Hi I am new to the forum and new to sidecars. I purchased a 1981 gl1100 with a hitchhiker sidecar unattached. As a matter of fact whomever removed the sidecar just unbolted and unscrewed everything and threw all the hardware in the tub. The hitchhiker is a single with a 13" wheel but no brake. I was told that the original owner bought the rig from the dealership new. There are a number of extra parts that were included as well and all of the extra parts were placed in the tub as well. I need pictures of a rig hooked up to make sense of all these parts and how to hook up properly. Any suggestions and photos please. Thanks
Hello i have a 82 gl1100 aspencade with only 18k miles and a motorvation formula 2 sidecar i am also looking for pictures of where to mount the clamps on the bike. If you find any pics would you share your pics. I just completely repainted the bike and sidecar and all new upholstery trying to get it ready for spring. Planning on spending a few months on the road exploring the ghost towns of the west. I wish you luck on your project. And many miles of smiles and happiness.. Robert
In general we try not to use a bunch of "universal" clamps as we have found when not used correctly they tend to slip and or damage the frame of the bike in some applications they are the right way to go. On your bike we use one for the upper front and the upper rear. The rest of the mounting points are bike specific. One issue with "clamping" onto any of the 4 cylinder Goldwing's is that the rear of the bottom of the frame is much higher then the lower part of the front of the frame. When you place your rear lower mount higher then your front lower mount it makes alignment difficult as the way you align a sidecar is to first set toe in, then lean out. Test ride and fine tune with lean out. So if you find on your test ride that you have a constant pull to the right you would lean the bike out a bit more. however when the lower rear is higher then the lower front the more you lean it out, the more you toe it out and the more it pulls to the right. So then you have to go back and set your toe in and keep repeating until you find the combination where it all works.
When we do these bikes we make bike specific mounts. In the case of your bike we drop the center stand out of the bike and use it as a pick up point, we also use the center of the swing arm pivot this allows us to move the lower rear mount back further then the main frame of the bike and it also allows us to have it about the same height off of the ground as the front lower mount.
When we are working with Motovation sidecars as they use 1.25 inch diameter lower mount tubes that we find flex more then we like to see and then they either used a ball collet lower mount which fails, not many of these still around or they go eye bolt to eye bolt which we are do not like as when you adjust lean out unless the bolts are parallel to the ground you are putting stress into the mounting system as some thing must flex to do this. So what we do is we replace the arms going into the sidecar frame, usually clamps with clamps that are the same 1.25 O.D. but we have double walled these making them much stiffer. The clamp end we step up to 1.5 inch O.D. which allows us to use our standard bosses. Then on the end we use Hiem joints, also known as rod ends. These are like eye bolts but they have a bearing in them such that when you change alignment you are not adding stress into the system. We find by doing this we often can do away with a steering damper which we try to avoid as dampers make steering effort harder all the time.
My first sidecar bike was a 1982 GL1100I that I put about 30K on then picked up a 1983A as it had some refinements I wanted that the 1982 did not. I put about 150K on the 1983. The 1982 I gave to my brother in law, we mounted a Motovation Coupe Royal on it for his two kids. These make great sidecar bikes. Once on our way to a camp out we use to host we had the GL1100, the sidecar which was a California FS1, we were towing a Martin tent trailer and had a Kenna sidecar on top of the tent trailer and we had enough stuff with us to cook for 200 people. We tipped the scales at a bit over 2500 LBS. we cleared Snoqualmie pass at 65 MPH at 6500 RPM in third gear.
Let me know if we can be of any help.
Jay G
DMC sidecars
15616 Carbonado South Prairie RD
Buckley WA 98321
Monday - Friday 6-4:30
www.dmcsidecars.com
