Of course... it is out of warranty... so far... not a word from the manufacterer in regard to this "manufacterer breakage"... not a word!
I am tired... very tired about all this... what is next? A serious crash???
Please read today's Blog and help me out!
Ara & Spirit
Hello,
I finally found the section in the "blog" that refers to your breakage. I wonder what size the bolt was? What thread?
I was just in Sacramento yesterday... BMW shop... gave them a tire... one rim... $38!!!... almost had a heart attack!!! WOW!!!
I will take another picture of the bolt... it is a 1/2 inch bolt...
Thanks and be well...
Ara & Spirit
Originally written by Beemerchef on 5/13/2007 7:52 PM
I was just in Sacramento yesterday... BMW shop... gave them a tire... one rim... $38!!!... almost had a heart attack!!! WOW!!!
I will take another picture of the bolt... it is a 1/2 inch bolt...
Thanks and be well...Ara & Spirit
Apparently that bolt is under a great deal of strain while riding. It' probably a victim of fatigue. It appears to me that you should consider re-doing that mount so that you have a 5/8" or 3/4" bolt in there. My Harley rig has two 3/4 inch coarse thread bolts which hold the bottom two mounts of the sidecar frame in place.
Let us now how you fix that.
Much discussion on Ara's situation has taken place at SCT.
If anyone wants to read it click on live link below, join yahoo if you are not a member and then go back to the posts from the last couple of days.The name of the thread began as ' A Must read... another breakage ..'
and then changed to:'A master of his trade' or something close to that.
Seems like Ara has a person involved now to beef up various things.
Also see the picture on the SCT homepage.
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/SCT/
gnm109 WROTE:
>>>My Harley rig has two 3/4 inch coarse thread bolts which hold the bottom two mounts of the sidecar frame in place.<<
Nothing wrong with extra beef. The bolt that Ara recently had trouble with was the pivot for the shock mount and linear actuator assembly for the tilt adjustor on the rig. This does hold ALL the weight of the sidecar when under way. Ara's rig has also been used under soem extreme conditions which is not an excuse but a fact.
Note that on a Harley being as there is no suspension on the sidecar all road shocks do not have the luxury of being partially absorbed by a sidecar suspension other than what air pressure may be in the sidecar tire. All shocks are transmitted directly through the sidecar frame to the mounting system and to the bike with no dampenng to speak of. Typical sidecar mounts do very well with 1/2" or greater grade eight bolts. Typical sidecar mounts also have four points to distribute the loads a little more. This is not to knock Harley at all but just to say that even though additional size in any fastener is not a bad thing it is really not an issue with most conventinal sidecar rigs. No need for the masses to get concerned that their rig swill be falling apart if they have the conventional size good quality bolts on them.
Originally written by claude #3563 on 5/14/2007 5:11 AM
gnm109 WROTE:
>>>My Harley rig has two 3/4 inch coarse thread bolts which hold the bottom two mounts of the sidecar frame in place.<<Nothing wrong with extra beef. The bolt that Ara recently had trouble with was the pivot for the shock mount and linear actuator assembly for the tilt adjustor on the rig. This does hold ALL the weight of the sidecar when under way. Ara's rig has also been used under soem extreme conditions which is not an excuse but a fact.
Note that on a Harley being as there is no suspension on the sidecar all road shocks do not have the luxury of being partially absorbed by a sidecar suspension other than what air pressure may be in the sidecar tire. All shocks are transmitted directly through the sidecar frame to the mounting system and to the bike with no dampenng to speak of. Typical sidecar mounts do very well with 1/2" or greater grade eight bolts. Typical sidecar mounts also have four points to distribute the loads a little more. This is not to knock Harley at all but just to say that even though additional size in any fastener is not a bad thing it is really not an issue with most conventinal sidecar rigs. No need for the masses to get concerned that their rig swill be falling apart if they have the conventional size good quality bolts on them.
Hi Claude!
As to the Harley, it's one of the widest of all sidecar frames - 53.3 inches from mounting bracket to the sidecar wheel. The long monent arm absorbs most of the shock (What shock, I ride only on paved roads? Ha.) The Harley also has good springs on the tub frame. In many years, I've yet to see a HD sidecar frame break. FWIW, the Harley three point system of which many are critical does have some give in it and I suspect that fact has more than a little to do with it's ability to avoid breakdown.
Back to the bolts. If that bolt takes as much weight and strain as you say it does, then it's under-designed. Most of us aren't engineers. I'm not, but I learned when I was racing motorcycles and riding enduros that sometimes even heavy duty items can break because of the strain and fatigue. The only answer is to change materials or go bigger.
As far as that goes, there aren't too many grades of bolts that are tougher in any size than grade 8's unless you go to aircraft MS or higher grade. All I'm saying is that if I had that sort of incident, I would seriously consider changing to a size or two larger.
The alternative would be to carry more bolts and a small oxy-acetylene cutting torch. LOL.
A bit of easy advice to take what ever way you want... with all the regular disclaimers applied to it... I've been engineering & building some of the biggest, most demanding offshore oilfield equipment for over 30 years and the most valuable bit of information I ever received was "look at all the other parts your's connects to and make your part bigger so theirs breaks first". Crude, but effective.
What Rocketman said!
I agree with what being said about the 1/2 inch bolt in grade 8 being used, the shear strength on a 1/2 grade 8 bolt is 22,000 lbs, if he's breaking grade 8 bolts he's got some serious problems somewhere, more than likely it was a grade 6 bolt that broke.
Ted
Originally written by Shadow1100T on 5/16/2007 12:05 AM
I agree with what being said about the 1/2 inch bolt in grade 8 being used, the shear strength on a 1/2 grade 8 bolt is 22,000 lbs, if he's breaking grade 8 bolts he's got some serious problems somewhere, more than likely it was a grade 6 bolt that broke.
Ted
Don't mean to contradict but it looks like the remaining bolt on the frame was a grade 8. (6 points = grade 8) Apparently it under-designed for the weight and load involved.
See the picture from his "blog" (whatever a blog is....LOL)
Originally written by gnm109 on 5/16/2007 5:58 AM
Originally written by Shadow1100T on 5/16/2007 12:05 AM
I agree with what being said about the 1/2 inch bolt in grade 8 being used, the shear strength on a 1/2 grade 8 bolt is 22,000 lbs, if he's breaking grade 8 bolts he's got some serious problems somewhere, more than likely it was a grade 6 bolt that broke.
Ted
Don't mean to contradict but it looks like the remaining bolt on the frame was a grade 8. (6 points = grade 8) Apparently it was under-designed for the weight and load involved.
See the picture from his "blog" (whatever a blog is....LOL)
I didn't seek out the pic, if it had the points your absolutely correct, if it sheared in the body area and not in the thread area he's really got a problem, the holes must be elongated and letting things move around, if it's in the thread area the wrong length or style bolt must have been used, I have elc. lift and shoulder bolts are used and that's, IMHO, what's should have been used in his.
Ted
I went to his Blog site, I'm on dial up, I'm in the sticks and can't get anything else, anyhow it would take me WAY to long to download his pic's, I would have loved to see what happened, somebody somewhere screwed up, you just don't brake 1/2" grade 8's that easily.
Ted
Originally written by Shadow1100T on 5/16/2007 7:23 AM
I went to his Blog site, I'm on dial up, I'm in the sticks and can't get anything else, anyhow it would take me WAY to long to download his pic's, I would have loved to see what happened, somebody somewhere screwed up, you just don't brake 1/2" grade 8's that easily.
Ted
Oh sorry. I had added his picture from the blog but it dropped off....or got removed. Here is it again. I don't know what grade the broken bolt was but the bolt on the left holding the shock absorber is a grade 8.
I think with a larger size, he'd be OK.
