Andy had some problems with his sidecar during the BlackDog. The Spirit of America chassis didn’t allow us to set it up with enough ground clearance and the suspension was way too soft!

The struts failed and he folded up the rig.

We decided to strip the bike and check for other damage and beef up the mounts.

While we were at it Andy decided to replace the suspension with a torsion stub axle. This allowed us to drop the axle below the chassis and dramatically increase the ground clearance while stiffening the suspension.

I cut off the swingarm and the shock mounts with the torch. Andy used the angle grinder to clean up afterwards.

Andy set the chassis up on blocks at the height he wanted it, clamped the axle in place, connected the bottom mounts and set the toe in and leanout to spec.

Then he marked the axle mount location on the bottom of the sidecar so he could drill holes for the bolts.

Nic thinks Andy’s new paint scheme is faster

Andy ended up with about 10″ of wheel lead and 11 1/2″ of ground clearance

the hack is a little light without the body work

Andy decided to add some ballast for the test ride

It needs a little fine tuning, but Andy was happy with the initial test ride