Stearing Dampner

The tree mods will get rid of the wobble and ease steering.
You will get used to it without the mods. Adding a damper will only put more effort into your steering by slowing it down and you will lose road feedback that you have without one.

Lonnie

Thanks for the feedback Lonnie. I'll run this rig for awhile and then make the big leap to Liberty sidecar and triple tree. Have a great weekend.

Hi Oilrigger. Good the hear you have your rig together. As for the wobble, I had favorable results with a couple of Lonnie's suggestions: Increase air pressure in front tires (39 was good on my Sportster) and tighten the steering head bearing a little. Both of these together minimized the wobble until I installed the appropriate triple trees.

Cool Lee, thanks.

Trying now to get lean out adjusted. Started at 4 (or so) deg. with 7/8" toe in. Protractor form Home Depot has pretty small lines so hard to read. Hack frame to subframe is out 12 5/8". Hack tire is in line with back tire and hack tire is square to the floor. My back strut is in a far as it will go and I am about 2-3 deg. now. Will run it here in a little bit and see how it feels. All in all, not bad for no trees.

Talked to Jay and he said your motor problem was not bad. I think he was going back together with it. Good luck and good to hear from ya.

Yep, I have my bike back and will re-install the sidecar tomorrow, including re-adjusting the level & lean-out required by mounting a slightly larger Elite 3 tire a couple of months ago.

Hey, it sounds as if you might not have enough sidecar wheel lead relative to the motorcycle rear, which can result in an unpleasant surprise, especially when braking into a left turn.

For our smaller rig, I found 5/8"--3/4" toe-in and maybe 1-1/2* lean out worked well. The Harbor Freight Item #34214 magnetic angle finder on the rear disk is quite helpful for checking lean-out.

Sidecar axle is approx. 8" ahead of bike axle. I put a lazer level on sidecar axle and the line was hitting center or tire (between rim edge and outside of tire). The install directions said 8 - 10". What do you think? Move more forward?

Should be good at 8". 🙂

Harley has an 8" lead on their sidecars.

I'm getting a steering damper put my HD when I get my sidecar mounted later this month sounds like it might be more of hindrance than helping. Should a person learn to used to the wobble and have better road feel through the steering? Will get new triple trees later.

If the bike has good solid mounts by playing with the alignment we find that the Harley's have little to no head shake. If set up wrong or with poorly designed mounts then you may need the damper. Jay G
DMC sidecars
www.dmcsidecars.com

Agree Jay. Harley sidecar setups are entirely different. My friend has a 98 Roadking with hack and Harley has a very beefy hookup. I think he told me no degree lean out and the book even calls for 1 deg in. His rides pretty darn good. I talked to you about your hacks, but did not want to wait the 6 months for delivery. You and Liberty make a very nice sidecar. I have got this Tx car lined up and running really good. No weight to it, so the 09 Electraglide pulls the hell out of it. For others learning the sidecar hook up, the 8' light bulbs work really good for toe in. Like someone else wrote, ride it and make adjustments. When it feels good, your there. Really appreciate this forum and the comments from you guys that ride and sell these things. I called the company that built mine (purchased used) and they would not even return my email for sell me hundreds of dollars worth of parts I requested. Guess who's sidecars I am going push?? Thanks again everyone.

Motorvation is doing the setup so I'm sure it will be right. I'll see how it handles on the ride home when I pick it up. Thanks.

For what it is worth, We try never to have more then a 6 week wait for our sidecars. In spring this year it went to 8 weeks, right now we are running 4-5 weeks depending on the sidecar and paint.
Jay G
DMC sidecars
www.dmcsidecars.com
866-638-1793