We live on a nasty washboard road and we really like this old hack.
Right now the torsion arm is nice and tight and tracks well. How do I maintain it so that it does not go south prematurely. I didn't see any grease fittings or anything? It is a California friendship 1. I Emailed them and they told me that they no longer supported that model.
No advice on maintenance.
I remember reading someone had some parts here. I am hoping that if I can maintain it I won't need to rebuild it soon.
Thanks in advance.
Joe
There are metal torsional straps that may break on occasion. They can be replaced with the torsion straps used by early VW Beetles. There may also be a bronze or composite bushing that may get sloppy. That will probably take a machinist to turn a replacement.
Lonnie
I think Dauntless sells th ebushing spoken of. The VW torsion 'straps' may be just a tad wide but can be ground down to fit with no problems. Don't over heat them though.
If the torsion straps fail totally yopu can lose the wheel, hub and swingarm all in one shot. Not a good thing.
We had a guy bring one to the shop for a fix last year and the sidecar wheel etc were leaning on quite an angle. If I woudl have known it was that bad we woudl have went to pick it up with a trailer.
It is too bad thae these sidecars had the suspension design they did. Th eactual concept was pretty good but the system , after many miles, can becoem quite dangerous.
I have head of some converting to a rubber torsion trailer axle asembly but have never seen one.
Dauntless did do a conversion to convert them to a coil over shock. Not sure if they are still doing them or not.
We do a conversion to these sidecars that provides a full splined end torsion bar that runs under and across the chassis. It also includes a manual tilt adjustor. There is a new 1" swingarm pivot spindle installed with a new pivot hub of course.
