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Jim Meehan and his sidecar, a sad story

I remember when I built this Sweet SL-220 sidecar for Jim Meenan, it was in 1976 and at the time he was living in Kingston New Hampshire and was 48 years old. Jim had his ride for thirty four years and then some low life two years ago stole it. Today Jim's 84 and his ride has been gone for two years. It's been reported that Jim today lives in Harrington Maine. If anyone knows Jim Meehan or anything about if Jim got his rig back I would appreciate hearing about it. I was told that Jim would give shut in's rides in his sidecar. What a sad state of affairs we live in when no ones ride is safe from the "Low Life's".

Back in 1972 when I built my first SL-110 sidecar I had moved to a larger shop and the first night someone broke in and stole my bike and sidecar. All I could do was build another, and move on with my life. A few weeks later the cops show up and told me that they found a bike and sidecar in the wood a few miles away. The officer told me that they had the local tow truck company haul it in and all I had to do was sign the paper work and I could go and pick it up. When I went to pick up my property it was all scratched up and the bike looked like someone had worked it over with a hammer. I asked the driver what happened and he told me that it was difacult to get up on the ramp truck so it got a little beat up. " So what your insurance will pay for it". I also had to pay for a weeks storage. It came to more than a small amount. I took the rig back to the old shop and moved out of the new shop and got on with my life. I did see the driver out a few months later and took him out around the back side pizza shop and showed him a few things. Street justice can be a bitch.

If anyone know anything about Jim please drop me a line.

Johnny Sweet

Johnny, 

 It does track straight.  We have not had to make any changes to the attachments except tighten them down.  they were loose when we picked up the rig.

The addition of the fairing made the headshake so much that my wife couldn't drive it at first this summer and was something that we didn't see last riding season.

To deal with the head shake we found that addtional weight in the sidecar makes a difference  She now rides with 100lb of lead shot in the trunk, we also tightened down steering head bearings on the bike that that made it much more drivable for my wife.

I also remember the story about his sidecar being stolen. Too bad that it has not been found yet. My heart goes out to him.

Thanks

Eric

That's interesting in that the addition of the fairing made it shimmy. You could add a VW steering shimmy damper. I used them on any of the set ups that gave me the least bit of trouble. I didn't want any customers coming back a few weeks later complaining about a shimmy. My feeling was to corrects a situation before it became a problem. I would purchase the VW shimmy dampers from any of the auto parts stores. The units that we used were from the 1960's VW. I'm not sure if they used the same damper in the 70's. I fabricated a bracket that attached to the right down tube and ran the VW shimmy damper over to the top front solid rod even with the attaching point on the down tube. I will see if I have any pictures of the combination that will show what it looked like.
I'm glad to hear that you placed the added weight to the back of the sidecar in the trunk area. I always had to make sure that every customer was aware of the problems if they placed the weight in the front of the sidecar. I would explain to them about weight and balance and moving what's called the "Moment", It's an airplane term. We only placed 40 lbs in the back, but if you feel comfortable with 100lbs then go with it.
One thing you may want to consider is placing tape, "yes tape" on the speedometer. In airplanes and some race cars back in the day they would place colored tape on the instruments. It was a small band around one eight of an inch wide. It was placed on the glass with green in the operating range and red in the "Danger Zone". All a pilot or a race driver has to do is look to see that all the instruments are in the green. If the needle is in the "Red" your in trouble. I did the same with some of the sidecar rigs, by placing a thin band of green tape below 38 MPH and a "Red line" above 38MPH. All the driver had to do when approaching a right hand turn when they were riding solo was to look down and see if they were in the " green", if they were in the " Red " it was time to pull the front brakes to slow down. We found that with a 40llb's of ballast below 38 MPH they were safe. More about stopping with the " Front Brake at a later time. I have pictures of the tape set up that I can post for any that may be interested.
Thanks for posting the information about the sidecar tracking straight after over thirty years warms my hart. I've always wondered about things like that.
Later, Johnny Sweet

Wolfhound - 9/4/2012 6:54 AM

You are a good man, Johnny Sweet. God Bless you for helping a veteran.

Thanks for the kind words, Larry is a great guy and I'm privileged to have him as a friend. But you know working with Vet's started over two decades before I ever met Larry. It all started with a gentleman named Dominic, Dom that brought an FLH Harley to me for a sidecar. Dom was a former Air Force vet. He was paralyzed from the waist down and was forced into a wheelchair when a Massachusetts State cop ran into him while chasing someone for a minor infraction. The thing that really got Dom was that the cop never even asked or cared how he was doing after he destroyed his life. I built an SL-220  sidecar for Dom and he did the conversion for the hand shifter. He would lift the wheelchair into the sidecar like it was a feather. Dom like us pushed iron three times a week, and kept in good shape, other than his handicap he was like any of us.  While driving his sidecar rig he would use his right hand to shift the gears. He left the return spring off the cable going to the carburetor just like they did in the old day's and when shifting gears the throttle would stay at whatever RMP it was at when he pulled his hand of the twist grip. It was something to see how he drove that rig. Dom was still driving his Harley back in the late 80's when I moved. He herd I was moving and came by to say his good by's.

  Not long after Dom's rig was built came Dicky, he was an old Navy vet  that drove under a trailer truck with no lights late at night returning home from work. Dicky had been handicapped for nineteen years when I installed an SL-220 on a Honda 750 Hondamatic . Dicky used sticks to walk, and in time when he was a fixture at the shop he brought down a wheelchair and when at the shop that's were you would find Dicky. He went to the races and traveled with us all over the country becoming a close friend.  He to was at my going away ceremony and was still driving his sidecar rig.

   The last  in that time period was uncle Frank. Not my real real uncle but when I was just four or five Uncle Frank was one of my Dad's best friends. He and my Dad and my Dads brothers, my real uncles raced flat track motorcycles. They raced on the New England Indian Motorcycle Racing team back in the 1930's in the middle of the depression. When World war II broke out my Dad and his twin brothers left that Sunday night along with Frank for Merchant Marine training. They were in the thick of it by April of 1942 transporting goods to England over the North Atlantic. Over the next three years they got blown out of the water two times and spent day's in life boats all making it home to sail again. By the time the German U Boats were all destroyed they had sunk 1,200 ships and 37,000 Merchant sailors had been lost. My Dad and his group made it to D Day. After the five  Sullivan brothers had been lost they split up my Dad and his brothers, but kept the twins together. Frank and my Dad along with the other brothers were all in the Normandy Invasion. They asked for volunteers to drive the landing craft and my uncle Willy, one of the twins and Frank volunteered to be landing craft drivers. The two of them didn't know that until the war was over, because they were on different ships. Day's after the D Day invasion the Merchant ships headed back to the US for more trips back and forth to England until the war ended. Without the Merchant ships the war could have never been won.

  A little note of interest, on the trip back to Boston on the merchant ships my Dad and Uncle Sandy on different ships landed within hours of each other and headed home, less than 30 miles from the docks for a few days. Two brothers were married to two sisters and when they headed back to England making many trips over the next nine months two baby's were born. My cousin and I, we were what's called twin cousins, we lost my cousin Bob, Robert  Sweet when we were 42. He was doing what we all loved, Skydiving. Sandy, his Dad said at Bob's funeral we new one day it would cost us someone in the family when we purchased the Skydiving Center/School in 1958. In all our family taught ten thousand people how to parachute Jump before Sandy the last of his generation died on his 84'th birthday. 

   Frank, my Dad, and and his brothers returned home at the end of 1945 and in the Summer of 1946 were back racing for the Indian factory team in New England with new flat track racers. They made a living doing construction work. Frank and my Dad both had road bikes. They made connections during the war when England was all but destroyed from the German U2 bombs.  The ships had more food than the guys could ever eat and both my Dad and Frank would take a duffel bag and fill them with non perishable food. They fed two different family's during the war with those in charge never knowing. As it turned out one of the family members was in charge at the old Triumph motorcycle factory. During the Winter of 1945/46 my Dad made a trip on the Merchant ship back to England. Ships were running back and forth shipping supply's in the rebuilding of Europe. My Dad made arrangements to pick up new 1946 Triumph 500 motorcycles for he and Frank when the factory was up and running again. In the late Spring another trip was made and on the return run two brand new 500 were in the hole all crated up. It was reported that they were the first Triumphs to be shipped into the country. This was before the dealer network was set up, that came later.

 I remember Uncle Frank when I was four or five years old, always being around. He was part of our family, but then he was gone. I never thought much about it for almost thirty years, and then he came back into our lives.  As the story goes I was  years later and Frank was driving his road bike, at that time in the early 1950's was a big Indian Chief and went off the road. He was banged up pretty badly and would never be able to work again. My Mom told me that he was married to a stunningly beautiful lady and when Frank got hurt she left him.  She also mentioned that after the war all the girls liked Frank. The entire group would go roller skating, a very popular thing at that time and Frank could have his pick of any of the girls.

   Time past and my Dad and Frank lost track of each other, not intentional ,but you know how life can be. It was in 1978 and my Dad walked into a Sub Shop in the town that I was born in and Frank was making subs. He owned the shop and had come a long way from the dark day;s of the early 50's. Over the years Frank made it out of the wheelchair and to a cane.  My Dad brought Frank home to meet my Mom after over twenty five years, and in a conversation my Dad mentioned that I manufactured motorcycle sidecars. A few days later I got a call and was invited to dinner and told that an old family friend would be showing up. Uncle Frank and I were reunited, and as adults hit it off from the start.  

   I felt it was an honor and a privilege to build Frank his sidecar. He went with the SL-220 and had me paint it white with florescent orange trim so that he would be seen. He also installed a blinking headlight so that he would definitely be seen with on coming tragic. Frank wasn't interested in how flashy the rig looked he just wanted to be seen and not run into. Frank became a permanent part of the shop and after retirement spent more time with us than at home. Between Dom, Dicky and Frank we had one great time, with my guys becoming good friends with all of them. I would observe as one of my guys was about to go somewhere and ask if any of them would like to come along. Many times the entire gaggle, ( many times they were disorderly and noisy)  of sidecar rigs would make it down the road headed somewhere having a good time.

At the time my Dad was still a Merchant seaman, a Captain making the run to Japan and the Philippines many times in a year. He had three months vacation that he took in the Summer. Frank and my Dad would go
out on the road making  trips all over New England on their sidecar rigs. Many time visiting places that were at one time an old race track that they had competed on.  When my Dad retired he and Frank took the motor home pulling a trailer with two sidecar rigs to Florida for bike week. It was the  last time the two of them could make a trip together, we lost my Dad three months later. Frank and Sandy were at my side at the funeral.  

   Frank lived to be 94 and when he died I received a call from my Mom informing me of his passing. I kept in touch with Frank up till the end. In the 1990's I would make the trip back home and stop by to see Frank. He was still driving his SL-220 sidecar into his late 80's and had picked up a few Honda 750 bikes for parts. In Franks mind he was going to be riding for many more years. Those WWII Veterans were tough as nails and I was lucky enough to be raised and guided by them, an opportunity I will always cherish.

   Helping other brother Veterans has been a big part of my life, but when you think about it it's all I have ever known. Before I was a combat vet I was around the WWII vets and was raised on their principals and beliefs. So when it came my time it was just a natural thing. I never held it against someone that never went, but I must admit that my brother vets would always get a little favoritism shown them.

  We had others in the group that weren't sidecar people like Cid'o that lost his arms, Jacky that lost a right leg, and my late uncle Ollie Silva, New England's Hall of Fame race car diver that was disabled in a racing accident in 1978. All were part of our group and all were veterans each  have interesting stories. Possibly at a later date.

An addendum to this short story:
During WWII my uncles Sandy and Willy along with Frank were on their way to England on one of the many trips they made during the war. The Germans blew the ship out of the water and by chance the three along with others found a life boat. At the time the German's would shoot any survivors with their machine gun. For some reason they the Germans were in a "Wolf Pack" and went after other ships and all those on the life raft lives were spared. They were on the open sea for day's and finally seen by a passing Merchant ship that's when the call went out and they were picked up and taken to England. In England with no ship and no ration card they couldn't find any food to eat. They went to the Red Cross just for coffee and some donuts. The cost was $1.00; it doesn't sound like much in today world but back then they only made thirty dollars a month. Putting this into prospective,how would you fell today if a coffee and a few donuts cost you a days pay. They finally found out that they could get the chips from fish and chips without a ration card and that's what they ate until they got a ship back to the New York for many more trips back and forth till the end of the war. Till the day that he died both Willy and Sandy disliked the Red Cross. I remember one time Willy's wife Alga had cloths out for the Red Cross and Willy threw them in the trash before he would give them to the Red Cross. I have no feeling one way or another and some of you may say that the Red Cross does so much. I find it hard to give to a group that pays the CEO over four hundred thousand dollars a year and when money is sent in money when a catastrophe happens and locally they fill their coffers up be sending the money on the where it's needed. If the Salvation Army's CEO only makes something like nineteen thousand a year why can't the Red Cross. This wasn't written to put down the Red Cross it's just part of the story and had to be explained.

I found this link to an interview that both Willy and Sandy gave back in the 1980's when they were running the Stormville Parachute Center and one of the jumpers made some video's. In this one video they are talking about the life boat and getting food in England during the war so many years earlier.

     

Thanks for reading,

Johnny Sweet 

 

 

 

                                 Frank looking proud and distinguished on his sidecar Rig in 1978.

 

 

SidecarFrankyGalewsha1978-1.jpg

 

 

 

A history to be proud of, Johnny Swet. God Bless you. My wife put in 21 years in the Army, served in the first Gulf War, my oldest son put in 23 in the Air Force, my middle son put in 4 in the Navy, my youngest
stepson put in 20 in the Navy, and his oldest son is stationed in Afghanistan in the Army at the moment. My wifes dad put in 20 in the Army. So we appreciate our service men.
As an aside, I married quite young, had 5 children, and was never in service, much to my regret.

What must the 4 wheelers think

Runaway Bike!, Runaway Bike!, O, it's only Larry cruising down the highway. Can you imagine what the 4 wheelers must think when they come upon this rig? I was sent these pictures by Steve Potash, Larry good friend. I felt that some would really appreciate seeing them.

Thanks for reading and looking,

Johnny Sweet

RunawayBike.jpg

LarryandDebdoingwhattheydo.jpg

It looks like it was a cold day. Larry and Deb riding in a charity event. Even the little bear in the trunk is having a good time.

LarryandDebontheroad.jpg

I had forgotten that I had cut in a trunk lid with lock on the old style Classic sidecar body. This shows the driving compartment and how it was set it up for easy driving. The three switches on the aluminum box control the wheelchair lift. The throttle and brake are on the left. The steering is lock to lock from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock with only 180 degrees of movement.

Larryssidecardrivers.jpg

You can see the end of Honda rack and pinion and the steering arm that pushes and pulls to activate the steering.

Larryswithhissidecar.jpg

Larry and his lovely wife Deb.

LarryandDeb.jpg

The SL-110 Sweet Sidecar

I've received many emails asking for pictures of the different models that I produced over the years. So I thought I would start from the first model, the SL-110.

This original SL-110 Sweet sidecar has been in the same family for over thirty five years. When Wain first purchased his sidecar his daughter was in kindergarten. Wain wanted to take the entire family out on the road for day trips and a sidecar fit the bill. Wain's sidecar has been hauling around three generations and working on the fourth. The SL-110 model was designed to be a wind in your face style sidecar. It didn't come with a windscreen/windshield. In all around 50 units were manufactured, and the design was perfected building these first SL-110's. Check out some of the pictures from the early day's. Most were built in black only, so I tried to find pictures with different colors.

SL-110onHarley1975andSL-220onHonda750.jpg

This SL-110 was installed on what's been know in later years an Air Head BMW. Check out the large ball joints used for the mounts. Look close and note the lower front joint was different, and that the two bottom joints were adjustable. That would turn out to be a big mistake, I soon rectifier that.

The crest on the front became very popular. I taped every design and sprayed all the SL-110's with lacquer paint. I then color sanded each body with 600 wet and dry paper and power buffed the entire body's. The paint was good enough to be put in a show. Back in the day we didn't have the help of the better paints of today, It was a lot of hard work.

sled1297.jpg

Silver with a trim color was very popular at the time. I had an inventory of upholster in almost every color and a few customers spent hours putting color swatches together trying to get something different. This is just one of the color print combinations that some came up with. The SL-110 was still asked for when the SL-220 in the foreground was offered.

SL-100andSL-220inshowroom1976.jpg

I found this picture on the internet. If anyone knows the owner please send me the information, I would like to contact him. This was the only SL-110 built with the Whale Tail that was designed for the SL-220. The windscreen would have been added sometime later. I bet these kids are having one grand time.

sidecar1-1.jpg

One of the first SL-110's mounted on a 650 Benelli motorcycle. I was still perfecting the upholstery at the time. The side lights cost $6.85 at the time and I got the price down to 89 cents as time went on.

SidecarSweetSL-110number6crest.jpg

Front view of the Benelli showing the popular silver and black trim. Note the rear rod and the dihedral angle that it intersected the top mount with. I found in time that the top of the rod at the adjusting end should be parallel to the plane, much like the front top rod.

SidecarSweetSL-110number6frontview.jpg

The original Model/Plug of the SL-110 that Designer/Sculptor/Artist Dick Lion and I built in the Winter of 1972 and completed in early March of that year. From the model I built the mold that started it all. I will do a future story of all the steps going from an idea to a manufactured product. Stay tuned for more along with other interesting stories.

Sl110SweetSidecar008.jpg

The very first of the SL-110 sidecars ever built.

Who ever said a business can't be started in a two stall garage. My buisness start up was as low tech as they came. These were the first units built, in the picture the black unit is sitting next to the Honda 500 and not installed. The first units were built using 3/4" rods as shown in the picture, they ended up being unsatisfactory. At the time the machinists lathe that I had would only except a rod 3/4" in diameter. I then picked up an old WWII Monark 16" lathe that would turn almost anything, I then went to a 1" rod. The red and blue body's were painted in Metalflake Candy colors. From the house the famed Metalflake shop was only over the hill around four miles away. At the time Metalflake advertised all over the country with adds in almost every car and bike magazine. I was a regular customer for years and worked at getting one of my sidecars in their adds, something that never would happen, a guy can dream can't he.

FirstrunofSL-110sidecars1972-1.jpg

The first and only Metalflake sidecar that I ever built. I ran a custom paint shop Ohio in the late 60's called "The House of Flake". I swore I would never paint anything in Metalflake again once I sold the buisness. Candy Colors were OK, but no Metalflake. When a childhood friend wanted me to match his Harley with a Metalflake sidecar I couldn't say no. Wayne was a dynamiter and worked on the last of the interstate highways. He would leave on a Sunday afternoon on his way back to "Down East Maine" with his suitcase and his jack hammer in the sidecar. He would work all week and make the drive back to New Hampshire on Friday night. He ran the sidecar rig for two years in the Summer months until rt 95 was completed. When he got married the wife wanted no bikes around so Wayne sold the Harley, but refused to sell the sidecar. It set in his front yard for years and then he sold it it a guy that had been bothering him for some time about buying the sidecar. He brought it to me to mount on something, I don't remember what, and he had me paint it black.

3b-1.jpg

This picture must have been taken on a Saturday afternoon. I still hadn't installed the dust cap on the spindle. I finished and test rode the rig later that day. Wayne told me to deliver it to the local "Watering Hole" that Saturday night. It was dark when I pulled into the parking lot and everyone was feeling no pain. Most of the guys in the bar I had know most of my life. The sidecar was a big hit and I gave all the drunks rides up and down the road. Wayne signed off on the sidecar and told me to take it back to my house and he would pick it up the next day when he was feeling better. I drove back to my house and dropped it of and took my Honda 750 with my sidecar back to give more rides. This time to the girls. I kept the rides in the the driveway of the parking lot . A hole lot of screaming went on that night. I would run the rig up and down the driveway in first gear making left hand sliding turns. The dirt track guys would have been proud of me that night. I was the only one sober and drunks got in one by one. A few laps around the driveway and they were screeching to get out. I would do the ten laps and by that time they had enough. I would stop in front of the entrance door where the crowd was standing and let them out. A few seconds later the next dare devil was getting in the sidecar. I gave out a lot of rides that night and one things for sure, I burned all bridges relating to any future sidecar sales to any of my old friends. The recipients of the hell ride would have the last word.

The Honda 500 on the left was one of my Dad's with the sidecar from the Philippians. He was in and out of Olongapo Philippians many time each year, so he had a custom sidecar built just for fun. When he wasn't driving a Sweet sidecar he drove his Philippine rig.

I had gotten into hydroplanes the year before and in the right of the picture is one of my hydroplanes.

3dd.jpg

I received this link from Roman, his wife took a short video from inside the sidecar as they road down the road. It's of Roman, the bike and the dog. One family that's been having fun on their new sidecar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAvsLBI2fhE

Johnny sweet

I would like to thank those of you that have sent me emails with all the kind words. I will attempt to answer many of your questions when writing about my Sweet sidecars in short stories and accounts from the old day's. I am aware that many of you never post on the internet and understand that so I will do my best to keep the stories coming as long as I'm asked. To answer all your emails would take up most of my time so please don't take it personal if I don't respond. Although if you have a personal request I will do my best to help you out if I can. The Roman story is a good example. I would also like to report that this week I'm going to travel around two hours from my home and re mount Ian's sidecar to his 750 Hondamatic. I'm looking forward to not only making new friends with an interesting older gentleman like myself but it will be the first time that I will mount a sidecar called a Hitchhicker. I remember my son visiting the Hitchhicker shop years ago when he was running the roads around Ohio. Ian bought the bike new and recently had the Hitchhicker installed on it. The first dealership wasn't successful so it was taken to a second and they in turn failed to the point that it can't even be ridden. My plan is to remove the so called universal mounting system and install my Sweet system to his frame and bike. I did install a Vetter Teraplane to a Honda 750 around thirty years ago, but never bothered with any other sidecar but my own. This should be a fun experience. Ian is an accomplished sidecar guy having another rig on a Goldwing. How could I refuse a guy that has two sidecar rigs.

Once again, thanks for all the emails and the personal kind words.

Johnny Sweet jsweet450@yahoo.com

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The Sweet SL-220 Sidecar

The SL-220 was the second in the line of the SL-model sidecars built in the 1970's. The SL-110 was a wind in your face style sidecar and at times I received requests for a windshield. I never felt that a windshield mounted on the SL-110 would look right. Sometime in 1975 I started thinking about increasing production and a second model. That's when the SL-220 was born. If I was going to offer a second model with a windshield it would also give me the opportunity to change the taillight and add more area to the trunk. Looking at the SL-110 from the rear you could see the sidecar frame and I figured by dropping the trunk area down 3" and blending it smoothly into the body it would hide the frame and at the same time add more storage to the trunk area. A funny thing about the trunk, It was behind the seat and was assessable by removing the lapel snaps on the upholstery and moving the upholstery and seat back forward. Some customers had to be told that the sidecar had a trunk. The same went for posable thieves, they never new that there was a trunk. The same for the tonneau cover, when it was covering the passenger compartment we never had an incident of someone opening it up by popping the snaps looking around to take something. An open cockpit was an invitation to have something stolen.

The taillight on the SL-110 was a good looking light but was to expensive at $6.85 per unit. I found a running light for something like .89 cents and blended that light to the rear of the new SL-220 body. At the time the only lights required on a sidecar was a white running light on the front and a red running light on the rear. I could see the potential for sidecar sales and intended on building hundreds of the SL-220. If I could save $6.00 per unit on anything it would soon adds up in profits.

Designing a windshield for the new SL-220 turned out to be an interesting exercise. The windshield had to blend into the existing lines and not look like it was an add on. I'm a professional designer, modeler and how many times have I seen a design with great looking flowing lines having something attached to it making the entire creation look like crap. This is not the results that I wanted to end up with. Something I learned from my instructors early on in my carrier as a modeler is once you reach a point in your work that you start getting noticed. The critics will be gunning for you looking for the slightest flaw or mistake in your work. So I new that every square inch of the SL-220 had to be perfect. Not that the design is perfect, because that's always subjective. One person will like one design and another will not, but that the workmanship on the surface of the body has to be perfect. The smallest flaw will show up and almost magnify itself making the entire design second rate. I always enjoyed observing someone studying the finished SL-220 body looking for the smallest flaw. It has one but Ill never tell. A little secret, every design ever created by a modeler has a flaw that only the modeler knows it's whereabouts. I've worked with teams of modelers and one thing we do is ask the other modelers to run their hands over our work looking for the flaws. We all do it, and in the end it makes us all better at what we do. The best there ever was, the late Roy Brown. Roy had magical eyes, he could see a flaw that only the best of us could only feel. When I say "feel", that's what us modelers do we feel the work, but Roy used a lost technique call viewing the horizon. He looked at any surface like most of use viewing the horizon of a sunset. Roy arrived late to the game and became a modeler much later in life than most. Before Roy's death he was awarded his Masters Modelers Certificate, something that his daughter hangs on her wall with pride to this day. Modeling today is a lost art with everything being done with Solid Works computer software, and CNC machines.

I ended up using snowmobile windshields on the SL-220. I started out by purchasing 100 small windshields for $1.00 a piece on a close out sale from a company in Wisconsin. I wasn't sure if they would work, but when they arrived I took one and placed masking tape all over it and places it on the of the original SL-110 body plug/model. I played around with windshield angles and line blending until I came up with something that I liked. I then called in some of my buddy's and asked them to be brutal. They, like most people enjoy being critical and enjoyed it when I screwed up. It's just human nature I guess. I was surprised when everyone that saw the windshield liked it. You would have thought that just to be spiteful someone would claim they didn't like it. I then sculptured the windshield into place and went about building a new mold. The first body out of the new mold was placed on my personal bike and I never got it in paint when someone came in and offered me more than it was ever worth. At this point I had two molds and could double my body production. I sent the SL-220 mold down to a high production fiberglass shop that a buddy of mine owned. He ran two shifts and could build one body per shift of ten body's a week. At the time the body cost $100 per unit but if I ordered ten units the cost was reduced to $85. In today's world that would be $850 a body. A young guy that hung around the shop would make the trip over to the glass shop to pick up body's for me. The SL-110 mold was at my shop and I had a body being built in it at all times. I could build twenty bare frames in a long day and not have to look at frames for a month or more. Body's were another thing, no body's no production.

In all I built 250 of the SL-220 sidecars but something that no one ever new was that I stopped numbering the body's at 133. In fact a good friend of mine Don Grant from Merrimack New Hampshire still had number 133 today. At the time I was involved in more than one buisness. I raced Hydroplane race boats in Canada and also sold racing speed parts international across the border, no free trade agreements back in that time. I also had a construction compa
ny. Everything was tied together and my lawyer, accountant and bookkeeper (my girlfriend) all told me to stop numbering the sidecars but to keep impeccable records," just in case". The "just in case" never happened. So many of the SL-220 sidecars never had a number on them and I was never asked by a customer as to the placement of a number. They new the number because it was on the board but it was never a thing that many ever thought about, They just wanted a sidecar.

The Sl-220 by far was the most popular but it was labor intense and every body had to be primed, sanded, painted in lacquer, wet sanded with 600 wet and dry and machine polished to a high luster, then waxed. Many a young guy learned all the steps and how to work in my shop. Years later when we have met up many a smile about all the hard work building those damn sidecars. I always had a standing deal for any of the young guys that worked in the shop. If they wanted a sidecar then build it yourself, and many of them did. I did have an unwritten rule, when they sold their sidecar it was to be sold for the full asking price. Most of them only had $150 in their sidecar, but the selling price was $600. Most would pick up a used wheel and related parts and I furnished all the metal pieces for free. The body cost the $85 and they had to purchase the paint. I would stitch up the upholster for free when I was stitching up five or more at a time. They always were on hand to help cut out the patterns or just to hold something for me,a good bunch of kids. I did loose one friend ,or I thought he was a friend over it. One friend built his rig and hung out with us for a few years and then it was time to move on to his next adventure In his case barefoot water skiing. So he put his sidecar up for sale. He told me he only needed to get $300 of less out of it and would sell it in the local weekly rag. I told him to ask the full price because if he didn't then it would set a precedents for my used sidecars only being worth $300 or less. He didn't seen to give a crap because he told me he only had $150 in it. I told him the only reason he only had that much in it was because he was my friend and I did that for all my friends. He sold his sidecar for $300 not really caring about the friendship. The guy he sold it to brought his bike and the sidecar over to me and I mounted it for him never mentioning one thing about what had transpired. Some of you reading this may agree with Karry and think that I'm out to lunch but that's how I did it and I stand by my decision.

Manufacturing the SL-220 was a lot of hard work but everyone involved in building them got a good feeling when the customer would be leaving the shop headed down the road with a smile from ear to ear.

Thanks for reading,

Johnny Sweet jsweet450@yahoo.com

Nothing High Tech just the basics, new mold on the back of the truck after a good production run. Notice how simple and clean the mounting rods look.

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The SL-220 always looked good in white.

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Don Grants number 133 painted in Corvette silver to match his BMW. Don still has his SL-220 sidecar.

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A weekly production all in black from the mid 1970's, almost all SL-220's were built in black.

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Fast forward to 2012 and my old new SL-220 made from new molds being readied for the open road. The body is in the process of being color sanded and polished.

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A beautiful clean design. And your philosophy, both business and personal, is spot on.

More pictures of Sweet SL-220 Sidecars

Jimmy Tate pushing his rig into the shop. It was a short walk to the Country store in the background, many visits were made in a day's time. The intersection to the right had over 10,000 cars a day travel threw it. That was the main reason I moved to this shop rather than a more attractive looking building, Location, Location, Location.

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Very clean simple looking mounts.

You may notice some odd ball upholstery combinations. I had a friend, a young guy that was from the neighborhood that had a step Dad that ran a company called Bolta. They manufactured upholstery for the boating industry. When young Glen got out of High School went to work at Bolta. Glen mentioned to me that he could get what's called "cut offs" for almost nothing. Cut off are the ends of the rolls of upholstery when they get finished with a production run. The cut offs ran from five to ten yards of material. Bolta made hundreds of different color and print combinations. They had a room on the second floor full of cut offs and the employs were allowed once a week to go in and purchase the cut offs for a few cents a pound. Glen would call and I would make the trip down to the old Bolta factory and park just below the door of the second story storage area. Glen would throw down the rolls of upholstery into my truck filling it up to the top. He would then come down and say "give me $17.00". I never new what color or pattern I was getting with all these rolls of upholstery and every trip was like opening presents as a kid at Christmas time. When I would arrive back at the shop the guys would be calling dibs on this roll or that roll. One day I figured out that the cost of stitch up an upholstery was less than $2.00. Most customers wanted black so I used a vinyl spray to get the black color. So as you can see in the pictures some of the color combinations were odd to say the least.

The only SL-220 ever produced with a gel coat finish. I never liked it because the seem down the center had to be covered with some form of trim. Charlie Chatsey liked it and took it to the West Coast on his Triumph 650, even doing the Griffith Park show back around 1976. It was a big hit at the show because all my sidecars were on the East coast and this design had never been seen on the West Coast. Charlie still has the sidecar in his barn after all these years. The Triumph 650 is long gone. Different ones have made the trip over to Charlies wanting to buy the sidecar and he won't sell it. He's been know to say "that he will be buried in it". I still don't like it after all these years

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One of my own rigs, The wings were different and not always liked by some, but I didn't care because it was my personal road rocket and it had speed written all over it. If you were on a Harley coming up the interstate and came upon me and my rig and thought you were going to pass me your were wrong. I was a professional racer, be it hydroplanes or Super Modified race cars and every racing weekend drove at speeds over 150MPH. I would push my rig up to whatever speed needed to make sure the Harley guys never got around me. Once we got up over 90 MPH most would figure this guys nuts and they had enough and backed off. I did get one of two that would push a little harder but when we got up over 100 MPH they were all done and backed off. It was more of a sidecar Harley thing, at the time the only thing a Harley was good for in my mind was to be sent to the dump. I did place my sidecars on many Harley's and made some good strong friendships along the way, but there was the few with the attitude that I laid in wait for. I wasn't as bad about it as my best friend Paul Pono a former Navy Seal. He had a thing for Harley guy's and could back it up if they cared to dance. I could take em or leave em it didn't matter to me, but if they came into our world they were in over their head. Paul was a Seal and I was Special Forces and we had each others backs. Out of all the hundreds of customers we did have two that crossed the line and to this day I bet they don't like thinking about that dark day.

My girlfriend at the time that would later become my wife and I were running along a flat straight road one night and I pushed it up to over 100 MPH and then backed it down. She later asked how fast we had been going and I told her and she said " that was really something" I told her that it was the last time she would ever be go that fast but I wanted her to feel what it was like, It was a one time deal. To the day she died she thought I would take the kids out and do the same, but I never did.

The boat being towed behind it was my Sweet Hydro Kart an idea that I had for ten years before I built it. One of my designs that never made it to the market place after building the original model, molds, six prototypes and setting up 38 dealers . The buisness model didn't make sense to me after being told by some so called experts that this was the boat of the future. I saw the Jet Ski as the future and it did become that, my design was a solid but outdated from the start. In the end I beleave I saved myself almost half a million dollars in money and heartache by not perusing my my boat manufacturing experience. Sometimes you have to use common sense in your buisness decisions and not be so in love with a design or a product that your blinded by it.

The Sweet SK 800 was what's called a "Tunnel Hull" boat only 8' long and 4' wide powered by an outboard motor. The driver sat in the boat just like a GO Kart and it rode like a racing boat. A customer could place any engine from 10 to 25 HP on it and go out and have one great time. It would run at speeds up to 50 MPH and turn on a dime, you couldn't flip it over. You could turn at full speed and all it would do is dig a hole in the water. It was designed using my years of high speed experience racing hydroplanes. and my background in the composites field. They were going to sell for around $1,200 per unit. The easy part about producing the Hydro Kart is that the customer, or dealer supplied the motor. The prototypes were picked up by some of the young guys around the area, they had two lakes within 1/2 a mile of my shop. I was told that they still have four of the originals six still running the lakes near the old shop.

The SL-440, or the SG-990 project and a few more things.

The SL-110 and the SL-220 had been received well by the public and it was a lot of work keeping up with the demand. My entire production each years was sold out in early June and I built sidecar into early October. The writing was on the wall and if I wanted to increase my production I had to design a new sidecar body to take advantage of some of the less time consuming steps in building my product. I had a good friend Don Grant that's a first Class Engineer and has this canny ability of laying out a concept that makes sense. So I asked Don to sit down with me and figure the steps so that I could cut the time building the SL-220 Sidecar body's in half. At that time I had been in the fiberglass industry for around ten years and had the FFA certification. Dean Webster another of my friends and a top notch Engineer in his own right was also a qualified Composites Engineer. Don sat down with Dean and myself and drew out what he thought the steps should be to transform the SL-220 into a newer more production friendly SG-990. I don't know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to ever work with people that are truly genius. These two are just that, both had built their own sidecars and Dean had built dozens of body's for me over the years when he was on College break. In fact Dean when he was at the university of New Hampshire wrote a computer program to calculate the speed of a hydroplane. We could plug in different engine, propeller and gear combinations and out would pop the speed. This was in the mid 1970's and had never been done before. Dean would get to use the University of New Hampshire's computer for 20 minutes at a time ever few weeks. He would print out all the variables and the findings and when he brought the pages of info back to the shop we would pour over it like real nerds. That was the day's before desk top computers, we had to wait another ten years.

The SG-990 was Don's designation number for the new project, he liked using the metric system. that's where the 990 came from. The SL-220 had great lines but the way it was styled it couldn't be used for a production mold. For production the body would use a gel coat finish with the color built into the body eliminating the need for paint. This called for a Class A mold something I had built many times in the past. The SG-990 project would have to be completely redesigned so I figured I would make some modifications that I had been thinking about for some time. We started by adding 4" to the passenger compartment not that it needed more room but so that I could add a dash area for a radio. The body would also be built in three pieces a total change from the one piece body of the SL-110 and SL-220's. The stylist design on the side of the body used in both the SL-110 and SL-220 would have to be removed so that the body would have a seam line. The fender would also be a first for us in that it would bolt onto the side of the body. We found over time if a customer was going to smash up his rig it would be the fender that would take the worst of it. I figured I would offer a deal that I would replace the fender on the new SG-990 for $100. The new SG-990 were going to be offered in black and white only. The days of custom painting was going to be a thing of the past, along with the tidies hours involved.

Parallel to the model and mold work of the SG-990 project I was designing my Sweet 55 T Bird, a copy of the Ford 55 Thunderbird. At the time the Kit Car industry was big and I jumped in with both feet building a new company from nothing but an idea. So the shop was one busy place with a new sidecar, T Bird and a new Hydroplane being worked on. All the time building SL-220 sidecars. We were growing so fast that I had to get a second building just down the street for the fiberglass work. In all the new SG-990 took a few months to develop with the help of team leader Don guiding Dean and myself. As progress was being made on the SG-990 the light bulb went on and I figured why not take the Harley sidecar that my Dad had picked up for me in Portland Maine for $50.00 and build a mold off the body. That way I could offer a Sweet Liberty sidecar, something a few had been asking for.

Around this same time I threw one more project into the mix and that was my front Indy wing. I wanted to race Indy Cars and almost pulled it off when they made the change to allow the 350 Stock Block Engines to run. You could use a 350 Chevy 3970010 engine used in School buses and trucks that are highly modified. I had been running these 600 plus HP engines in my hydroplanes for a few years and had four ready to race at any time. I had a deal pending on a year old Indy car but at the last moment the deal fell threw. So the closest I got to running Indy was to have an Indy wing on the front of my own personal sidecar. Sometimes some of us dream big in life and never make it but without ones dreams great things can never happen. So I made a front Indy style wing for my personal sidecar and later a customer would come in and offered me some crazy money for the sidecar so I sold it to him after it was repainted. Later on I would also build a Porsche 930 style Whale Tail to go along with the Indy front wing.

The SG-990 project was completed and ready for the market place and I had a problem with the designation model number that Don came up with so I changed it to the SL-440 to stay in line with the other models before it. All the new models sold well and I was still getting requests for the SL-220 and a few SL-110's so I raised the price and put one of my best guys on doing the paint and finish. I still built all the frames and did all the installations myself and progress was being made on my Sweet T Bird. In time I would grow the Sweet T Bird Reproductions company to 25 employes and moves it into a twenty thousand square foot building.

The Liberty body sold good and it was funny to see the body's being used on my frames being placed on every kind of bike other than a Harley. Years later when I moved to South Carolina it was the only body that would sell in the South, go figure.

Thanks for reading and viewing and yes to those that have emailed me, I have been noticing the viewing count. It blows me away to think that so many would take the time to look.

Especially thanks to Joyce for being so gracious in letting me post.

Johnny Sweet

Sweet Sidecars jsweet450@yahoo.com

Double post so I deleted one.
Johnny

With out dreams man is nothing. Thanks for sharing yours with us readers. You have given us a better understanding of sidecars and what goes into designing and manufacturing them.

Sweet sidecars from right to left. The first new SL-440 sidecar, middle was my SL-220 with the Indy wing trimmed out in my Hydroplane racing colors, and to the right the first Sweet Classic sidecar owned by Dave Coburn and mounted of all things a Yamaha bike. Weeks later the yearly sidecar get together at Parker Dam in Goffstown New Hampshire was held and 102 sidecars were in attendance with 52 Sweet sidecars making the show with Dave's Sweet Liberty winning the peoples choice.

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For those that have asked about what my Hydroplanes looked like this is a picture taken in September of 1979. At this time we had the former World Champion GP hydroplane, and the

present Canadian American NESMA Champion Super Modified in the yard along with one of my SL-110 sidecars. My Indy sidecar had been sold and the SL-110 was brought into service for a few weeks. The sidecar traveled with us in the back of the transporter in it's own little garage specially built for it. When we would travel in the US or Canada to the races we would take the sidecar and bike and travel the back roads taking in the sites in our off time.

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The sidecars made it posable so that I could race these crazy things.

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I received a few emails asking about the little garage for the sidecar and if I had any pictures of me racing my hydroplanes. The sidecar garage was at the back area on the right side of the transporter. It even had a window so that people could look in and check it out. You wouldn't beleave how it became the topic of conversation at many an event when we pulled it out and parked it next to the transporter. The transporter was set up to haul extra engines and could sleep as many as six. Many times we had a chase car that was full of friends and everyone camped out for the weekend. Some of the guys and gals never would sleep all weekend long, racing in Canada in those day's was one big party. Us drivers weren't allowed to drink any kind of alcohol but it sure didn't stop the rest from partying hardy.

Joyce,

If this is to far off topic I apologize and will stay on topic in the future.

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One of the fourteen different Hydroplanes I raced over the years. It was all posable because of sidecars

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At the time us drivers were insured by Loyd's of London. You can see why. No seat belts, not roll bars, and no brakes.

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I don't want to push this off topic to much, but this was when I was still young and dumb and full of you know what.

We used a life jacket with a parachute on the back that would deploy if we were thrown out of the boat. I was lucky in that I never had to use it. Note the printing on the back side of the helmet. That was my blood type just in case the the rescue teams or the ER needed to know what it was.

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How I built my original sidecar body from nothing more than a drawing.

I receive emails all the time and some have asked what I used or copied to get my original sidecar body for my Sweet SL-110 Sidecar. The only way I can answer that is by saying it’s an original design thought up by both Dick Lion and myself. We didn’t copy any other body like from an amusement park ride or a midget race car, but came up with the design on our own. I find it interesting that some would think that I copied someone else’s work. So let me show you the reader how the design and development of the first body was accomplished along with the steps that we took to produce the first body.

Every idea or new product has to come from somewhere and this is my story.

It seems as though I have always had an Entrepreneurial spirit running in my veins. I observed my Dad building businesses from nothing more than an idea that he drew out on a napkin at the dinner table. When it came my turn I started my first business in Ohio while back at school after the service. I ran it for three years while I finished up my schooling. When I decided to move back home to New England I put my business up for sale and had three different parties interested in purchasing it. So when I returned home after being away for eight years I had a pocket full of cash and was looking for the next business opportunity. Upon returning home I was visiting with my Mom and Dad and as we sat at the kitchen table talking about my childhood and the old days the subject of sidecars came up. I remembered my Dads sidecar; from the back it looked like a midget racer and the front had a round spherical nose with a shark face painted on it. On the center point of the nose was a small model airplane propeller that spun when we drove down the street. What kid wouldn’t love riding in a sidecar like that when your eight or ten years old. Other memories like flying in my Dads airplane equipped with wooden blocks on the rudder pedals so that my little feet would reach. Those wooden blocks sure made it easy for an eight year old when it was my turn to fly; I could do it like the grownups. Some of my earliest memories were of my Dad racing motorcycles at speeds over one hundred miles an hour on the half mile dirt tracks. To a young kid it sure was exciting even though it was dangerous. With all this and more going on my parents made it possible for me to have one great childhood allowing me to be exposed to so many different venues that it sparked an interest in all things. As we sat talking about the old days stories about the sidecars kept coming up. I mentioned that I had seen a few sidecars in my travels but never one that looked like my Dads. He started laughing and said “that’s because I built the body from four 1937 Buick front fenders”. I thought; no wonder I never saw another one like it. My Dad then mentioned about the thousands of motorcycles that he had been transporting from Japan into the US on his ship, and not one sidecar. As we talked out of my Moms mouth comes “Johnny you should build sidecars”. As I watched my Dads eyes light up, he said “you wouldn’t have any competition in the East, all the sidecar action is on the West coast by a guy named Doug Bingham. As we sat talking the wheels started turning in my head as both my Mom and Dad talked on about the old days. The family stories are so interesting that they should be written down; it would make a great book. On this one Sunday visit what I went away with was this love affair for sidecars that both my Dad and specially my Mom still had. When they were first married in the 1930’s during the height of the depression all they had for transportation for the first three years was a motorcycle and sidecar. When my older brother was born things were looking up and they finally got a car. Even the day I was visiting my Dad had taken an early morning drive on his custom made sidecar rig that he had built while in the Philippines. He was a ship’s Captain in the Merchant Marines and sailed in and out of the Orient nine months out of the year. During the summer he would be home for three months enjoying the New England weather.

It was 1971 and I was only twenty six years old with my entire life ahead of me. As I got up from my Mom’s kitchen table and was giving her a hug my mind was made up, I was going to design and manufacture motorcycle sidecars placing the family’s name on them. This life changing decision was made in a matter of a few minutes but as I would learn from many other leaders of industry in my future great decisions can be made at the drop of a hat.

The first step was to perform my due diligence a process that ended up taking me six months. I had moved out of state and was worked with my two uncles Sandy and Willy. Talking about sidecars became a daily thing as we worked framing and building houses out near the IBM plant in Upstate New York. As it turned out the twins were the first in the family to own and drive motorcycles with sidecars dating back to 1928. I was told stories about my Dad at eleven or twelve riding in the sidecars as the older brothers drove the back roads of New England. I once asked “why sidecars” and was told “that’s all we could afford”. One thing that has always stuck in my mind was Sandy mentioning about the 1924 Henderson and the only problem he kept having with it was the sidecar rods. They would keep bending under hard running. I remember thinking “hard running, ya right, these guys were wild men so I can imagine what they were like at twenty years old”. The cure was for Willy to jump on the sidecar after Sandy lifted it up and placed a wooden block under the bike frame. They learned early on that the bike had to be pulled out away from the sidecar at the top or it would pull to the right and if they went too far it would pull to the left. They had it figured out even in 1929, and nothing has changed in over eighty years. After six months of working with my uncles, and on the weekends Skydiving and flying at our family Parachute Center I returned home and set out to building a new business manufacturing my Sweet Sidecars.

Once the design of my sidecar frame was put on paper
I set out to find a professional artist that could do my artist renderings for the body. I believed that the body should be like a sales hook. If I had a smooth simple design that the average person would find pleasing then I would have half the battle won. I had looked at the bodies that had been around forever and wanted to stay as far away from those designs as possible. I figured the bikes I would be installing my sidecars on would most likely be from Japan and to me the square box styling from Europe just wasn’t going to get it. I had a few ideas as to what I was looking for design wise but was open to other ideas. As it turn out a good friend of mine had a gentleman visiting with him named Dick Lion. Dick had just gone through a divorce and at the same time his kids were grown and in college. This was the first time that Dick was free to do as he pleased in twenty years. He was planning on moving to the Green Mountains of Vermont and purchasing a house on a mountain top that he could turn into an Art Studio. They say that timing is everything in life and the timing couldn’t have worked out better. Dick told me he was moving in two months and had time to work on a new project provided it interested him. I explained about my sidecar project and he liked the idea and would work with me provided it didn’t take up all of his time. As it turned out Dick and I had similar backgrounds in that both of us were proficient in sculpturing in different medians. We both could shape in metals and were first class body men having worked with auto body fillers and paints for some time. Dick had worked in his Dads auto body shop from the time he was eight years old. By the time he was in High school he had a side business painting cars for all the kids in school. He then went in another direction for the next twenty years and this was a new beginning going back to his roots. I learned almost in the same way working in one of my Dads shops as a kid and then later advancing my skills after high school at GMI studying Automotive styling and clay modeling. On returning to the world after the service I took the design concept one step forward when I incorporated auto body products in the modeling process getting rid of the clay and using auto body filler. The auto body filler made the model a more permanent structure. This allowing for fiberglass molds to be taken off the model in a much easier manner.

Artist rendering of the body design

Once Dick and I laid out our plan of attack we started with a basic design box. Our design box measurements were determined in a very simple manner. Each of us sat our girlfriends in a chair and measured how much space they needed while being seated in a comfortable position. We then had the girls do the same to us using the same stations when they did their measuring. We took the long and short and this gave us the design box parameters. I knew that I wanted the back end of the body to have the same shape as a midget race car. As I mentioned earlier when I was a kid the back of my dad’s sidecar looked like a midget race car and that’s what I wanted, call it a family design or a design heirloom if there is such a thing.

As Dick sketched out different designs he would place them on the table and the girls and I would look them over. He could sketch a design in less than five minutes. Within a few hours and a few more drinks along with some good old story telling we had a pile of different designs and shapes. It seemed like he never ran out of ideas. The girls and I would look over the designs and then take the best or what we thought were the best lines and feed them back to Dick. He would then take the best from the front and side along with the midget back and came up with something that we all liked. You the reader may be thinking why I would care about what anyone else thought of the design; after all I would be making the final design decision with it being my project. I learned early on in my carrier about designing by committee while at GMI. The more positive input the better.

Sidebar: I found a totally different view can be found when it comes to Mechanical Engineering and Engineers. In my time I’ve headed up many Engineering teams because I had the license. I was always the one put in charge and the first thing one will notice is that every Engineer has the best idea and everyone else’s idea stinks. On some team projects the dissension between Engineers got so bad that I had to let two or three go just to keep the piece.

When it came to Stylist’s be it Automotive or top end modelers designing Kayaks for say the US Olympic Team everyone works as a team member and for the betterment of the project. When a new design or line is introduced into the model all will give an input and if the new line or shape adds or improves to the design everyone will be in agreement. If the new addition takes away from the overall design then the team will respond with thumbs down. The thing that never happens is team members taking it personal. This is a case of two different worlds acting in totally different ways. The next time you have to talk to an Engineer and you’re just not getting across to them, think about what you’ve read here today. I lived in both worlds and the modeling stylist world was a much more pleasant place to reside in.

When our little group came up with what we thought was the best design Dick drew a final artist rendering. I asked Dick to draw it to scale so that we would get a real world idea as to what it should look like. Once that was completed the next step was to start sculpturing a model of my new Sweet Sidecar body.

Sculpturing the model

Building a model starts with what’s called the armature. An armature is the framework used to hold the clay or other material in a sculptor or model. Over the years armatures were mostly made from wood even going back to the days when Fredrick Bartholdi had his men sculpture the pieces for the Statue of Liberty out of plaster so that they could shape the bronze outer skin. Later when Cord Motor Car Company introduced clay modeling wood was used for the armatures for all the clay models. When General Motors adopted the clay modeling practice they to used wood for the armatures along with Ford and Chrysler.

I decided against wood because of New England’s damp weather. I wasn’t building my model in a controlled environment but a two stall garage and wood has a tendency to swell when conditions are damp and to shrink when they are dry. I didn’t want to spend the next six weeks building a model and having it swell or shrink once it was completed. That’s all I needed was to have the detail distorted when it was time to build the fiberglass mold. So I went with metal using tubing and a sheet of .090” mild steel. I started by cutting a piece of tubing that would represent the center line. All good designs are built off a center line. Dimensions off the center line are always port and starboard or left and right. The next step is the Datum line, the datum line is the point that all dimensions forward and aft are taken off and once it’s determined it never changes or moves. Datum lines are placed at different points in different design venues. Airplanes use the firewall just behind the engine while some car designs use the center of the front wheel. When we designed Kayaks we used the center of the front seat. Some race cars are built with a datum line going threw the number one spark plug on the engine. Hydroplane racing boats are measured off the transom. So as you can see different designs venues can have different datum placements. I decided to use the dash area in front of the ridi
ng passenger compartment for my datum line.

With the center line and datum lines established I started building the armature out of steel and covered the sweeping shape with .090” sheet metal.

This is what the armature looked like before the auto body filler. The little rocket in the background was an Ice Boat that I built in a three week period for the ice boat season. I powered it with a three cylinder motorcycle engine. The wheels had studs on them and I could run over 100 MPH on the ice. In today's world they would have locked me up just on principal. When seeing the ice boat one of my uncles said if you crash that thing they will have to cut you out of it with a can opener. When out on the big lakes I would be running it at over 100 MPH past the ice fisherman and they would be flagging me on" faster", "faster".

To the right is one of my first hydroplanes that I purchased months earlier.

You can see Dicks artist rendering that we used to make the model from in the background.

It was around this time in the project and I came up with the model designation of the SL-110. It stood for Sweet Lion and the 110 for the first in a line that would be built in the future.

Everyone got into having fun on this project.

These pictures are proof that it doesn't always take a big high dollar shop, tools and equipment to make your dreams come true. Although it does take

skill, talent, and ability to produce something like this. In today's world we are producing fewer and fewer people that care to think big and follow their dreams, for this I'm

sorry for our society.

Was I ever that young and trim, and what's with the hair and sideburns. I would love to have just half that amount today. Picture taken in late February or early March 1972.

The first mold of the SL-110 sidecar body. I still have this mold today and a part could be taken out of it.

The model when it was completed. Note the finish and how it was flawless ready to make a mold. At this point after a final inspection I painted the model with a red primer. This made it easier for the mold to release from the model. Some in the fiberglass industry call the model a "Plug".

I hope you enjoyed the story and how I designed and built my sidecar body. Thanks for viewing and reading.

Johnny Sweet "Sidecars are Fun" Sweet SL-110,220,440,and the Sweet Liberty Sidecars with over eighty years of history with over forty years of manufacturing experience.

Wow! Great story and photos Johnny!! Thank you for posting that. Seems to me that your life is well spent so far... And that's putting it mildly.

Jim’s Great Sidecar Adventure

Many of you reading this may be able to identify with Jim Hapshie and the fun he and his wife had over a thirty year period owning and driving many different sidecar rigs. I was fortunate enough to have built three of Jim’s rigs and at the same time making a lifelong friend. Any of you that have been around this crazy sport for a while may appreciate this story. It all started in 1976 when manufacturing my Sweet motorcycle Sidecars. I had released my latest offering the Sweet SL-220 a year earlier after a very successful run of the SL-110. It was early in June of 1976 and my production schedule for the year was filling up fast, as I sold my sidecars on a first come first purchase basis. It was a Saturday morning and we were in the shop and not out racing hydroplanes in Canada. Most weekends my crew and I were running what was called the Grand Prix Hydroplanes Circuit but on this particular weekend we were off. On weekends that we were around the shop as many as twenty five sidecar friends would show up early on Saturday morning and spend the day hanging around the shop mingling with other like minded sidecar people. Over time many of this small group became good friends that otherwise would have never happened if it wasn’t for the sidecars that brought them all together. On these pleasant summer days’ small groups would come and go taking short trips along the twisting roads around the lakes of Southern New Hampshire. Someone would ask if they could use the grill to cook some hot dogs and hamburgers and before long you would think that we were having a party. I guess to some it was because years later I was told by many that they were the best days back then.

This Saturday morning as I was talking with a few friends a gentleman pulls up on his motorcycle with his young daughter on the back. He got off his bike and helped his daughter down and the two of them walked around together looking at all the bikes and sidecars. The sidecar mix was between the SL-110 and the SL-220. Many customers with the newer 1975 SL-220 would come back and hang out with the earlier SL-110 owners. They were all like minded people and loved their sidecars. Jim and his daughter Tina walked among the sidecars introducing himself and his daughter to the group. Someone asked if Tina would like to sit in one of the sidecars but as little kids sometimes do, she was too shy to take up the offer, but instead just hung on to Daddy’s leg real tight. Jim finally made his way over to me after he and Tina took in all the sidecars. I invited the two of them into the shop but along the way as we passed by the “Toy Box” I invited Tina to take some toys out and play with them if she wanted to as long as it was OK with Daddy. Jim told Tina it was OK if she wanted to stay in the room and play.

How the “Toy Box” came about. I found that many of my potential customers would come in with their small children and when the dads were trying to ask questions the kids did what kids do. I don’t think I have to elaborate any further. I had a good friend the late Bruce Kirby that in the late 1960’s was the one who started the program for children on the West coast called “Christmas in July”. He was at a hospital in July visiting a friend whose young child was sick and had to spend most of the summer in the hospital in bed. He noticed all the young kids and how hard it was for them with all the other kids out playing and having fun. That’s when he got the idea for “Christmas in July”. When he came back East and we became good friends he took me to one of the hospitals where he was doing a Christmas in July affair for the kids. This stuck in my mind when I was thinking about what to do so that I could free up the Dads from the kids when trying to sell them a sidecar. Christmas in July came to mind so I sent one of the girls and Danny one of the young guys to help her purchase some toys at K Mart. Back in 1976 you would be surprised as to how many toys could be bought for $100. When the bags and bags of small toys arrived I took a big cardboard box and cut it down so that it stood around 18” high. I filled the box with the toys and hung a large sign above it “Toy Box”. I installed a carpet in my very small display room and placed the box of toys so that the kids couldn’t miss seeing them as they walked by. It worked like a charm. When the dads were talking with me the kids were busy playing with the toys. When it came time to for the kids to leave I always gave them the option of taking a toy with them. So Tina dove into the Toy box and Jim and I went into the shop to talk about sidecars.

Jim told me that he wanted to take his wife and daughter out on the bike and a sidecar was just what he was looking for. He told me that he saw my newspaper add and had called the shop the day before to get directions. As we talked I realized that Jim was a likable guy not the least bit pushy almost passive. I had been in the Military and had been half way around the world. On any given weekend while racing my hydroplane I was in front of 100,000 people so I had gotten to meet all kinds of characters in my travels. Jim was the kind of guy that you knew from the onset was just a regular Joe not out to impress anyone and not the least bit pretentious. Jim had never been around sidecars so I knew that he must have had a few questions to ask. I gave him my usual spiel that covered just about everything that a guy new to sidecars needed to know. We went out to his bike and I went over how the sidecar would be mounted to it. We talked about price and delivery time and that he should bring his wife by. He told me that he would like to come back in the middle of the next week with his wife and we could finalize the deal. We then went in to retrieve Tina with all the toys in the toy box. Tina didn’t want to go home and I told her she could take one toy home with her. She took a little bunny rabbit and Jim and she headed towards their bike. Danny, one of the young guys that worked in the shop asked how she was going to carry the little bunny home on the bike. No one knew so Danny asked Tina if he could borrow the bunny for a few minutes while he built a little harness for the bunny. Danny made a quick harness out of some webbing and two snaps that we used on the sidecar upholstery and custom fit the bunny like how the kid’s today carry their school books in their back packs. Tina loved the harness and Jim and she got on the bike with the little bunny on her back and headed home. I noticed that Jim had Tina place her hands in his jacket pockets that way she could hold on to him.

Sometime in the next week Jim and Elsa, Jim’s wife came in and Elsa got an idea what a sidecar was all about. Elsa was from Chile South America and had seen sidecars on motorcycles from the time she was a little girl, something Jim never new, so Elsa was an easy sale. I had Elsa get into my sidecar and gave her a short ride and when we arrived back at the shop everyone was all smiles. Elsa was even more excited than Jim about getting a sidecar so no sales closing was needed, it was a done deal.

All my sidecars at the time were custom painted to the customers liking and Jim’s color combination would be silver with a blue trim. We made out the paper work and
placed Jim’s and Elsa’s name on the big board. It would take around six weeks before they would be taking delivery of their new Sweet SL-220 Silver and Blue sidecar. At the time they wished that they could get it earlier but understood that others were in front of them. As Jim and Elsa were getting ready to leave Jim asked if it was OK if they came back to visit. I told him that our door was always open to them, but that we wouldn’t be around on the upcoming weekend, because we would out of town racing. At this point Jim didn’t understand about my racing and my hydroplane rig had been out back the first time he came over to the shop with Tina, but this time he had to park next to in the yard.

It was always funny looking at the expression on my customers faces when we talked about racing. My customers were sidecar enthusiasts and some of my friends were racing guys. I guess you could say we came from two different worlds with people sharing the same small space in my shop. I would get asked often about if something happened when I was racing and I couldn’t finish their sidecar. I set up an account “just in case” so that any and all deposits would be returned without question. In the end I never got hurt racing when in a five year period twelve drivers were killed driving hydroplanes; I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

The next week Jim shows up at the shop. At first he was a little shy, probably wondering if the invitation was genuine or not. After all people talk and many times they don’t say what they mean. I spotted Jim and invited him in as I was fabricating some mounts for a few bikes. The conversation varied with discussions about welding, painting and the processes used in making things. I could see the wheels turning in Jim’s head. He had a good grasp on the process of making thing because he was a chef and did the same thing with food. I then asked if he would like to learn anything and he answered that “he would like to learn how to spray paint”. I told Jim that he could hang around the shop on his day’s off and with time he could learn how but I also wanted him to learn how to weld and run a lathe. Also learning how to sharpen drill bits would also help when he was fabricating things in the future. It was funny because I put Jim on a sidecar body wet sanding with 220 grip paper and for the next month on Jim’s days off he was at the shop learning his new trade. As the weeks past it was time for Jim to bring in his Yamaha 650 motorcycle so that we could set up his new sidecar. By this time Jim was a regular at the shop and when the guys would cut up Jim was fair game and he could give it as good as he got. The guys really liked Jim and when it came time to build Jim's sidecar everyone got involved. I don’t want to say that Jim’s received preferential treatment but it seemed to me that more time was spent on Jim’s unit than was normal. When it came time for Jim and Elsa to pick up their sidecar we had three other customers doing the same thing. On Saturday’s when we weren’t out of town racing we would have the customers come in around ten in the morning to pick up their rigs. I paid my guys $20.00 to instruct the new customers on how to drive their new sidecar rigs. I had an agreement with the nuns down the street at the local church and they allowed me to use the parking lot so that the driving lessons weren’t out on the road where someone could get hurt. When Jim, Elsa, and Tina showed up it was fun to watch the other customers when Jim got on his rig and drove it up and down the street. I had instructed Jim a few weeks earlier on how to drive my rig and every time Jim came over and we went out to lunch I let him drive. Jim liked the way his new sidecar rig handled and he took Elsa and Tina out for a spin. When Elsa and Jim were ordering the sidecar I asked Elsa if she would like me to make a custom seat cushion that was longer so the Tina could sit in front of her in the sidecar. They liked the idea and it worked out good for both she and young Tina. Jim hung around for a few hours with the other customers and then he and Tina drove home in the sidecar rig with Elsa following in the family car.

Tina’s missing, Tina’s missing!

A few weeks later Jim came by and told me this interesting story. It was around two in the afternoon in the middle of the week just before the kids went back to school for the new year. Tina disappeared and the call went out throughout the neighborhood with everyone looking for her. It was before this new Amber alert that they have today. The police were called and everyone up and down the street was in every back yard looking little Tina. Elsa called Jim at work but his shift was over and he was on his way home. When Jim arrived home he was alerted to what was going on, Tina had been gone for almost an hour and a half. Jim asked if anyone had looked in the garage, and he was assured that they had. Jim opened the garage door and walked over to the sidecar and sure enough Tina was asleep in the sidecar resting on the large cushion taking her afternoon nap. Jim said that Tina loved her new sidecar and often fell asleep with her blanket that Elsa carried with them on trips, other times she just sat in the sidecar pretending.

Jim's Silver and Blue Sweet SL-220 sidecar.

Jim became a regular at the shop and whenever we were racing locally he became part of the race crew. He drove his sidecar rig for the next three years and then the inevitable happened. He let his brother drive it without any instruction. Sure enough he ran it into a pole and destroyed the bike with the sidecar having minimal damage. Insurance paid for a new bike and Jim wanted a new sidecar. At that time I had just finished with the molds for my new Sweet Classic body, a copy of the old Harley from the 1930’s - 1960’s. Jim purchased a Sportster and wanted the new Classic. I told him that he had been hanging around the shop for three years and he should build the new sidecar himself. He liked the idea and I also mentioned that he should fix the damage to his old sidecar and sell it. Over the next month that’s just what he did and I mounted his old sidecar for the new owner. Jim built his new Sweet Classic body using the same skills that he was taught working in the shop and cut and drilled all the parts for the frame, mounts and rods. I asked Jim if he was going to weld up his frame but he asked me if I would weld it for him, after all his family’s safety was at stake. Jim did all the finish work on the body and even made the fender from a new mold that I made. The fender was called an “Elephant ear fender”, something that I dreamed up one day and sculptured out in a few hours. I ended up selling over five hundred units over the years. The BMW guys would buy them as fast as the guys in the shop could make them. I had a deal with the young guys in the shop that were learning while they were in school. I split the money for each unit less the cost of the materials. They could make $25.00 in an hour of less working at night. That Elephant Ear mold was being used almost every day for three or four seasons. Then it’s time ran out.

Jim building his Elephant Ear fender with his good friend Frank looking on. Franks sidecar is in the background.

Tina sitting on the Sportster with a big smile on her face.

When Jim finished up his Sportster sidecar combination I upholstered it for him. He had painted the body and fender a metallic brown and found some pleated upholstery almost the same color. In the end it was a good combination and he got many compliments on his new rig. Jim drove the wheels off his Sportster over the next ten years and when it finally died he was looking for something smoother like a Jap bike with a lot of power.

I had moved to South Carolina getting away from the cold winters and had been there for a few years when I got a call from Jim. He told me that he went over to my Moms house to get my phone number. She made coffee for both Jim and Elsa and she spent an hour talking with the two of them. Jim asked if I was still building sidecars and did I have one that I could ship to him. As it turned out I had built a new SL-550 model with a new mold combining the SL-440 version with some new ideas. I told him that I was planning on taking my yearly trip back home and I could bring the original model of the new SL-550 with me along with a new frame and mounting rods. A few weeks later I made my pilgrimage back home to my Moms and Jim brought over his new Bike for me to mount. All the old equipment like my Dads original welder was still in the shop just like he had left it ten years earlier. I brought up my welding tanks and anything else that I thought I would need to mount Jim's new sidecar to his new Jap bike. Jim and Elsa drove over on Saturday morning and I started in building mounts just like I had done hundreds of times before. Jim helped and by the time my Mom called for the morning coffee brake at ten o’clock we had the mounts completed. When we went back out we had the rods mounted to the frame and the sidecar wheel lined up before noon. At one o’clock the body was mounted on the frame and Jim was ready for a test run. Just about that time Tina shows up in her new Firebird. I hadn’t seen her for over fifteen years and she turned out to be a beautiful young woman. I got a big hug and a kiss on the cheek as I watched the boyfriend looking in bewilderment, I couldn’t help but laugh. I was introduced as Uncle Johnny as Jim and I pulled the rig out for Jim’s first ride. A few runs up and down the street and Jim and Elsa were back out on the road with their third Sweet sidecar.

The next year I received a call from a former customer from Vermont asking if I could build his brother in law a sidecar. How he got my phone number I do not know but I told him I was headed North in a few weeks to visit my Mom and I had an SL-220 body that I had built for myself with the whale tail that I could bring up and sell to him. I then called Jim and told him that I was coming up and he and Elsa should come over for a visit and also that I would be mounting a sidecar up for a family out of Vermont. A few weeks later I was back home and as planned everyone showed up early on Saturday morning. My Mom called coffee brake at ten o’clock and the seven of us make our way into the kitchen. We had the mounts completed and after the brake we got back at it. At one o’clock the mounting was completed and the new owner was ready for his first ride. While I was mounting the sidecar frame Jim gave the fellow a driving lesson with his own rig just like we did back in the day so with a little getting used to he was ready for the road.

This is the group of six that showed up that Saturday.

When I sold Jim his sidecar it was in primer and he didn't have any paint spraying equipment. But he did know how to paint after spending years in the shop. He did the finish work just like we did back in the day and then used ten cans of lacquer spray paint from Home Depot. Silver base with clear on top. He then color sanded with 600 fine and hand buffed the top coat. He then had the lettering done by a professional.

This is the last time that I ever saw Jim and Elsa driving away in their "Silver Bullet" Sweet sidecar.

When I talked to Jim last year I asked him whatever happened to his sidecar rig. He told me that he drove it for more than ten years putting around eight to nine thousand miles a year on it. A fellow that lived a few blocks away would stop him from time to time and ask if he would like to sell it. Jim drove over to the guys house one day and offered to sell the entire rig to him. As Jim looked around and saw the guy’s situation he knew that the guy could never afford his rig. In Jim's mind the rig was pretty much worn out, at least the motorcycle, the sidecar still had plenty of miles left on it. so he asked the guy if he would like to have it for free. When I heard that I thought to myself, same old Jim. Today they call that “paying it forward” but back in the day things like that went on every day, it’s just that people never talked about it. He gave the guy the rig with no strings attached. He then went out and bought a brand new Harley with sidecar and all the bells and whistles. I asked how he liked the Harley and he said “you were always right about them”. He said he was disappointed probably because he had a few hundred thousand miles running my rigs and it was hard getting used to something so heavy and bulky. He drove the Harley off and on for four years and once it was paid for he sold it for some good money because it didn’t have many miles on it. He then went out and purchased one of these Can Am three wheel trikes. He sold it a few years back because he can’t ride any longer because of health problems. Today Jim's retired and living out his days with his love of his life Elsa and for little Tina. Tina is around forty years old and has two beautiful children along with a great husband that’s a wonderful provider. What’s the down side to this story? To this day Tina can’t remember any of her childhood and doesn’t remember the early sidecars or riding in them.

I hope you enjoyed Jim, Elsa, and Tina’s story, their wonderful people and I was the better for having them in my life.

Thanks for ready,

Johnny Sweet

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