At the end of last season 2007, progress had been good with only one or two steps in the wrong direction.  From being dead last and 20 seconds off the pace we were now battling.  OK still at the back, but in 7 meetings we had pulled back the 20 seconds lost and still learning.

We decided to take the sidecar to a rolling road to find out if there were any major problems with the fuelling.

As it turned out fuelling was spot on, but we had a problem with our exhaust, creating a horrible flat spot right in our power band.

January 2008

The start of the full strip down.

The sidecar came to pieces in a matter of hours for the arduous task of cleaning and checking all bearings and parts, it was decided the frame was the starting point.

Checking for cracks and fractures, welding in some strengthening plates. The reason being the chassis was made in the 70s/80s when flex was desirable, in 2008 tyre technology has advanced to virtually eliminate chassis flex. 

With the chassis painted and finished attention was drawn to steering, rear swing arm and side wheel.  New bearings, complete check over and a clean were the order of the day.  Although this sounds like an easy job we actually used £20 worth of contact cleaner and £5 worth of rags to remove grime and grease.

At this point we made a list of new parts that were needed for fitting, as bearings alone totalled in at £127.   We also needed new brakes, plus lines, calliper service kits – all this before we think about putting the engine in. 

When we purchased our sidecar in 2007 it came with three engines, STD, mild and full race, we did a whole season with the mild, so it is time to go to race engine.

Our attention turned next to the exhaust, we needed a 4:1 system to be made, so out came the trusty welder and some pipe and we managed to get a system off another sidecar that required slight adjustment.  The primaries were measured and matched and the system started to take shape. 

Hopefully, it proves to be a worthwhile venture when we go for our next rolling road - end of February. 

As of the end January we have a clean rolling chassis.

 Feb/March 2008

The start of the rebuild.

February started with glorious weather so progress was fast and furious, we soon had our chassis up, built, ready for final installation.

The race engine proved to be a ‘dud’ so tuning work was given to our old engine.  As we had been putting parts on we’ve been ironing out a few niggles along the way.

The new wiring turned out at first to be problematic, but it was all down to the so-called race engine.  With 95% of the build eradicated, we are on the home stretch – touch ‘wood’.

Everything has been put together with new bolts, nuts, bearings and washers and a few things came to light.  The chassis is a late 70s, early 80s built by cavemen with imperial measurements and we have tried to convert the chassis over to metric because those clever Japanese made our engine, the important thing, in metric.  We trial fitted the bodywork and all seems fine.

Our attention turned next to the dash – to look at it, it would seem things are simply and straightforward – two dials and one button, but finding somewhere for these to go and so the driver can still see them was a pain.  Temp gauge was easy to wire in, live, negative and sender negative – job done.  Tacho was a nightmare, no instructions - four wires - after market part.

Technical

Was our tacho single coil, twin coil, negative earth, or positive earth?

Found out negative earth, so two of the wires covered.

Next job to find negative side of the coil pulse – this would tell us if the tacho was for twin coil i.e. ZZR600, if not at 6000rpm it would only show 3000rpm.  This can be sorted via blocking diodes.

One wire left after hours of searching it was the ‘f’in light.

As we stand at the moment we are waiting for the top man at the rolling road to sort us out.

Fingers crossed!

March

First meeting of the year saw team 41 haga louts score a 5th,4th and a 3rd securing points for 3rd in the championship. Engine ran great, infact everything went well, a bit race rusty but a good start to the season.

Next up on the 12th of April we have oulton and we will see how we go with the engine changes and new gearing, hopefull for an improved laptime. After oulton comes the strip down again as we are changing to e engines (10-15bhp more) plus a new exhaust system !. 

April

Our meeting at Oulton went really well, we took 8 seconds off our best ever lap!! and was up with the lads with far better bikes and dicing for positions, which is great. The big thing we have noticed is that we/bike are really suited to the wet/drying conditions.

We followed our main competitor in the wet conditions in qualifying and knew we could go quicker, we passed him into shell corner (quarter of the lap) then got going,  not realising this was to be our last qualifying lap we took 5 seconds from him in the remainder of the lap. :) well sorted.

Now to the engine, it ran great and the gearing change certainly helped, its now coming out to be replaced by an e engine, more power (now much needed) before tonfanau,anglesey, and oulton all in 10 days at the end of May.  WATCH THIS SPACE, WE'RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE FRONT !.