SR500 Hack - cleaning and dialing in

I think the vehicle that has seen the least coverage on this blog is my SR 500 sidecar. And there's a simple reason for that: it's mighty reliable, which is one of the reasons why I am holding on to it.

The base bike used to be a 1985 or 1986 SR500, type 48T. The frame has been altered in Walcher style, i.e. the backbone has been doubled up and the headstock beefed up. Additionally the rear lower mount has been beefed up with a solid rear footpeg mount off a 2J4-model and some gently applied 5mm steelplate.
The engine is pretty much stock, but with a stainless header pipe and a homegrown muffler, which lets it breathe "a bit" better.

I mostly use this bike during the Winter months and for hauling all sorts of sh*t around and it's extremely capable at that. I haven't encountered a situation (yet), where I had to get out the snowchains... In order to prevent some from eating the old girl up like a hot 'n' greasy hamburger (she's grown a bit leaky over the years), I marinated her with some S100 salt protection spray and I have to say, washing that off left me more than chuffed, but see for yourself.

My dad making sure the Dre-XT-Stück doesn't live up to her name.

The part you can't see in this pictures...

... in order to get the S100 stuff off ...

... we had to use spray-on kitchen cleaner and a hot water jet-wash.

The second part was to adjust to the toe in and pin the lower front mount in place as it had a tendency to twist away, once it was put under enough strain.

About two years ago, I replaced the lower sidecar mounts, which were just normal "clevis" mounts with proper sidecar balls and that was one of the best mods ever done. The little girl is super rigid and can be flung around corners like you wouldn't believe.

The next mods will include a longer sidecar swingarm to fit a proper shock there as the current Velorex-shock's damping is non-existent by now and additionally find some better shocks for the rear as the current Bilstein's are a bit leaky and even before that were softer than I want them to be.