The XS Triple Sidecar - finishing the subframe and lots of other small things...

... hardly anyone will notice.

Let's start off with the subframe. With all the mounts and clamps in the right places, it was about time to plug the ends. Originally I wanted to turn up some plugs on the lathe, but in the end I decided that it would be quicker and easier to just weld the ends shut.

Next were some touch ups on the frame, where I had to remove a bolt.

For the very first time I tried a paint-system, which was two-pack, but in normal spray cans. Now I am by no means a talented painter of sorts, but the results are pretty impressive. (As are the paint fumes...)

The last thing I wanted to address, was a "little" issue I noticed during my first test-ride: The rubber dampers of the bar mounts were completely shot, as in torn and completely mushy. Therefore I turned them up from some POM-barstock I had lying around, with the result that the steering is now nice and direct. (Probably one of those mods, which would also make sense on a bike without a sidecar!)

One of those priceless, middle-of-the-night freehand sketches...

And once run outside of the workshop the bike's sounds quite reasonable and not as obnoxiously loud.

Everyday TR1 - overhauling the killswitch and fixing the rear light

Most of the time this year, the Everyday TR1 has done just that: Run every day, start fine, run fine and generally be an awesome bike. Except for when it intermittently cut out.

Luckily this isn't an entirely new problem (thanks XS650 v*br*t*r-on-wheels-guys) and can be cured with relative ease, by drilling out the plastic with a 1/4" (6.5mm is fine too) drill and then adding some metal spacers. When new the plastic was relatively elastic and made sure that the screws holding the terminals onto the killswitch wouldn't come loose. 35 years later - not so much.

The process is pretty straightforward and whilst I was in there I used the oportunity and lubed the throttle cable.

The other thing I finally got round to doing was to trim back the rear-light holder, so the baseplate was finally smaller than the actual rear light. Doesn't look all that different on the photos, but makes quite a difference in real life. The other thing was to add a proper ground-cable as the flickering was said to be pretty annoying, if you rode behind me.

That's it for today. In the next installment there'll be quite a few news on the XS-Triple Sidecar subframe and finally a testride to report.