The XS Triple Sidecar - Sidecar brake (part 1)

Do you remember the stories that start with the phrase: "I'll just quickly..." in this case the sentence went on with: "swap the sidecar's wheel axle out as it is too short."

Well, that was Sunday afternoon. Now it's Wednesday and I didn't take it easy. At all.

But first things first, lift the sidecar.

Remove the mudguard (and find out that it's on the piss, because somebody in the past must have lost the rear spacer) and start pulling out the swingarm.

Pull out the old 5-foot crowbar to "gently" "persuade" the half axle out of the swingarm. Worked a whole lot nicer than anticipated and even the rubbers (aka. swingarm bearings) are still fine. Take that modern crapitalist engineering with your fancy taper roller bearings. ;-) Seriously, riding a solo Dnepr with rubber swingarm mounts is scary...

More about all of that in the next installment, because if you think that was the difficult part...