Last time I wrote about the sidecar mounts, I was pretty convinced that they are more or less done. Yup, when going through that last post on sidecar mounts (part 6), I had a good chuckle myself.
First order of business - make the parts look a bit better and chamfer them. Technically completely superfluous, but visually appealing. (And if that's the sort of eye-candy needed to convince the engineer that those are some well made clamps - which they are - then heck, let's do it.)
As I decided that I would never again fit the bash plate anyway and it would allow me to mount the lower mounts a bit higher up, the tabs for the afore mentioned guard had a date with Mr. angle grinder.
As my sidecar mounts are (intentionally) a bit beefier than the original clamps that originally were on my first SR500 sidecar, the engine had to be unbolted and lifted up a bit in the frame to squeeze the mounts in.
To be honest that wasn't enough and 3mm had to come off of the back side of the clamps. A 50mm knife head makes short work of that.
When fitting the mounts I remember a little detail that annoyed me on the last SR500 sidecar conversion: The two outer bolts are easy to reach and tightening the nuts is no problem, but the two inner ones...
... as such I threaded the clamps for M12-bolts and now can comfortably tighten them from the front.
Squeezing the rear mount in between airbox and frame required the same mods aside from me having to cut out the splash guard.
The astute amongst the blog readers will have notice the absence of the top mount with its puny M6 bolts holding the two halves together. Well that's currently sitting on the mill getting drilled out to M10, after being dramatically slimmed down as it looked both disproportionate with no particular gains in terms of stability.
The big lesson learned here was - high quality wood routing bits are awesome for chamfering (or rounding corners, if you buy the right bit) and it's not the end until you're done. Also... can I weigh in swarf? The last picture gives a good indication what my workshop floor looks like at the moment.
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