Late July, 2013
The first weekend we had it, I was driving it, with my wife in the sidecar, and as I shifted, the transmission locked up!!! I quickly pulled the clutch and steered to the curb. After working with the shifter, I determined that I couldn’t get it into neutral, and more perplexing, the reverse selector lever could be activated when it should not be able to. Reverse should only be able to be selected when the transmission is in neutral. I rolled it to an opening in the sidewalk to get off the streetside. After futzing with it for a bit, I called the shop and waited for them to show up. Fortunately, it comes with a loose “warranty”, and it was still brand new, so something must have been assembled incorrectly. It was also super hot outside, and we were in the bright sun with no shade, temps were hovering around 39C (~100F). After about 20 mins, a sidecar with 2 Chinese workers showed up, whew! After looking at it for a few minutes, they were as perplexed as I was! Fortunately they brought some tools, and pretty soon, out came the jack, the rear wheel was raised up, and they started disassembling it! Nope, they weren’t fixing it, just disengaging the rear shaft drive so it could be pulled. Then they rolled it to the other side of street to be facing back towards the shop, brought the other sidecar around, and out came the tow rope! I then got on my bike to be pulled, the wife climbed in the sidecar, and they jumped on their bike and we were off! (Side note: communication with the workers with with our very limited Chinese, and gestures, as they don’t speak any English.)
Once back at the shop, we communicated that they would fix the bike, and then deliver it back to our place. Sweet!
Later that evening, my bike came back, and via a phone translator, I found out that it was a “washer” (maybe shim?) that was incorrect.
During the next week, we proceeded to ride, and work on getting it broke in and waiting for the next item to break!
Sure enough, after taking a longer ride to fulfill an errand for the wife, and then later that day a ride up to B&Q, (similar to Lowe’s, Home Depot, Bunnings, etc), the next issues showed up. We went to B&Q to buy tools to stock carry with on the bike for potential issues. On the way home, the wife was complaining about the rough ride and that over every bump it sounded like a tin can rattling!!! I couldn’t hear anything from my seat, so I wasn’t sure if I believed her or not! She usually doesn’t complain about much, and is quite aware of items, and it hadn’t been making that sound earlier in the day, so there was probably an issue. Also, when I started it up at B&Q to come home, it was smoking like crazy. It soon burnt off, and I was fairly certain I knew what the issue was… more on that later.
We got home, and once in the garage, I decided to jack up the sidecar and see what was going on. I thought maybe it was something in the brake hub of the wheel. Nope, instead, it was some looseness in the torque arm that provides the suspension travel of the wheel.
As far as the smoking goes, earlier when I had removed the valve covers to adjust the valves, one of the sides was completely full of oil, which seemed to indicate that oil wasn’t draining properly back to the crankcase. The build-up of oil probably caused some leakage through the valve guides, which would then cause that cylinder to smoke for a bit. Also that side valve cover was leaking a lot of oil, so a new gasket was in order anyway.
We needed to go to the shop anyway, as the rear rack had arrived! So there were multiple reasons for a visit.
Once we got to the shop in the morning, I had to use their jack, lift up the wheel, and wiggle it to show what the problem was, then they started to disassemble it.
This picture shows the torque arm assembly, you can sort of see that it slips into a bushing assembly with a bolting plate that then attaches to the sidecar frame. It was the fit between the torque arm and the bushing that was the problem, it was loose and sloppy, and so everytime the wheel hit any sort of a bump it caused it to clank against the bushing rather than rotate like it should. The torque arm is splined inside and connects to a splined shaft that runs the width of the sidecar frame. It is the twisting of this shaft that acts like a spring to provide the suspension travel. This system is used on many modern day cars and trucks.
During the reassembly process, I made sure the torque arm had some preload on it so that there would be plenty of suspension travel left even when it was under load. It worked, as the wife was extremely happy with how it was riding on the way home!
After they got the torque arm fixed, and the bike had sat for about an hour during that process, the one valve cover had managed to leak a significant amount of oil on the bricks, a puddle about the size of a large hand. The worker proceeded to quickly remove the valve cover, which also involves disconnecting the diagonal support arms from the sidecar frame to the motorcycle frame in order to tilt the bike to get enough room to remove. As soon as he loosened the valve cover, it immediately dumped the entire valve cover’s worth of oil all over the bricks!!! He then grabbed an old cover from a bike they were dismantling for restoring, threw that on the oil, and then rolled the bike over the cover and to a new spot! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of that! It made a puddle about 4′ by 4′! He then dug around in the oil drain back hole, and then put on a new gasket and reassembled it. I wasn’t sure that he actually fixed the problem, but time would tell.
Now that I had my tools in the trunk of the sidecar, I was feeling a bit more confident in venturing out with it.
We decided to head out and drive to supper, and wouldn’t you know it, halfway there, it died suddenly! I coasted to a stop, and attempted to restart it. I first gave it a quick check, looking at the fuel petcock and fuel filters. Those appeared normal. Based on how quickly it died, I was fairly certain it was an ignition problem. For some reason, I popped off the points cover, and tried it again, and lo and behold it started up! But immediately died when I put the cover back on. Since I had my tools with, I decided to remove the points plate to look at it closer. Sure enough, there was a contactor plate that is separated from the points plate by some fiber plate to isolate it, this allows the connection from condensor and coil to get to the points. It was shorting out on the points plate when the points cover was on. Since I was able to get it running, I decided to try to drive over to shop to get a new points plate. As long as the cover was removed, it seemed to run. Once there, they replaced the points plate and we were off and going! Whew!
Remember earlier that I talked about the one side valve cover that filled with oil, and leaked? Well, even with a new gasket on it, it was still leaking, so I was pretty sure that the root cause of the problem had not been solved: making sure that the drain back port was clear. I had made a trip to another tool market in Shanghai, and picked up some RTV sealant in preparation for fixing this problem for good.
I proceeded to remove the valve cover, but I put a container under it first, and sure enough, it was full of oil. I stuck a small probe in the drain back hole, but encountered resistance right where the head gasket would be. Hmm, did a hole get forgotten? At this point, I wanted to solve the problem, which meant the head had to come off! In order to do so, the exhaust pipe has to be removed, then the valve rockers, then the once those are out of the way, the head can slide up off the studs and there’s just enough room for the head to clear the studs and the sidecar body!
Once the head was off, it was clear what the problem was: a bulb of silicone was blocking the hole, preventing drain back of the oil! Evidently, when they assembled the motor, a bit of silicone was used on the copper gasket to ensure sealing, and the excess got pushed into that hole, and blocked. I cleaned all that up, carefully put some RTV sealant on it and reassembled everything. Since then, no more oil leaks!!!
Credit to the wife for taking the pictures, as my hands were way too oily to be touching a camera!
