butt mooar Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 The Isle of Man is a hotbed for sidecars. In the late 80s or early 90s, at the manx 2 day, there were few crews from Sweden competing with right hand chairs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jse Posted March 1, 2009 Report Share Posted March 1, 2009 Sure would be interesting!!!!Wonder if we could do a twinshock and a modern rig? I think we would be the only ones in MI riding sidecar!? Zip, If you have an old TL250, a 270+cc kit and a sidecar makes a good rig, which is about the only thing I think a TL250 is good for, with all due respect, of course........ Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hillary Posted March 1, 2009 Report Share Posted March 1, 2009 Time to give you guys the other side of the pond some facts. When I took up sidecars in 1979 - some time ago I know, but not that long ago, there were many sidecars in use, probably over 100 crews in the UK. You could even buy a ready to ride, and very competitive sidecars from Sandifords, the Montesa importer; they were 348 Cotas fitted with a Barry Kefford sidecar. Then in the early eighties the Beamish Suzuki was available as a ready to ride sidecar made by Mick Whitlock, the original crafter of the fabulous chromed frames. They were exceedingly competitive and during my five or six years riding all the British Championship rounds on first a Montesa then two Suzukis, a championship round would frequently get 40 entries and the big sidecar trials like the Manx Two Day and the Gerald Simpson Two Day would get over 50, occasionally 60 entries. However, since those days the enthusiasm for sidecars has dropped off a bit, certainly in numbers, but even so, there is still a significant number of crews around. In fact it's probably time I made an announcement. As you may have guessed, Hillary is Mike Rapley of Centrally Speaking and it's my intention to ride this year's Manx Two Day on a sidecar. I have a passenger lined up - not my old sparring partner Mannix Devlin, but Andrew Scott who used to ride with his brother Phil - and they were very good. I'm hoping to borrow a competitive outfit, Robin Luscombe has said he will help, so if he can manage that, then it's a goer. Whilst I still ride regularly as a solo rider, as does Andrew, it's many years since I last rode a sidecar in a trial. It was May 1994 and before that May 1990 and before that 1986, so don't expect miracles. However, I would like to think that we'll get round OK and maybe even have the odd clean or two. But it all depends on being able to borrow a suitably competitive outfit. Surely somebody will help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jse Posted March 2, 2009 Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 Mike, If at all possible, if you could post some photos from the event, that would be great! The Trials sidecars are one of my secret fetishes (my other fetishes are apparently well known to the public) and most of the riders here where I ride don't even know there is such a thing. I've driven a couple, and been a passenger, and found them both fun and quite challenging. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.