And so the sidecar sat in the yard for a few days while I kept having a look round it and working out what went where and what the hell I'd gone and let myself in for. Sunday was gonna be fitting day and with a stroke of luck, for me anyway, Ray and Sally turned up (Ruths mum and dad) so Ray was recruited into fitting the sidecar with me while Ruth, Sally and Emily sat and took the pee!

Its great to have someone elses' view on a job cos sometimes you get blinkerd and can't see the wood for the trees so to speak, then when it goes according to plan its like an hallelluja moment, we had so many moments like that we must have sounded like born again christians .... and so with a lot of paitiance we finally got the sidecar connected. It was too late in the day for a test ride so it would have to wait till the morning. After getting back from the 2 mile test ride i was knackerd. The 'thing' was pulling to the left and it took all my strength to keep it on the road, I was seriously having doubts about the whole sidecar sernario.

Bolting the sidecar on the day before was just that, bolting it on, so with the aid of the info from Chris at Squire Sidecars the fine tuning could begin. the outfit has to 'toe in' 1/2 inch and the bike has to lean out 3/4 inch-ish when the rider is on the bike and the sidecar axle needs to be approx 9 inch infront of the bikes rear axle. A check of what the outfit and it was toeing out 3 inch, ooooh eck that'll have summat to do with it. This fine tuning took another day to complete but the next test ride was so much better, so much so that I've left set at it is .... and so the combi was riding ok and after a weeks test riding, which invoved Ruth being my first passenger we decided that it could do with a complete overhaul and spruce up

Thanks to neighbours Chris and Ducati Monster riding Paul for helping unload the sidecar, Ray for helping fit sidecar and Ruth, Sally and Emily for having a laugh and endless cuppa's.