PROJECT CAN-AM A BIT ON THE SIDE

It all seemed like such a good idea at the time...

Hopefully plenty of readers will recall the Can-am we did up a few years back and gave away as a prize? (back issues are available!)... well, I was so impressed with this bike that I got my own.

At the time of the original project Lee Granby told me he’d inherited the ex-jack Mathews enduro sidecar which Jack had used for fun towards the end of his riding career. It was specially made for a military Can-am and Lee suggested bolting it on to the project bike. This wasn’t possible because a) the bike wasn’t mine and b) it was going to be given away as a solo. However, it was deemed a good idea for the future...

Lee is persistent though and somehow the sidecar arrived in my workshop in November. It was in a bit of a state and I doubted if it was useable. There are a number of vulnerable points on a chassis and if they are rotten then work needs to be done. In this case, and in order to find out what the metal was like, I set to with a wire brush on my angle grinder and found the chassis to be basically okay.

The bearings were well shot in the sidecar wheel pivot but were the same as Can-am ones I had in the drawer. I spent some time cleaning the whole chassis off and then hand painted it with Granville Metal Paint Silver..

The aluminium panels came off, were cleaned up with a good wash then the satinising mop on my bench grinder prettied them up. The floor was in a terrible state though, basically rotten and unusable. Wondering what to do I messaged a plywood importer and explained what we were after and could we be cheeky and get some cuttings to make a side car floor? A message came back from their depot in Gateshead and the answer was yes, we could get some cuttings the size we needed, oh and what’s a sidecar? We sent pictures and they still agreed to supply the trailer decking which would do the job.

With the frame all painted and the new bearings in the swinging arm, the floor panels were fitted and all we needed was a wheel, which Lee was sorting. A temporary fix was the disc of plywood you can see in the pictures, this is so the outfit

can roll around the workshop. The sidecar bolts quite easily on to the mounting points and all we needed to do was sort the top mount which had vanished over the years. In order to do this the wheel needs to be in place. Once it is then we should be on for Telford, so have a glance at the Owd Codgers stand and see what we’re up to.

There is a strange effect when enquiring if anyone fancies going in the chair… there’s been a number of husbands volunteering their wives. Not sure what that says about me, or them…

Not the best of starts.

It was fun taking the panels off.

Almost stripped.

They were in reasonable condition.

Let’s try it in place.

Mostly fits, just a bolt or two...

The steel sidecar link cleaned up nicely.

As the chair had been made for this model, it fitted on easily.

JBL’S Graham Jones with the decking they supplied.

Trailer decking better than the original plywood.

Some CYKO cleaner, a bit of scrubbing and the panels cleaned up.

Nothing wrong with brush painting. Once all the old paint and rust was gone some Granville metal paint could be brushed on.

The old bits were okay as a pattern.

Seat looked okay... but the base wasn’t.