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Anyone ever owned or rode a GL or CX with a sidecar? I have an old Velorex car that has been setting on a workbench for a while now. I originally bought my GL1100 thinking I would bolt a car to it this winter but these old Velorex's are really made to be mated up to a lighter bike. I would have to do a lot of mods to make it heavy enough for the Wing .

Anyway I have seen quite a few GL's and CX's reasonable for sale lately on C/L . I have never owned one but borrowed one (GL-650) for about a month years ago and really liked it. Not looking to build a freeway cruiser, Just something to haul the kids around and commute to work. If anyone has any pics of how they mounted a car I would appreciate it. I know I will have to build a subframe but I have the tools to do that.

Heres the Velorex mounted up to a tired old Yamaha XS-650 that I just sold, Before that it was attached to a GS-850.

Your velorex would be better suited to the CX.
Quite a few mounting pic's on my Flickr site.

Is there really such a thing as a sidecar that's too light? I mean, you can just add ballast.
If you put a decent capacity car battery in the sidecar, and maybe a second fuel tank, you're adding ballast. Other than that, lead ingots in the floor....

Mine doesn't need any ballast at all, it's perfectly ok without, but I do have the battery and a beefy roll-bar in the boot.

Its not a question of weight, I used around 60 Lbs.of ballast in the form of a deep cycle battery

What concerns me is the quality of the the sidecar frame and suspension. Velorex uses a pretty lightweight tubing for its frame. I know a lot of folks have used the Velorex 562 on a heavier bike and had no problems but I have seen pics of frame sections broke in half. I personally have broken a mount and a shock on this very car, Probably because of abuse from off-roading it . I haul my kids around in this and I don't want to take any chances.

If I can find the time , I just might build my own car. Thinking along the lines of a Ural car but using a tube frame with an aluminum body .

I have a Velorex 562, and I have to say the frame work is very substantial. As are the mounts. But I would agree that without a passenger , some ballast is needed

By the way, Nice looking car Hal. Seems like all the best hacks are in Europe


Didn't find much by searching for "CX500 Sidecar" but found a video on Youtube that shows some good detail of the subframe. Could not fiqure out to embed the video but here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... VzFtkKJ7tM

Don't know how much horsepower you prefer for toting a bike and sidecar, but keep in mind that the 650 has a third more horses than the 500. The 500 runs about a thousand rpm per 10mph, whereas the 650 runs about 800 or less for the same. Either bike has a good amount of torque, so it should pull easily. I'd go for the GL650, if you can find one you like.

Missourimike wrote:Don't know how much horsepower you prefer for toting a bike and sidecar, but keep in mind that the 650 has a third more horses than the 500. The 500 runs about a thousand rpm per 10mph, whereas the 650 runs about 800 or less for the same. Either bike has a good amount of torque, so it should pull easily. I'd go for the GL650, if you can find one you like.

My XS-650 had around 50 HP and got the job done, At least on most days. It would run 65 MPH but add a 25 MPH headwind and a passenger and it would struggle to hit 55. The Suzuki GS 850 was around 70 HP and would run 75 easy .

What is the HP on the 500 vs. the 650?

The 650 is rated at 60hp, the 500 at 40.

How old is the sidecar? If it is the old design with the square tube frame I wouldn't recommend it for any bike over 350 Lb and/or with more than 30 HP. They were made for use with the Jawa 350....

But I don't think it is because the body looks like a model 562 to me. If it is a model 562 and the frame isn't rusted on the inside it could easily handle a SilverWing.

My CX650E based winter machine is called Eccles after a character in an old British radio show. Eccles' sidecar started out as a 1982 Velorex model 700 (same frame as the 562). It was attached to a GL500 for 5 years/45,000 Km, then to a CB750SC for most of a year (until its camchain came through the cylinder block) and has been on Eccles since. I replaced the shock with something from a wrecker early on and eventually made up my own version of the SideStrider heavy duty suspension for Velorex and changed to a Comstar wheel. That was OK as long as I replaced the pivot bearings every couple of years. After 10 winters of use, with the rust scraped off and the frame re-painted every year, I started wondering just what they were using for steel in the Czech in '82 how much of it was left so I explored a bunch of options and ended up getting a deal on a brand new Ural sidecar frame.

Anyway, the original Velorex frame lasted almost 100,000 Km (maybe more - who knows how much the OP used it?) and other than the suspension problems (probably more the fault of the roads I drive on than of the design) it gave me no trouble.

Hal:
How many times have I said that the sidecar's weight should be 0.25-0.33 the weight of the bike and that it is because the frames of lighter sidecars tend to have less strength, as do the frames of lighter bikes? Adding ballast to a lightweight sidecar to bring it into the optimum range will only increase the load on the sidecar's frame and make the problem worse.

And speaking of ballast, I will say it one more time: If the bike & sidecar are well matched and properly set up you should not need ballast. All I carry in Eccles' sidecar is a jack and a few tools, and then only because it is the logical place to carry them. I have removed them while working on something and test driven it without and I have never noticed the difference.

The only time I ever carry ballast is in the snowy part of winter. Since the weight of the bike's engine and the lardo on the seat is all on the bike's tires they can easily push through the snow almost to the road surface, but there is a lot less weight on the sidecar's tire so it tends to ride up on top of the snow, tipping the outfit to the left more than I like. The winter ballast consists of a 2 gallon plastic jug of water (approx. 20 Lb.). The idea is that if I end up taking on a heavy load I can dump the water or, if it is frozen, even discard the jug. In over 25 years I have never done either.

Mike:
I don't know where you got those figures, but the CX & GL500 engines are rated at 50 HP and the CX/GL650 engine at 65 Hp.

BTW: My first outfit was a GS400 with a Jawa/Velorex sidecar (the kind I would not currently recommend for that size of bike). I saw over 140 Km/h on it a number of times and once got the front wheel off the ground pulling away fast in 2nd with an adult passenger in the chair. That 35 HP machine could do just about everything Eccles can and burn less fuel doing it but it was less comfortable, you can grow old waiting for Suzuki Canada to ship a parts order and drive chains & road salt don't play well together.