Sticks and Stones
May break my bones
But whips and chains excite me!
Now before your mind goes into the gutter immediately, I am just using it as an introduction to today's posting.
A few weeks ago, I placed a group order with oldtimergarage, a provider in Poland of sometimes hard to find parts for vintage motorcycles and sidecar rigs. Three other fellow Uralisti and I had ordered two sets of eight chain links for our rigs.
The chains finally arrived, they apparently were delayed a bit by Hurricane Sandy as they entered the country through the customs office in New York City.
Some trial and error, some emails exchanged with the suppliers and fellow riders who've used these chains and I got them fitted to the pusher tire on Valencia. The other set of eight will go on the sidecar tire for when I am in 2WD mode.
Why the slight issues? There's very little clearance between the sidewall of the pusher tire and the drive shaft coming from the transmission and into the final drive on the rear wheel. The chains and straps I bought were modeled after the ones used by the Wermacht apparently for their army sidecar rigs during WWII.
My initial fitting went OK, but you could tell the leather strap was contacting slightly against the rubber boot that protects where the drive shaft splines mate onto the final drive. This was a bit worrisome though I'd been told some slight contact was OK and snow would act as lubricant in that case.
Today, after getting some emails from the supplier, I bent the hardware mount that goes on the right side of the tire so that it comforms more onto the tire's sidewall. Now, the straps clear the rubber boot just fine!
Here's a couple of videos showing the chains on the pusher tire, roughly in the spot I will use them in, come the first decent amount of snow.
The second video shows how the straps are now clearing the rubber boot with zero contact.
The squeaky noises you hear are not the straps, it's the "rubber donut" which acts as coupler
device between the transmission and the drive shaft.
There's snow forecasted for Sunday, guess where I'll be?
8 comments:
Pretty cool setup, hopefully they continue to clear. I think that leather stretches when it gets wet. It may be challenging to keep them tight if this happens. Waiting to hear your report...
Good luck with the snow. Here the forecasters haven't been so good about predicting precipitation.
I will be looking forward to hearing how the chains work out. Good luck.
~k
Sending some snow your way, hope it doesn't get stuck at the border.
Snow expected Sunday in Denver, we shall see....
Thanks Circle Blue....I doubt we'll get much, just want to see how well they stay in place....
Thanks Sonja, please send all you got....
There are only two people in this world that I know who would want snow chains for their motorcycles. You are one of them!
It's posts like this that make me wish I had a rig like that to enjoy year-round riding. Good luck with the chains, and may you get lots and lots of snow.
Post a Comment