Attaching my first sidecar an old Tomco to a Harley Dyna Street Bob and am not sure about placement. We have to fabricate our own mounts so looking to figure best placement of sidecar before we attach it to the bike. I heard the sidecar wheel should be approx 10 inches ahead of the rear tire of the bike and the persons weight in the sidecar should be right about at the middle of the motorcycle. Is that a good formula and does anyone have any more suggestions, we could use them.

 

Here's some guidance from the USCA manual (known as the "yellow book"):

"As a rule of thumb, the sidecar axle should point at the front of the motorcycle rear wheel rim. The sidecar wheel is also angled slightly towards the front of the motorcycle. Toe-in should be approximately 3/8" to 1/2". Leanout (leaning of the motorcycle away from the sidecar) should be initially adjusted to 2 to 3 degrees. The sidecar should sit level front to back and viewed from the rear, the sidecar frame should be just slightly higher at the sidecar wheel than at the motorcycle connections".

They emphasize that these are initial settings and probably will need further adjustment based on handling (pulling right or left). It's also important if both motorcycle wheels aren't the same width, to do the toe-in measurements to the center of both wheels instead of the edge of the rims. Hope this helps some.

 

heres a couple links that may help:

http://www.sidecar-industry.com/techpages.htm

http://www.sidecar.com/links3.asp

 

this will get us started