In the beginning (1993/94), though we both already had good touring bikes, me a Yamaha TDM850 and Marie a K75s, we had decided that we wanted a sidecar for our trip to the Off-Centre Rally, being held in August of that year in Mt. Dare,  South Australia.  We had been to the previous rally at Stonehenge in '92 and needed to go to collect our badges.

We thought we'd build our own, we had time and an XJ750 Seca became available.  It needed rebuilding, but based on my little knowledge of sidecars it seemed like the basis of a good outfit.  We had a already picked up a single sidecar at a good price, thinking it also would be suitable for the purpose.

The single sidecar turned out to need more chassis work than I was capable of at the time.  The XJ we got on the the road after sourcing another engine from wrecked bike and buying another wreck to donate some parts.  Painted up, it looked good, and it rode well, if a little underpowered.  With the sidecar already giving me headaches, when I read the add saying "K100RT/HRD 1.5 sidecar with leading link" for $5800 at a very local number, I had to call.

Well, I recognised the voice as soon as he picked the phone up, it was a friend I hadn't seen for a while, Nick Maddock.  He had decided to sell the outfit and keep his solo only.  Well, I was happy that I already knew the bike.  Nick had bought the bike from a government auction, it was an ex-police K100TIC.  At some stage during his ownership, he had a car turn in front of him, the collision writing the bike off (front end and fairing damage).  Nick had an R100RT with a HRD sidecar also, so he bought the bike back from the insurers, replaced the fairing, then asked Ron Hurdis to fit the sidecar to the K100 and please make a leading link to suit while he was at it.

After this reconstruction, the bike was then well abused around the NSW countryside, Nick attempting  tracks that no road bike had a right to travel on.

My attitude to this was that if the bike had survived Nicks best efforts relatively unscathed, it must be OK.

An agreement was reached, and I rode the outfit home after writing Nick a cheque for $5500.  It was the first time I had ridden a sidecar, so I clipped a few gutters on the way home.  Marie asked if she could take it for a ride when I arrived home.  After I told her to her to be careful, and gave her a warning about the steering, she rode it 10 metres into a tree (just breaking a blinker lens). C'est la vie.

The first change I made to it (well you do have to make it fit your needs) was to put some grippy tape on the mudguard to make it easier for the dogs to get in/out.  I also made a hood and side curtains where I worked to make it a bit more comfortable.

It's first rally in my hands was the Alpine Rally, being held in the Brindabella ranges on the Queens Birthday long weekend.  Sidecars and the Alpine just go together due to the sometimes difficult road in.  we stopped at Gunning on the Friday night before the rally, where the dogs had to sleep inside the sidecar. I was glad of the hood.  I also had one of our friends, Colleen travelling in the sidecar to the rally.  It was my first longish distance riding it, we only had one 'oops', but it was scary enough though.  Being a Long weekend, we went home via the Winter Rally at Nerriga on the Sunday night.

We also took the bike to the Apollo Rally at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra,  celebrating the 25th anniversary of the moon landing by the crew of Apollo 11.  Honeysuckle Creek has significance as it is the site where the first signals were received from the astronauts on the moon.  I remember it, because this where my frame broke (the right front downtube, followed by damage to two top frame tubes).  Luckily with friends there it was arranged to be taken to a chicken farm where one of the guys worked as a maintenance fitter.  He welded the frame back together, I reassembled all the bodywork, and we rode it home that day.  The Apollo is probably the coldest rally I've ever been to.

My leave to go to the Off-Centre rally was refused, so it looked like Marie was going herself, till her friend Lannie suggested that Marie and her could travel together in the sidecar.  We made as many preparations as possible (heavy duty tubes front and rear, spare fairing brackets, cable ties etc) without overloading it and they were off to Mt Dare.  Neither of them told me they turned the outfit around onto the expressway divider strip just 2 hours south, knocking down three small trees in the process.  They enjoyed their trip and the sidecar came back with many broken fairing mounts, a speedo that no longer worked and some other pieces missing.  They'd had some repairs to the fairing mounts done at Mt Dare by someone who apparently didn't know one end of an oxy torch from another.  

Another major event when Marie returned was that I asked her to be my wife (absence makes the heart grow fonder ?).  This was a pretty good reason for a major rebuild as a trip to the Worlds End Rally in SA showed the bike was starting to lack power and use more fuel.  During the rebuild, Don Wilson replaced some bearings in both the rear drive and the gearbox.  Sometime here we'd also acquired a trailer, originally intended to go behind Maries K75s, but it didn't tow well, so it ended up behind the outfit where it behaved just fine.

At the Summer rally near Nowra in November, the fairing fell off yet again, so I decided it had to go.  I'd found someone in the club with a naked K100 that wanted a fairing and I wanted his bits, a deal was struck.  Kenny thought I wouldn't be able to make it through Winter without a fairing, so he didn't fit the parts initially in case I wanted them back.

The bike was more pleasant to ride without the fairing.  For our honeymoon (after the New Year, 1995)  we left the dogs behind and took the outfit and trailer on a trip to Victoria.  During the trip we hired a horse drawn caravan for a week, unluckily, the Clydesdale dropped dead on the first night out.  She had an easy day with us, but had a problem with her heart the owner did not know about.

Sidecar mit trailer, note the new naked look and the dirt tyre on the front

Easter '95 we joined a few friends for a camping weekend in the Warrumbungles, near Coonabarrabran.  As it was a Nat Park, we couldn't take the dogs, so I took Big Bunny as a suitable Easter passenger in the sidecar.  A friend from Queensland, Pete agreed to come into town in the sidecar if he could have  a ride on the way back,  as Pete was pretty sensible I agreed (oops).  Heading back, in the worst possible scenario, a tightening downhill left hander (left hand chair remember), Pate panicked and put all the brakes on.  The sidecar spun immediately to the right and the outside of the corner, a white timber marker pole went between the bike and car, breaking the steering damper, the sidecar wheel, sliding sideways, hit the dirt. The tyre came off under the pressure, allowing the rim to dig in.  The bike had enough momentum to roll over the sidecar, (with me in it).  Seeing what was happening, I tucked in as deep as I could.  Pete was thrown to the ground on his back, from where he could see a K100 coming down on top of him.  Luckily it was a slow roll, and was able to stop the bike with his feet.  He asked if I was OK and told me to get out because he wouldn't be able to hold it.  Luckily I had a car seat fitted in the chair which sat higher than the body, I'm sure it saved me from harm.  We were rushed by Japanese tourists from a lookout across the road who helped get the bike back on its wheels.  Total damage: one flat tyre, a broken windscreen, busted steering damper and a few visits to the Physiotherapist for Pete.  We wuz lucky.  The lack of steering damper made for some pretty wild oscillations up to 40mph, but otherwise it was OK.

After the damage, you can see the missing windscreen and the high seat that saved my back.  It also ended up with some weird geometry as the sidecar swinging arm pivot got bent, giving it toe out.  We adjusted the pivot bolt to make it toe in with some mean negative camber

Sometime before this I had sold my TDM850(big mistake) thinking I could live with sidecar alone.  The accident started to make me think, I'd rather have a solo, so I made a possibly hasty decision to sell the sidecar and turn the bike back into a 2 wheeler.  I sold the sidecar and fitting kit to Vince Cahill, and sold the leading link back to Ron Hurdis.  I picked up some good RS forks from a wrecker, Nick had given me the stand assembly when he sold me the outfit, so that was OK.  As a naked solo, I immediately found the RT bars way too high, the bike was a wheelie monster, so I got some K1100RS bars, I also bought a low seat kit from a friend in Qld, these two items for me gave the bike a really good riding position.  An old Luftmeister 4-1 exhaust was found at a BMW shop as well, it sounded absolutely glorious.

But with the K now doing nothing, it allowed me to think again of a sidecar.  When one became available in Goulburn complete with a K100 fitting kit, I had to look.  It was a '92 model in burgundy, but that didn't matter; and had hardly done any work, belonging first to an older rider who could no longer hold his bike up and then to a young mother who never did get around to fitting it to her K75.

I had the boat painted to match my K100 and fitted the chair in one day.  I have great respect for the quality of Ron Hurdis work that they are so easy to fit.

The bike stayed in that format and did many kilometres and rallies up till last year.  During that period it seen a few changes, Marie ran it into an Armco fence, putting herself in hospital with a leg injury and writing the bike off again.  Healing Maries leg took a while and a major skin graft, the good thing was that it never damaged her mobility, it still doesn't look good today.  We also fixed the bike.  It needed a frame, radiator, handlebars and fork legs, which basically meant pull the whole bike to pieces and reassemble it (are you getting the idea that I know this bike intimately).  In 2001, we found that the drive pinion spline and the driveshaft were not going much further, they were replaced with 2nd hand parts from 2 low mileage Japanese imports that the wreckers had.  I finally bought a 15" rear wheel (a custom made steel one), the original 135-15 tyre did not last long with my riding style, I replaced it with a 165 which I am very happy with.

The boot-lid BBQ and extra lights were added about this time, 

MARK II (nothing left of the original sidecar I purchased now, the evolution has to start again)

In November 2001, we found a non-ABS 16v RS at a dealer around 2 hours away.  It passed inspection, so we bought it.  I took it to one rally, then fitted the sidecar immediately lest I was tempted to keep it as a two wheeler.

How it fitted initially	What I want it to look like
The HRD body needs some repairs and a new paintjob, but I didn't want to take the chair off the road completely.  During my holidays, I built a camping/cargo body for it.  It's easy to pack, carries the dogs with ease and weighs less than the original fibrglass body.  I can swap bodies in 15 minutes, so practical too.

I did seriously consider swapping all the bike bodywork so that she would look the same as she had taken a few years evolving into.  The new look did shock a few people, they were so used to seeing me on the old black girl.  The sportier, sleeker look of the RS is growing on me, even though I still like the aggressiveness of a black naked bike (I guess my R1100R will start to evolve now, it already has a loud pipe, lower, wider bars and a modified seat).

What's New?

I purchased a used leading link from Sydneys Trading Post, it was a HRD front end off of a K100RT, needing only sanding back and repainting.  The KONI shocks needed a rebuild due to pitted shafts.  I also found a 15" Bob Martin front wheel in a local wrecker.  Its now running a 140/80-15" Metzeler Marathon at the front and handles fine.

With our camper rebuilt, we did a trip partway around Australia in August/Sept/Oct 2002.  We left from Sydney, via Wagga to South Oz , across the Nullarbor, to Esperance, up the west coast eventually to Darwin, then back down the centre for the Centre OZ Rally and Henley on Todd Regatta at Alice Springs, we returned home via Victoria and another rally.  The outfit stood up well, pulling 880kg all up with the camper and gear, it was still getting over 12km/l most of the time.  The only issues were the brakes and the rear drive needing a rebuild when we came back.

Pics to come.

K-Series rule!!!