My main form of transport at the moment is my combo, comprising of a TS250/1 with sidecar shocks, forks and keyed yokes, fitted with a Watsonian 'Mitze' sidecar. The bike was a bit of a state when Slip found it for me, but an engine rebuild, a new chain and a bit of hammerite saw the bike back onto the road. The eternal wrangle of shall I leave it standard or mod it up to the eyeballs soon took me, and after a long run fully loaded, 'the plan' was formed. Most important was a disk brake, pilfered from my well-used and quite worn out ETZ125, which also provided many of the electrical components needed for a 12v conversion. Both of these were made necessary due to the decision to build a trailer! A 12v system was required to power the extra lighting needed for the trailer as well as the sidecar. The conversion was a simple case of putting an ETZ250 motor into the bike, allowing a future conversion to a '300. The swinging arm is an ETZ250 item with the shocker mounts welded on to match the original item. The back wheel and sprocket are out of the 251, mainly because the sprocket runs on two bearings rather than just the one on the Supa 5. The rear tyre is a Cheng Shin 3.50x16, the 'fairly-square' profile giving nearly 7000 miles of fairly good grip in all weather. A pair of export ETZ 'bars (like TS high 'bars but wider) help to steer the thing. The towbar was easily fitted by welding a stub mounting to the sidecar frame. The trailer is a home-made item using only the finest bed frames and ply-wood. Running gear was supplied by Swillington Trailers, an Indespension stockist. They were also able to provide info on the legal side of trailer towing. Future mods on the cards include a 16-inch front wheel in a leading-link set-up, a sidecar-mounted headlight (a Simson item no less) and lorry lights on the back of the bike and chair. I would also like to fit a large battery for night-riding and running camp lights and an air pump. The rear mudguard on the bike is to be replaced by an ETZ125 item, and a plastic mudguard from the back of the Simson Magpie is to go in place of the slowly disintegrating fibreglass original on the chair.
My combo has caused quite a varied response from club members, summed up by winning the 'most pointless creation' silver gnome award at the Bonchester Bridge, so before anyone else wants to ask 'why?' , the answer has to be 'because'. I suppose piloting a combo is a fairly personal affair, and everyone should modify theirs to best suit their own needs and preferences. The generous carrying capacity of the thing means that Bev and I can camp comfortably rather than basically, shifting spares (on one occasion a stripped-down ETZ250) becomes a simpler task and serious amounts of Winalot can be moved on pet-food runs. The trailer doesn't add enough to fuel consumption for me to notice, but does make accelerating and braking a bit more of a struggle. A sidecar brake would probably even out the braking.
Since writing this (September 1997) a few more of the mods have happened. The front end now sports a 16x2.15 rim to match the rear, and handling has improved dramatically. The only problem is the extra grip afforded by the huge footprint compared to the standard size causes more twist in the forks, but who cares because I can slow down in confidence now. The Supa5 rear wheel has gone back in because the ETZ wheels seem to break up quite quickly. The swinging arm mod works well as no permanent twist has occured, but I found it still didn't work as well as fitting a good pair of shocks. A set of Hagons are now on the shopping list.
