Let’s imagine that you are looking at a sidecar outfit in front of you. 

 

First, check that it’s set up right. 

 

The motorcycle should lean away from the sidecar - this is called ‘lean out’. This affects whether it cruises in a straight line. You should be able to travel at cruising speed in a straight line without pulling to left or right. If there’s isn’t enough lean out then it will pull towards the sidecar, if there’s too much you will have serious trouble on left hand bends. 

 

You can adjust lean out by changing the ride height of the sidecar wheel and sometimes that’s easier than moving the fittings. 

 

The other thing you need is ’toe in’. This means that if you put a plank against the sidecar wheel, you find that it points a little towards the bike, about 2-3 inches level with the front wheel. I have no idea what difference this makes. 

 

The next thing you might consider is gearing. If the owner tells you that it is on standard gearing you are not going to have a good time. On an MZ in particular it needs to be geared right down. The front sprocket should be something like 17t instead of 21t. 

 

If you want to take left hand bends safely, you need ways to get weight off the bike and onto the sidecar, especially weight high up. Despite some of the bikes you see at sidecar rallies, it’s bonkers to run with a pannier on the opposite side to the sidecar, or a top box. If you must have a top box put it on the back of the sidecar. 

 

The best thing you can do for weight distribution is to take the battery off the bike and re-mount it somewhere on the sidecar, preferably low and near the back. 

 

Next you should think about the front brake. The old drum brake is pretty weak for a solo, for a sidecar you are asking for trouble, though of course many classic bike owners survive with it. I would fit a disk brake off a later model MZ. 

 

You ought to change the fork springs for sidecar springs, these are a standard MZ part. If you don’t, but you have a decent front brake, you may find that you get a lot of dive at the front and that you might even have the front fork seals popping out through hydraulic force - I’ve had that happen. 

 

After the fork springs the next useful item is a Tarrozzi fork brace, not that expensive and cheap to fit. The other clever thing about the Tarrozzi is that it fits over the forks in such a way that it holds the oils seals in, a double benefit. 

 

At the rear end, if you still have the MZ shocks, make sure that your adjusters work. Perversely, if you plan to carry a passenger, the adjusters are used the wrong way. That is, when the passenger gets in, you set the adjusters to the lower position so as to level off with the lower sidecar. When the passenger gets out, you put the adjusters to the higher position. This is the opposite of what you would do when carrying a passenger on a solo bike. Personally I think the standard shocks are bit too soft which is why I have Hagons. 

 

The other mod I did to my bike was to get Maitland Racing to build me a roll cage. This is to protect the passenger in the event of a rollover.  I am a bit obsessed with avoiding rollover and its consequences. Ironically the thing that protects you best against rolling an outfit is the weight of a passenger in a sidecar. The only time I have actually rolled a sidecar there was no passenger in it.