I've got plenty to be thankful for this year, like every year, as far as that goes. A year ago we were dealing with serious health issues with the wife - several operations to drain fluid from her lungs, cancer diagnosis and all that. Kind of hard to be thankful for what you have when all that is weighing on your mind. Things are much better this year. I went to the cardiologist the other day to get the results of my stress test and echo-cardiogram. The doc says everything is Jake, come back in a year. So health wise, we're doing pretty well. I got the hot rod version of the flu shot for those of us 65 and older about a week ago, arm was sore for two days and then I came down with something that I would swear was the flu even though they say you can't get the flu from the shot. Itchy-watery eyes, hacking cough, sore throat, low grade fever, headache. Whether it's side effects from the shot, the flu, an old fashioned kick-ass cold, regardless, I've been miserable for about four days. I was supposed to do a 5K this morning but due to the health and the rain, going to take a pass. No point in making things worse. Best to just be thankful for what I've got, which is plenty.
The silver lining that comes with sitting around hacking and coughing, is that I can get caught up on some of my reading, both with books and magazines, as well as spend a little time sitting on my arse in front of the computer. I typed in a search for sidecar suspension designs and got quite a few things to come up. If you combined the ideas from the top two photos, you'd have something similar to what I ran on my old sidecar. A double sided swingarm but rather than using a conventional motorcycle coil over shock, I used an air shock from a car. The advantage to the air shock was being able to level the bike out depending on the weight added from a passenger and/or cargo. Also with the swingarm, it was possible to adjust the toe-in on the wheel easily to insure better tracking.
The bottom design is both clever and simple. If you follow the link back, you can see a little more of the construction and get a better understanding of how well thought-out the whole design is. I'm still toying with the idea of using a torsion bar suspension. It would be simple enough to have the swing arm pivot off the torsion bar and likewise it would be very simple to set the preload on the torsion bar to level out the chair for various loads. I'm going to continue to pursue a design and get some sketches made up. It wouldn't take long to make the frame if everything was worked out on paper. The sheet metal might be another story depending on the design but might be a good project now that I have access to my sheet metal tools all in one spot.
Enjoy your day and give thanks for all you've got.
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