MURP'S HOLLAND..................the Bicycle Diaries Pt III.

My Stern Rox sidecar frame ready to go to the powdercoaters.

The spare tire carrier and assorted metal pieces from the sidecar ready for powder coating.

Friday, August 10th, 2012.

This morning we disassembled my soon to be sidecar outfit for the last time as we enter into the final stages of the construction.

All of the metalwork is finally finished and today I dropped everything off at the powdercoaters.

Yesterday I brought the fiberglass sidecar to the paint shop, so by Wednesday of next week, we will have all the parts back and start putting it all together, and hopefully we won't have too many parts left over (!).

So, what to do while I wait?.

Get out on the bicycle and breathe a bit, something I haven't  had much of a chance to do in the last two or three weeks.

I had intended to pack a few items on the bicycle and head off for a week of cycling and photographing, but trying to get the sidecar outfit built and ready for the August EGT has taken up all of my spare time. 

I was going to cycle up the 110km(67 mls) to Alblasserdam, which is just a wee bit south east of Rotterdam and right by the famous Windmills of Kinderdijk, a series of 19 mills on the World Heritage List, used for water drainage from the Alblasserwaard polders which are situated below sea-level (a Polder is a piece of land in a low-lying area that has been reclaimed from a body of water using dikes and drainage canals). But now that i'm running out of time, I don't think I'll be able to go on a bicycle trip, pity.

There are plenty of bicycle paths to ride on here in Noord Brabant, probably a few thousand miles of them.

Cafes are everywhere here in the Province of Noord Brabant in the south of Holland, and Noord Brabant borders itself with Belgium to the south, Limburg province to the west and Zeeland province to the east.

If dogs could smile.

A traditional and typical thatched roof cottage just outside of Milheeze here in Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands, and just to the right of this cottage is the beautiful "Laurentia' grain mill.

The Laurentia would be what the Dutch would describe 

 as an "Achtkante Stellingmolen", or a "Smock Mill" due to it's shape.

Smock Mills are usually octagonal and built from brick unlike tower mills which are usually cylindrical and built of timber. In a tower mill the whole body of the mill turns to be able to be faced into the wind, whereas in a smock mill only the crown or head of the mill turns, allowing the construction of the smock mill to be much larger and stronger.

The "Laurentia" is a fully operational Belt Mill, originally built in 1890 and then called the "Ludolizawi", a combination of the names of the former owners.
It was changed in 1965 to "Laurentia" after a having a substantial restoration done to her.
The Laurentia is also a hell of a lot easier to pronounce after a few cocktails.

And in stark contrast to the Laurentia, this slowly decaying Mill on the outskirts of the village of Gemert has been left to deteriorate and age gracefully, and there's still an air of majesty to her. As I wandered around the base I couldn't help but wonder what she was like and the people and the millers who she entertained back in her heyday.

From what little research is out there about this mill, it appears it was named
 "The Peoples Friend" mill. 

'The Peoples Friend' windmill must have been a very beautiful mill when fully operational, structurally it's very well made with it's cylindrical brick base. 

Due to the fact it was made of brick it would have been able to take a lot more weight inside, so I'm guessing it probably had three pairs if not four pairs of milling stones in it.

The older wooden mills, the tower mills, were not able to carry as much weight as brick mills and usually had only one or at most two pairs of the huge and very heavy grain milling stones in them.

And now for something unusual, my "Omen" moment if you will.

If any of you have seen the movie "The Omen" there is a scene I remember ( i'm not sure whether it was Omen I, II or III) where a photographer shoots a picture of the priest outside of a church at night. When the photographer get's back to the darkroom and starts to develop the pictures, the image of the priest comes out with a white 'slash' or a flare going through him (the priest), and as it turns out that night during a particularly bad storm the weather vein on the church is hit by lightning, falls and spears the priest, just like the white slash flare did in the picture.

So, as I processed this image, I noticed in the bottom left part of the shot a flare that looked to be in the shape of an orange cross.
Just a cross, nothing unusual really, except that it wasn't there on the overgrown hedges surrounding the brick base of the windmill to begin with, wasn't in any of the other shots I took that morning and there was nothing in the way of the shot that would reflect or throw off a shadow with this type of a shape to it.

So, just an interesting lens flare, or an Omen of things to come?.

I'm sure that there's a perfectly rational and scientific explanation for it, but what's the fun in that?.

The comments section is now
OPEN.


Have the day of your choice......



Murph.

MURPH'S MOBEC DUO-DRIVE BMW 2WD SIDECAR CONVERSION................Part 4

My 2004 BMW R1150 GS Adventure as it looked when it arrived in Holland on May 3rd at LBS Sidecars.

Hello and welcome to Pt IV of my BMW Sidecar conversion.
You can read Pt 1 of the build here, Pt 2 of the build here, and Pt 3 of the build here.


My name is Murph and I am a full-time motorcycle photojournalist, and have been on the road now for the last 2 1/2 years and roughly 60,000 miles, traveling all over the U.S.A., Western Canada and south only as far as Baja California. 
Central and South America I have not yet travelled to, but intend to on the final leg of my 7 yr RTW that I am currently on. 
My travels and this journey all started by accident in December of 2009 when two  things happened in my life that would significantly shape and channel me to where I am today. 
The first event related to my house that was in foreclosure, the looming hammer of the banks closing in and taking it back was becoming more and more of a reality. This played heavily on my mind, as the thought of trying to get out from under all of the debt I incurred after losing my business due to my battle with alcoholism seemed like an insurmountable task at the time, made even more difficult and depressing with the hemorrhaging economy that we are still in today.

I was nearly a year out of rehab at that time 3 yrs ago, sober, feeling good and in a better place than I was one year prior, but still not really content with what my future held for me if I decided to stay in Florida and tried to stay afloat. It's not that I was restless or unhappy, but I just new that there was more, and it wasn't where I was. It was an inner contentment that was missing from my life, the one that you think about when you stop for the day and put your head on the pillow at night, the time just before you fall asleep, it seems to be the time that all the lines light up with all of those thoughts, stuff you didn't get done, stuff you should do.
I was never a fan of living in Florida, it's just too damn hot and humid, as flat a state as there is, and being the outdoor person that I was and still am whose god is in the mountains, it was the complete opposite of my ideal choice of location of where to live,but live there I did because that's where my real estate was that I made my living from at the time.


The second event came in the form of a Craigslist ad for a 2004 BMW 1150 GS Adventure that was forwarded to me by my pal Greg in Texas.
I was always a motorcyclist from an early age, from my first motorcycle at age 14, a Bultaco Trials bike.
I've had a lot of different bikes since then, and even some seriously nice 
Hot-Rods like the 1927 Tall-T I was building with an 8-71 blown 1955 392 Chrysler Hemi in it, but my love of motorcycles has always been the stronger of the two modes of transport and travel, and still is today at 50.


So I saw the ad for this 2004 low milage BMW, looked good and I struck a deal with the owner David, and took possession of the bike in December 2009.
At the time I had absolutely no intentions of packing up everything and leaving Florida for good when I purchased the BMW, but in March of 2010 I went on a 6,000 mile road trip with Greg after he purchased a new Kawasaki and wanted to break it in, and when I returned to Florida at the end of March, I decided to go a little further afield, partly because after that 6,000 mile trip I wasn't too happy about being back in Florida, and partly because I wanted to explore the Northwest with a view to a future place to live with mountains. So this was the second trip, a ride up to Seattle, with a stop off in Medford, Oregon, where I had located a used 41 ltr Touratech Gas Tank for sale from a RTW rider who was letting it go cheap, so I figured instead of shipping it down to Florida, I may as well ride up there and put it on, it kind of justified the trip, in my mind anyway. So in June after I rode up there and put the tank on I thought, well, whats the point of going back to Florida now,  I'm so close to Canada I may as well go a little further north to Vancouver BC since I had never been before. Trip #3. 
Once I crossed over into Canada I think that was the point where the trips started to roll into one another, and in August of 2010, I ended up at the Bonneville International Speedway for the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials intending to head back to Florida,and was thinking to myself that 5 months prior in March a month long motorcycle trip seemed like a big ride to me, having been on the road then for nearly 6 months I was now looking at it in a whole different light, and those questions I used to ask myself like how do you continuously keep going on the road with the daily requirements of life that you were accustomed to, all began to reveal and answer themselves over time.
Fast forward to today and it seems like another time and a different person that set out for Medford Oregon just to change out a gas tank on a BMW motorcycle, but it's only been a few years.

My 2004 BMW R1150 GS Adventure as it looks now.

We've made a lot of progress since these pictures and I'll try to detail what was done to get it to this stage as best I can.

THE DUO-DRIVE.

In this image the outer half-shaft that goes from the output of the Duo-Drive to the sidecar wheel is being measured. We needed to notch a portion out of the sidecar frame that the half-shaft was sitting on to allow for suspension articulation.

With the Duo-Drive installed we can get a more accurate measurement.

 But, the Mobec adapter plate that is supplied with the Duo-Drive was drilled for the 4 hole half shafts that Mobec provide with the units, but we were going to use a Suzuki Vitara 3 hole mounting flange....

....no problem. Throw a cylinderical chunk of aluminum on the barbie... er.....milling machine, and in no time flat Ad had a new 3 hole flange ready to go.

That worked out well.

The other half-shaft going from the final drive output of the motorcycle to the input of the Mobec Duo-Drive we had to make from scratch.

Made from 28mm (1 1/8") steel rod, we cut the splined ends off the original shorty driveshafts that Mobec supply with the Duo-Drive, then welded them on each end of the new half-shaft.

After turning the weld on the milling machine and milling in the dust cover grooves, both of the drive shafts are now finished and ready to go. 

THE STERN ROX SIDECAR

So, while Ad was doing the metalwork on the frame, I was notching out the glass on the sidecar to accommodate the axle articulation and also the auxiliary 8 gl Stainless Steel gas tank that was going up underneath the frame.

I had thought about either building an extra gas tank in the trunk, as it's a pretty big trunk, but I wasnt too crazy about that idea, if there's a line break, a gas leak, everything in the trunk gets ruined, not to mention the flammability aspect of it. Confined space, gas fumes, pooff.
Plus I thought that the extra space would be more beneficial in the long run, and the Stainless is thick enough that it doubles as a skid plate underneath.

I had to cut out the whole section of the floor of the chair....

....and then make templates or forms so it can be fiberglassed back in again from the inside.

I guess in Hot Rod terminology, this would be called channeling, when back in the fifties and sixties they would take the body off a Ford or Chevy and cut out the floor, drop the body back on to the chassis about 4" lower, then re-weld the floor back in, only it was 4" higher inside.

I also didn't want to put too much metalwork on the outside, I didn't want to make it look like a sidecar version of an FJ40 at Cruise Moab, but a spare tire carrier had to be made, as there were only two choices for me to pick from to mount a spare tire. 
One was for me to remove the inside rear pannier, the one between the motorcycle and the sidecar, and mount it there, but I didn't want to lose all that space, with the extra drawer I built, I have now 55ltr panniers, plus I didnt like the look of the spare tire at the back like that, so the only other place left was on top of the nose of the sidecar. So we had to build a spare tire carrier.

To get a nice smooth curve to the pipe, a slight bend every 60mm (1 3/4") was necessary.

This is not the actual spare tire for the outfit, but one that was in the shop just to get an idea of scale, to see just how much it would fill up the frontal area and affect visibility.
Since a passenger will only be be part of this trip for approximately 25% of the time at the most, passenger visibility was not extremely important. There's still enough room to see out of the front windshield, as a passengers eye level will be about 6"+ over the tire height, depending on the height of the passenger.
We are also building a slide out rack on the rear of the chair, so worst case scenario, I can take off the spare tire and carry it on the rack for periods of the trip to afford better passenger visibility.




So thats where we're at right now, these latest shots were all taken in the last week, so it's as near realtime as I can get with it, not like it happened a month ago.

So, the next build installment will probably be trial fit assembly and test ride, and then disassembly for powdercoat and paint. I had decided from the outset to get all the metal and frame work powdercoated as I hate rust, and powdercoat is much stronger and much more durable than paint, and lasts a lifetime, unlike paint which chips and can develop much more rust in cracks and under the surface. Powdercoat is also chemical resistant, if you're bleeding your brakes and spill brake fluid on paint, it will eat through the paint, not so with powdercoat, you just wipe it off.
The only piece that is getting painted is the fiberglas sidecar, and this I hope to be able to do myself, as I cant afford to get it professionally done, and there's really no need to spend that type of money as 90% of the sidecar will be covered in a large Wherethehellismurph sticker map of the world, so it would a waste of money and paint.




There are 3 weeks left until the Euro Gespann Treffen in Luxembourg, which means the outfit is  weeks away from being finished.






Murph.