bzzzt ... bye bye wasp

The Wasp has finally left.

wasp mx sidecar 

For the amount of work done to it,
I was a little slow.
Each project was intricate enough that it wasn't quick cut and paste work.
Fortunately Mark found an event to enter which lit the fuse a bit.
Deadlines always help!

kawasaki w650 engine

So where was I since the last update...

After making the brackets for the master cylinder and rear caliper,
the next thing was modifying the foot brake pedal.
Its hard to see in the picture but that is good,
it was a retweaking of an original.
At least the positioning is right!

The exhaust was fun.
It started out with this unrelated stainless donor that had the perfect bends.

donor exhaust

The tricky part was figuring out how to clamp it to the engine.
The original used a couple shims with a bolt on clamp.
Mark wanted a different method.

double ring

Basically it's 2 flat washer/rings.
One presses on the copper gasket and the other is for the clamp.
very time consuming whittling those rings out of stainless!

exhaust clamped

It seems like a sturdy design and less prone to leaking or loosening.
The clamps can slide off the other end if needed.

almost equal

The idea of the pipes was to have them as equal length as possible.
Tricky when its on opposite sides of the bike,
so that's why that dip is there.
Still about 3" short.
The pipes were forced into the V shape of the Wasp muffler,
so there weren't too many variables without changing the muffler clamp angle.

front view

I'm sure it will be fine,
at least it matches the other angles of the side car.


Another fun part was this foot grip for the base.

castellated

I had searched for some designs on other Wasps,
and came up with this.

forward gription

The rider or monkey has to move all around the side car,
from way forward on this corner leading edge to the other side behind the driver.
Crazy.

rear gription

Oh yeah.
One of the last things was reangling the top handbar.

workbench

That was one of the harder things

as we don't have a bender that will bend tight 90's out of thin wall tube.

I ended up using the bends I had cut out of the original handle,

but it came out good enough.

WASP MX  sidecar rear view

That was one of the relieving things on the bike.
Nothing had to be show,
it was better if it had a 70's race bike theme,
since that's what it is.
Not arc-weld out in the pits type work,
but not unrealistically restored either.

sidecar view

So the cool thing is Mark and his wife Kathy (C?) are planning on racing this together.
It seems like there might be an issue on whose the driver and whose the rider!
(she rides horses and he's actually been the sidecar monkey during races)

I hope they get it running soon enough to get some practice time.
The plan is to get it running for the race this november,
than blow it apart and clean it up.

wasp and happy owners Mark and Kathy

So this left last Monday.
It was there long enough that its strange having the shop space open again!

Thanks guys for the project!

TP