Tony Foale center hub outfits

[tonyfoale]

i have only just come across this forum and thread, 2 years late I know. I thought that I would just like to clarify a few things about the sidecars that I made in the 1970s.
Firstly I should say that I had the advantage (or disadvantage) of being totally inept at riding/driving a sidecar. My few attempts on the road always resulted in punching holes in hedges. Therefore when asked to build a couple of racing outfits I had no experience to go on and had to rely on first principles without the burden of tunnel vision. I knew how to design solos and race cars but not asymmetric three wheelers. Although Alan Sansum was working for me at the time and was able to point out some essentials.
I build two machines, the first one was for Stan Stevens who I believe won the British or maybe the Bemsee championship on it. I forget the names of the guys who had the other one.
Someone mentioned buying one of them in pieces and having trouble with the setup of it. just like race cars, I designed it to work with wide tyres which require very carefully setup suspension to work right. I am not at all surprised that the assembly of a box of bits did not result in a well handling device. Had I been contacted I would have done what I could to have helped get it setup correctly.
Whether such outfits should be allowed in classic racing is another argument which I have no intention of entering into.
I am content to use only two wheels for my classic racing.
For anyone interested there are some pix of some of the stuff that I built on my web site and picasa pages at tonyfoale.com and http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyfoale

Tony Foale

info@tonyfoale.com
http://www.tonyfoale.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyfoale
https://www.facebook.com/tony.foale.5
https://www.youtube.com/user/MotoChassis

[steve-e]

Tony, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on here! I will say without any doubt that you changed my attitude to bikes years ago with FF biking (which is nothing to do with this thread, apologies!)

You have been an inspiration to me for a long time, and I've read some of your books on the engineering of bikes, especially the work on trail, rake, how bikes steer and learnt so much.

Thank you!

[steve-e]

the FF stuff was Malcolm Newell but it wouldn't have happened in my view without the work Tony Foale had put in before that. The stuff I learnt about rake, castor (not caster that's US spellink) and what Tony explained so simply was something that kept Dad busy and informed for years. Just thought I should clear that up The Qasar wouldn't have happened and I still have the books, probably at mum's now, about the geometry of how bikes work.

[tonyfoale]

Steve
I think that you are giving me too much credit. Malcolm was most definitely his own man and I doubt that he would have taken much notice of anything that I (or anyone else) said. The geometry of the Quasar owed little to anything that I did.

[steve-e]

I think it did. You did so much with the early hub centred stuff, or are you saying he was a beardy wizard?