Now decided to make the sidecar into a trailer for safety reasons on the road and narrow tracks when off road.

OK, I have abandoned the sidecar idea, you can do it if you want by using my coupling idea, but I have explored the public rights of way off road byways and there are very few where you can fit a bicycle with a sidecar at the side because they aren't wide enough, I don't want to ride on the main roads as I felt very vulnerable when I test rode my bike with the sidecar chasses I felt very vulnerable with cars and trucks trying to pass me. So, I have changed my mind and my chasses will now have 2 wheels and a tow bar; It is going to be a trailer. I have changed the idea of the roof as you can see below and I am using the sheeting for the door with just 2 bars on it as the other one looked too much like a mini wild animal cage. I will begin again tomorrow with the title Building a bicycle trailer out of scrap materials. Below you will see that I have already  been re-designing.
WHERE'S THE ROOF GONE?

Answer, I have changed my mind again. You know I was talking about the way those sun-loungers fix the canvas to the frame? Well I came up with an idea to keep the sidecar even lighter.

So, I cut more material from the Builders bag, and used some more of the framing, cut it down and threaded the bag canvas into it.

Like so.

How I experimented threading it in before I cut the bar, it worked so I cut the bar and below is the fixing on in progress.

I have transferred the glowing tape on as soon as possible as it was losing its adhesive through taking it off the splashboard roof. I am using electrical tape to secure it as it sticks better to the tape than it does to the canvas. I could have binned the glow tape but it cost a lot from the cycle shop.



Below is a square tube that came off something, but I can't remember what, I put it in my workmate and put my electric scroll saw down it to make a trim for the ragged ends of the sheeting.

You can see it here just under the roof. I have trimmed the ragged ends with a sharp Stanley knife (new blade) and used electrical tape to seal the ends of the bars; so that the bars are out of sight I rolled the sheeting round them and pulled tight so that it is as tight as a drum skin. -if the electrical tape comes off as it weathers I will replace it with duck tape as I believe that stuff holds well. Keep watching this blog to see how the Sidecar has evolved. I'll be back.