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A sad tale of a Sidecar from India
I bought a new Royal Enfield 350 Meteor. Shortly after buying the bike I had serious medical problems that left me not strong enough to ride two up with my wife. I decided to buy a sidecar and install it. I saw on "Jay Leno's Garage" that you could buy sidecars from India (I live in Cambodia) I contacted Cozy Wheels and their dealer in India MGE. They both treated me very badly. How do these people stay in business?
I went to Youtube and saw some Americans installing a "Inder" sidecar from India on a Honda 250 Rebel. It had a tube frame and looked like good quality. I ordered a sidecar from "Inder Exports" of India.
In a little under three months the sidecar got to Cambodia where I live (after paying the corrupt Cambodia Customs Dept.$2000.us) On taking the car out of the box I saw that it had a bar stock frame and not the tube frame. It also only had two welded on mounting points not the eight like the one on Youtube. The welded on mounts looked like an afterthought.
I went to take the car body off the frame and found that the holes in the body floor did not line up with the holes on the hold down tabs on the frame. On one hole they had just ripped the metal floor to make the holes line up. The rest of the holes did not line up, but the factory warped the floor to make it fit. I had to cut a piece of plywood to fit the floor as it looked really weak. In the Youtube video it showed nice movable rubber mounts hold down tabs frame to car. What I got was thin welded on metal tabs on the bar stock frame with some kind of rope as padding. I added thick rubber padding.
I went to put the wheel on and one of the wheel bearings felt like it had rocks not bearings in it. Lucky I had paid extra and ordered a "set" of wheel bearings. There is no holes to run the lighting wiring to the bike also.
The clamps that go to the bike frame that came with the kit were way to big. I had ordered/paid for an additional mounting kit and lucky I did. The clamps in that kit were smaller, but still too big, but I used double metal shims (from the kit) and drilled the side of the clamps were it met the frame and the frame, and drove in stainless steel metal pins to keep it from turning. Also the J-bar on the front mount is clamped down by three bolts. I could not get the J-bar to keep from turning no matter of much I tightened down on the bolts. I tightened down on the bolts and drilled/taped three holes in the J-bar and the frame, and installed three stainless steel bolts to keep it from turning.
Since there were only two hold down mounting points on the frame to bike, I had to drill the frame for another and fabricate a new hold down frame to bike mount using some parts from the extra mounting kit. I got the center mounting arms in an "X" that should be strong enough (I hope)
I ordered an optional trunk mounted rack. With the rack installed the truck doesn't open all the way. I ordered at extra cost a "deluxe seat" and it is just exactly like the stock seat. The paint was so bad in places or not at all I had to repaint in some places.
Here is the REAL PROBLEM. There are "two Inder sidecar Companies" There is "Inder Automotive"(Inderautos@yahoo) that has the tube frame sidecar with eight mounting positions and then there is "Inder Exports Sidecar"(Inderexports@yahoo) The Inder Automotive is the one with the good tube sidecar, but I got Inder Exports with the bar stock frame, warped floor, ripped floor, bad wheel bearing, poor paint, only rwo mounting points on the frame and many small problems. The two companies are run/owed by cousins. There is nothing on the internet showing there are two "Inder" sidecar companies. I think this a bit of a scam by one of the companies or maybe both.
"CAVEAT EMPTOR" (let the buyer beware.)
