When you hear the familiar potato-potato exhaust report of a high-performance American V-twin popping toward you on the street, you expect to see an old Harley with a millionaire dentist in blue collar cosplay. The gap between your expectations and the reality of this Russian hot rodder storming the streets in a self-propelled vintage Ural sidecar could not be farther apart. This machine — dubbed the “Siderod” — was built by Mad Badger Garage, and it somehow took more than two years to show up in my social media feeds.
Sometimes I come across interesting things on the internet, and share them here with you. Maybe you’ve seen them, maybe you haven’t, but either way, hopefully you find them entertaining.
If you want to do a deep dive into what makes this thing tick, thankfully the Mad Badger Garage Instagram account still has hundreds of stories archived documenting the build’s progress. This little machine required the addition of suspension and steering, which appear Volkswagen Beetle-based and rudimentary at best, plus a complete drivetrain system. I love watching these videos, as it uncovers some interesting things about the Siderod, like how the battery tray needed to be elevated to straddle the solid rear axle in the back compartment. The little moon tank to the driver’s left, which looks like it should hold the fuel, actually holds all of the electronics from the donor bike, used to run the engine.
Some of the development of this machine was done by Ural, as it still uses the original rear driveshaft that drove the sidecar’s original single outside wheel, though now it receives power not from a separate motorcycle, but from a chain and sprocket isolated on a flex-disc giubo (which is pronounced djyoo-bow, not gwee-bow; I will die on this hill) connected at the other end to a hopped up V-twin and five-speed transmission.
It seems that Mad Badger has already long sold this contraption, as it was listed for sale some 30 months ago. Alas, I’ll just have to build my own.