With the body out of the way it’s easy to get to the sidecar’s mount points.

There are 4 of these, the two upper being clevis joints and the two lower are ball and socket clamps.

Once the top braces are removed the chassis will try to fold up towards the bike so first thing is to put the bike onto its centre stand for the first time in years.

I’m making all this sound easy, well there’s none of it particularly difficult but when you’re working on your own and have to manhandle the bike around it raises problems.

To make moving the bike around easier I’ve got one of those wheeled platform dollies that go under the centre stand so the bike can be moved around in any direction, I’ve just to get it under the stand, a pig of a job because the bike is on smaller diameter wheels than when it was a solo and so it’s not only a higher lift to get it onto the stand but the roll-on action only comes into effect once the rear wheel is around 2 inches clear of the ground, before that it’s a deadweight lift.

I’ve come up with a cunning plan to help with this.

I put a length of 2 x 4 timber on the ground behind the rear wheel with another length on top of it but stepped back so there were two 2 inch steps.

I then backed the bike back onto these and then I could lower the stand.

Unfortunately while there was enough height to lower the stand it wasn’t enough to slide the dolly under.

So it was a case of moving one of the 2 x 4’s to between the bike and sidecar, digging out the scissor jack from the sidecar boot and using that under the rear sidecar mount and at maximum lift I just managed to slide the dolly under the legs of the stand.

It’s now standing on the front wheel, the sidecar wheel and canted onto one leg of the stand but once the top brace fittings are removed it drops over onto both legs of the stand.

Both lower mounts have a drawbar to close the socket jaws onto the ball so it’s loosen this off, and then it’s twelve full turns to get the jaws wide enough to clear the balls before the chassis can be lifted away.

Well that’s assuming the jaws will open, one pair wouldn’t until given some “percussive maintenance” with a 2lb hammer!

Now, the aim of this job is to repaint the rear sub-frame so what’s in the way?.

First of these is the silencers, so off they come, they’re stainless steel, bought back in the late 1970’s and all they need is a clean and buff up, well worth the money they cost!.

Next off is the rear wheel.

When I took the rear wheel out I noticed that the tyre tread was down to just above the wear bars, so that means I’ll need a new rear tyre while I’m at it. This raises a neat point though.

The rear tyre is a 15 inch car type so it’s wear bars are set for car use, but the wear bars on a bike tyre are set lower, 1.6mm for a car but at only 1.0mm for a bike. I’ve no desire to try to argue the point with either the police or the insurance however so there’s a new tyre on the list now.

I’m going to go the whole hog here and remove the rear swinging fork as well, Think Big!.

To do this means splitting the shaft at the gearbox coupling, just undo the rubber boot and undo four twelve-point headed bolts and that’s done.

But first the rear mudguard has to come off , only hassle here is the electrical connections, I’ll look to improving these while I’m at it, while BMW themselves used a choccy block connector on the /2 models that this combo is based on, I’m going to change it to a multi-connector and tidy up the wiring.

Then you undo the suspension units, unscrew the pivot bolts and the whole thing lifts away.

All that’s left to do now is remove the seat and tank so they don’t get damaged and I’m ready to start stripping off what’s left of the old paint, a wire brush in the angle-grinder will make short work of that!