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Some of history’s earliest adventure motorcy-clists weren’t riding to blog their journeys, but to dodge bullets and land mines through

wars in the far corners of the world. Thankfully those global conflicts are over, but the motorcycle tradition still lives on today inspired by an over-70-year-old design BMW manufactured during WWII, called the R71/75 750cc sidecar. Adventure Mo-torcycle got a chance to catch up with Jim Bryant from Beijing who has not only completed several trans- continental sidecar journeys, but is also a highly qualified authority on the restoration and customization of classic BMW sidecars.

ADVENTURE MOTORCYCLE: When and where did you start riding? Were there any influential people who helped you get started or inspired you?

JIM BRYANT: I’ve only been riding about 12 years. The first motorcycle I bought was a Chang Jiang in 1995. But before I ever got to ride it, it was stolen. Then on my birthday in 1997 my wife bought me a brand new Chang Jiang 750 and I’ve been hooked ever since. The motor in that bike blew up within the first week of ownership, and I swapped it out for an OHV motor. Then I had the heads ported and polished, and finally decked twice.

Adventure Time MachinesSidecars of the Past are Better than Ever TodayWords by Carl Parker, Photos by Jim Bryant

AM: Much of the fun of motorcycling is in the leaning a rider gets from the two wheeled, single track orientation of the machine. What, in your opinion is the most compelling reason for a person to own and ride a sidecar?

JB: I learned how to ride on a Chang Jiang side-car so, unlike many, I had to learn how to go from 3 wheels to two wheels rather than the other way around. But you still get the wind in your face;

the temperature differences, the smells, and sounds with either form of motorcycle. With a sidecar motorcycle you never have to leave your family be-hind. When you go out for a ride and you develop a different set of muscles when riding a sidecar bike.

AM: That’s interesting! How are muscles used in sidecar riding different from a standard motorcy-cle? I would initially think you’d use fewer muscle groups riding a side a car.

JB: You use quite a bit of upper body strength when riding a sidecar rig. Instead of leaning the bike you have to actually muscle it to get it to turn. The sidecar bike naturally wants to go straight and you have to lever the bars to turn unlike a 2 wheeled bike which requires very little turning of the handlebars. New riders always say their upper arms and shoulders are sore after their first few rides.

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AM: You took a world ride on a 69’ BMW R69S with a Jawa sidecar. What was your route and what were some of the most memorable moments of that trip?

JB: I rode the circumference of the U.S. in the summer of 2004 - all on back roads. That was a warm-up for the next step of my ride from Europe to Beijing. A year later I shipped my bike to Ger-many and rode it from the Isle of Man TT race to Beijing. Going through Europe was relaxing, and it started to get really interesting from the Eastern border of Germany all the way to Beijing.

I have been invited in by complete strangers for food and a place to stay and then threatened by a crooked cop. I got to spend some time at the Moscow Bike fest and then spent over 3 weeks trying to cross Mongolia which is more like trying to cross the moon. I was arrested in Mongolia and had a drunken soldier with a loaded AK-47 threaten to shoot me on the spot.

AM: You have a long and impressive history with sidecars but your current specialty is the classic BMW R71 and its derivatives. What initially attracted you to the classic BMW side-cars?

JB: What attracted me was the look of the Chang Jiang 750 which is built on BMW R71 tooling. I think it is still one of the most beautiful motor-cycles ever built. The problem I had on my first bike was the unreliability of the motor. So after trying to improve first the 24 HP flathead motor and then the 32 HP OHV motor, I gave up and mounted an early 1970s BMW R75/5 motor into my bike. It worked out so well that I started get-ting requests from other owners for the same. So

in late 2005 I started a shop with my old friend Kang Jian Chao and we opened Jimbo’s Classic Sidecars, specializing in BMW conversions to the Chang Jiang 750 motorcycle. To date we’ve built over 90 of them.

AM: The R71 model then began to appear from different countries and were copied by Russia with the Ural and the Chinese with the Chang Jiang (CJ) 750? Can you give us a brief history of how this happened?

JB: If you ask 10 people you will get 10 differ-ent theories. My version, which I’ve heard from older friends, is that BMW transferred the design and tooling to Russia in 1939. That same tool-ing was then transferred to the Chinese in 1957. And the Chinese have been building them ever since. I did get a look at the factory’s blueprints back in the late 1990s and the plans were written in German, Russian, and Chinese. The Russians dropped the plunger frame (from the R71) and went to a more modern swing-arm frame around

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the 1950s. The Russians also developed the 2WD, swing arm frame, and the 650cc OHV motor but because of their poor metallurgy, the bikes were very prone to catastrophic failures. The tooling that the Russians sent to China was still true to the original R71 which had the plunger frame and flathead motor. The Chinese eventually upgraded the bikes with a reverse gear transmission and developed their own swing-arm frame and OHV (750cc) motors. The most recent Russian Urals have finally gotten back up to 750cc and have improved their quality control by using imported components from Europe.

AM: Why did you choose to settle your side-car business and life in Beijing, China? Are there lots of sidecar riders in China?

JB: I fell in love with the country back in 1981 when I first came to China to establish shoe manu-facturing plants. After selling that business in 1995, I started the Subway Sandwich chain in Chi-na. In 2005 I sold that business with the thought of retiring. But after I returned home from my round-the-world ride I found I couldn’t sit at home, and with lots of encouragement from my wife, I went out to start a third business here and that’s when I turned my hobby into a business. There are prob-ably more sidecar bikes in China than anywhere else on earth. The factory in China churned out up to 30,000 units per year from the early 1960s up until 2000.

AM: I remember riding once with a CJ750 rider in China and it seemed that every 40-50kms or so he had to stop and bolt, jiggle or reattach something back on to the bike. How do people manage such long distance travel on these bikes?

JB: Yes, I remember that being the case years ago. We used to ride just from Shunyi to Miyun and back and it was rare that at least one bike didn’t come back on the end of a tow rope. But with all the small shops making improvements in the bikes, and especially with the BMW motors, that is a distant memory. For example twice this year I rode with a group of riders from Beijing

to Shandong and back. Last year I rode twice to southern Anhui and back, all with no break-downs. Breakdowns are becoming a thing of the past now.

AM: Of all the sidecar projects you’ve worked on, what was one of your favorite or most outstanding projects?

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JB: We’re building 2 bikes right now that are fast becoming 2 of my favorites. One is a P51 Mustang Tribute bike. The rear of the sidecar has a big humped bulkhead; the bike is being painted a satin chrome to elicit the memories of the all aluminum P51. The other bike which we’re presently working on is a Dover White (think cream color) bike with real BMW R60/2 fend-ers. I’m thinking about reproducing these fenders for future builds.

AM: If you wanted to own and run one of the classic models, do they have to buy an antique or are they still produced new? What’s the easiest way to purchase one and how much can someone expect to pay to have one in their garage?

JB: Unfortunately the factory stopped mass production of these bikes back in 2000. However, because there were liter-ally millions of these bikes manufactured over its lifespan, there are plenty of good condition bikes available. We buy up old military surplus bikes, strip them down to the bare frame and rebuild them from the ground up. Our bikes start at $4995 US (Chinese powered) and go up to $7995 US for a BMW-powered bike. It nor-mally takes 30 days to build a bike and another 30-45 days for shipping. Because we use only 1960s and 1970s bikes to start out with (rebuilding and restor-ing) the bikes are exempt from TUV and EPA regulations. We’re happy to take questions and orders over the internet at www.bmwsidecar.com.