She's been working pretty hard lately, its now showing on the temp guage too on long climbs.  The Lake Cargellico trip towing the trailer was possibly the last straw.

She's now displaying a good puff of smoke on starting and not running on all four when she starts either.  It does settle in into smooth all fours quickly enough.  All this coupled with the thirst she's been displaying lately means I will have to dig deeper.  Compression test first I suppose, I'm lucky to have an internal inspection camera too (from Aldi), maybe tomorrow if the Holdens look they have a hold of the race at Bathurst.

Thankfully I have a spare 1100 motor sitting in the garage to either fit or supply some parts, I'll have to give it the attention it deserves first before starting to strip the sidecar again though.  Even swapping a cylinder head means complete sidecar and sidecar subframe removal because I can't get the exhaust out otherwise.

I think the sidecar will get ridden for short hops only for a while and for the moment i cant see when I'm going to get the time to strip and rebuild it.  Looks like she rests for a while now.

Al

Is it using any coolant because the dropping a cylinder at start up is often because of coolant in the cylinder and so is a puff of very white smoke.

Not losing a drop Rick.  Not even spitting it out the coolant reservoir when the temp needle was buried in the red climbing My Victoria. No water in the oil, no oil in the water.  Definitely lost power though.

Thinking on it now, i think what I have to do is pretty clear.

The spare 1100 engine I have has done around 80odd k-ish, the PO hadn't had a big bike before and unnecessarily downshifted a couple of gears to overtake.  This caused a thumping noise in the engine (which I've never heard myself). A car mechanic using a stethoscope narrowed it down to right side high on the bell housing.  The theory is the cush drive on the output shaft has gone.  

All of that is fine on my current engine(which to be honest has been suspect since day one, after needing 13 shims in the head and the near new rear tyre being flat all the way round from "the boys" at the wrecker doing burnouts (my guess). It's never been a quiet motor either.  Been using a fair bit more fuel lately than it did after it was initially fitted

1- I have to strip the spare down to locate any damaged parts before doing anything to the bike.

2- Strip the sidecar down again for another swap.

Al

I have an 1100 block with crank and pistons if you need them for an engine rebuild before you tear the bike apart, you can have them so long as you promise not to bring them back.
Or I notice Graeme jays has a K1200RS engine for sale.