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Meyers Aircraft

Here’s some information uncovered by Jay H. I think this is typical for sidecar manufacturers to have different frames while using the same body. Thanks for sharing this information.

The black frame is my current rig, it came off Glenn Reid’s Series 2 Lambretta TV175 and can be seen attached to my VBB in the Smallstate pictures on scoot.net. The other rig I just got from Chris Ramsey, I traded him my ‘55 Allstate for it.

Philippe Devant was eyeballing my rig at Smallstate and noticed that the sidecar tire was way too far back in relation to the scooter’s rear tire, in fact it trailed the scooter’s rear tire. He pointed out that it should be in front of the scooter tire by a certain amount. I figured the difference must be in the sidecar’s swinging arm since this frame came off a Lambretta. Turns out that’s true, but only by a couple of inches - Vespa rig trailing arm is only 2″ shorter than the Lambretta rig’s. But check out the major difference in the main frame tube, the Lambretta’s has a huge offset compared to the Vespa. Since the Lambretta rig came with a mount that attaches to the Lammy floorboard outriggers, and I’m guessing is farther forward than the typical “tube clamp” type of mount, this must account for the overall length working perfecly for a Series 2 scoot but being totally wrong for a Vespa.

So there ya go. Neat stuff to know.

Oh, and both bodies are identical. I believe they’re both manufactured by Meyers Aircraft, I asked John Gerber and he thought they were the only company making them back then in the States. So I’m assuming that Meyers made the Harley Topper rigs as well as all the Vespa & Lammys, just changing the shape of the main tube & trailing arm length as needed for each brand. Check out the Harley diagram on Scott’s site, the body is identical to the others, and the main part of the rig frame is the same as in my photo. What do you guys think?

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