The rubber band mounts on our Cozy sidecar needed replacement, so googled it up and found this posted on the Classic Motorworks forum: Replacing the rubber bands on a cozy sidecar (
https://forum.classicmotorworks.com/index.php?topic=16577.0)
Tried to follow their method, but after removing the old bands and installing new ones on the one side, couldn't get any aligned on the other. As luck would have my neighbor stopped by, took one look and said "that ain't gonna work, ya need to remove the sidecar body." Well that didn't sound too good to me, but six bolts later, he had the back of the body loose. The front pivots on a cross piece, so didn't need to be disturbed. We tied a ratchet strap to the luggage rack, then to the garage door mechanism and lifted it up. It's real light so could've just as easily lifted it by hand and tied it up with a rope.
With the brackets exposed, it was easy to take a second ratchet strap and pull the bracket over to mount the other side rubber bands. Then just use two screwdrivers to align everything and slide the bolts into the brackets. It's a lot easier with two people, the third hand fits the bolt while the other two hold positioning with the screwdrivers.
So all in all it wasn't terribly hard once we figured it out, but I still think it's the stupidest suspension system I've ever seen. And then came the best part: after we were finished, I noticed one of the new bands was starting to split, it hadn't lasted more than a few minutes. Fortunately two of the old ones were still good, so replaced it with one of those. Makes you feel real confident in the new parts.
Pictures and text posted at:
http://smilesfromnowherre.blogspot.com/2016/05/rubber-buggy-bumpers.html