1952 Type C Nimbus Motorcycle

By Jeppe Sorensen
Published on April 18, 2008
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by Jeppe Sorensen

Danish citizen Kim Scholer has owned and ridden Nimbuses for most of his life. “It’s like a virus I’ll never get rid of, in spite of frequent affairs with other brands,” he says. So one day he decided, why not a Nimbus bobber?

Kim explains: “Nimbuses are common as dirt here in Denmark, so the local vintage bike community doesn’t care much for them. Besides, they are too reliable, too easy to fix, parts are too cheap and too easy to find, and thus they’re completely missing that essential masochistic element so dear to most old-bike enthusiasts.

“But I’m a lousy mechanic, I ride a lot, and new bikes just don’t cut it for me. So a Nimbus it had to be. When the bobber style came back some years ago, I thought I’d go with it. A Nimbus bobber would almost be legal here, and in any case, leaving it all to the Harleys and the Indians just didn’t seem right.”

Different by design

Kim’s first step was to draw and redraw the project dozens of times. He found the process to be tricky with the Nimbus, finding often that by changing one thing, eight other things suddenly looked wrong.

But he kept on, tracking down needed parts and modifying where necessary — most notably the stock front fork, which was cut down 8 centimeters (about 3 inches) and its plate-type handlebar replaced with a motocross-type one. This was originally meant to be an interim solution, so Kim would know exactly how to bend the Harley-Davidson WLA-type bars he planned to add. But the motocross bars grew on him, so he plans to keep it that way.

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