Words and drawings by Kim Scholer
Most people think of Denmark as an advanced society, which may be justified in some respects. When it comes to laws regarding modified vehicles, it is not, because here Denmark ranks somewhere in between North Korea and Burkina Faso. And when the longhaired teenager that is now middle aged me got into choppers Way Back When, it was much worse; put a 16” rear tyre on your stock Bonnie or a handlebar a fraction wider than the legal 27.6 inches, off went the license plate and you’d be walking the bike home.
Then you’d rebuild the bike to stock, rent a temporary license plate and ride to the State Inspection Station, which at the time was run like a medieval fiefdom, the boss usually being a former army officer unable to advance further up the ranks. And this bastard with failed dreams of becoming the next General Patton would, as a matter of principle, hate anyone entering his premises. This was the early 70’s and resistance was useless.
Fast-forward to the Great Nordic Rocker War (1995-97), rocket propelled grenades and all. Suddenly the police realized that there were more serious threats to society than slightly chopped bikes. Add to this a new generation of vehicle inspectors who didn’t suffer nervous breakdowns when faced with something of non-stock appearance. Sometimes they’d pass what you brought in, sometimes they'd chase you out - it was now a hit-or-miss affair.
Actually it still is, but as of four years ago the inspections have been privatized, so now we deal with private garages and car dealers, some of which can’t tell a motorcycle from a manhole cover, were it not for the fact that the former has lights. We think of this as The Golden Age.
It is, of course, all very relative, as Einstein might have pointed out. Neighbouring Sweden has great laws regarding choppers and hotrods, laws that magically ensure that the neat stuff they build also is somewhat safe to drive. In fact said laws proved to work so well that Norway and Finland eventually just copied them, and who knows, in twenty years or when pigs fly – whichever comes first - Denmark might follow suit.
Now, while some may be able to take advantage of this current ‘golden age’, I’m not amongst them. I dislike wrenching, and I’m not particularly good at it anyway. This is why it took me three years to build the Nimbus bobber this mag featured a while back, a bike most people could have built in three months or less. Instead I let my mind and my pens roam free.
An email from editor Desperate Dan of Britchopper said he’d publish my drawings, but they had to be sent within a week from when I wrote this. And I was up to my ears in other work. This happened in late February '09, at the peak of the suicide season, and I couldn’t find my hara-kiri knives. There was nothing to do but sigh and dig out the folder with old sketches.
Nimbus motorcycles have been the one constant of my life and despite frequent affairs with other brands, the Danish in-line four with the overhead cam and the exposed rocker arms is The One. So it often is my engine of choice when drawing up a new project, which does not and should not look like a Harley. Too many Harleys about.
Now don’t get me wrong; there’s four of them on my winning-the-lottery-list, and the best looking bike I ever had was a brand new XLX, which I loved dearly, even if I took to wearing a patriotic ‘Fuck price and quality – Buy American’ button every time the blasted thing was brought in for yet another warranty fix. Even the frame broke before the six month warranty expired.
Trouble is that Harleys are way too expensive, and in particular that most everybody building choppers uses them. Businesswise this makes sense, of course, witness now-defunct Orange County Choppers et al, but for creativity I long for something else. Enter the ones below which are all designed with engines costing a quarter or less of what a new American v-twin engine goes for.
As hinted above, I suffer from a bad case of Nimbusitis, but for all their inherent qualities (really nice looking engine, reliability, cheap & plentiful spares), they make a paltry 22 bhp, which is only half the fun of playing with – say - 44 bhp. Recently I took off the rear view mirror on my bobber, because seeing all those clear, mirrored MAN or IVECO logos in it became too stressful. As a result, three of the specials here have a pair or a quartet of Nimbus engines, coupled one way or another.
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