Other Bikes » Nimbus motorcycle

I saw my first running Nimbus today. I think it is a 1950's era model. It really sounded sweet with a very distinctive sound. Photos attached.

Here is a 30-second video showing a Nimbus idling. Kind of interesting to watch. I sounds and looks just like the one that I saw today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR13KFvLhSc&feature=youtu.be

I had not heard of the Nimbus (apart from the Mitsubishi people carrier I bought 30 years ago).

I also followed up on Richard230's posting about the Rover motorcycle, which you got when you went to the Revzilla website.

It is easy to see why bikes, before Honda and Japan Inc (perhaps excluding BMW) were such high maintenance machines. It is just not possible to maintain accuracy as we now expect it to be, with the tools and technology of the time.

I remember reading, and it may have been in one of Phil Irving's books, where the idea of a 4 valve head was dismissed due to the difficulty in maintaining tolerances.

Seeing a video on the making of the Nimbus (from the Nimbus site) is much the same as the Rover and it is obvious to me that maintaining very high tolerances would be difficult.

As it happened, I saw a YouTube vid from Harley Davidson in the making of the Milwaukee 8. Even that factory maintains a modern environment and I suspect that their motors will be far superior to what was made in the late 60's when I started riding.