An Exercise In Frustration

May 2 & 3, 2023


We drag the bike around to Ohira-san, a motorcycle tuner Andreas knows and admires. Guy used to race, of course, but now has a nice workshop making go-fast bits for modern machinery. 

I work on the bike for a while, and eventually Ohira takes and interest too, going through the igintion system and making the electrics work again. Japan har moved on from 6 volts systems a while ago, but Ohira manages to get the drained battery charged anyway. Bike still soots up the plugs, though, so we call it a day, returning only to pay him and handle over the bottle of Gammel Dansk, a Danish bitter schnapps that you normally have to be 5th generation Dane to fully appreciate.

Next day doesn't bring any improvement, and the bike actually runs worse than when I started. That's usually what happens when I start playing with carb settings. Ohira then tells me to take off the sidecar, so we can put the Nimbus on his dyno. A full afternoon and 15 runs later brings no improvement either, and before Andreas and Rasmus take me for dinner, I accept that this vacation may not be taken on a Nimbus after all.

(Edit: As it turned out, my fortunes changed the next day.)


The workshop's usual clientele, the guy nodding off having embarked on an odyssey of making 
some two-stroke Special work.

On the bench again, which went well when doing so in Denmark.
Here not so much....


Ohira charging the Nimbus' battery with what may be the coolest 
12/24 volt battery charger on the planet.

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