Dave Nourish
It is with sadness that we learned of the death of legendary engineer, Dave Nourish, on October 18, 2021. If you’ve ever owned a Triumph and Norton then you will know his name, but his career involved so much more. It began in 1949 as a teenager, racing a ‘cammy’ Velocette and even a BSA Gold Star in the Isle of Man TT. But it was in grasstrack he excelled, winning the 1963 British Sidecar Grasstrack Championship.
Using the experience he had gained over the years, he set up his own small engineering business and undertook work for Weslake. This led to Dave tuning the speedway bike of a certain Peter Collins, although Dave always reckoned it was down to the fact he was simply the closest Weslake agent to Peter’s home. It was a typical modest response but Collins went on to win the 1976 World Speedway Championship, beating the Weslake works engine machines.
When Weslake couldn’t afford the tooling to finish its four-valve single cylinder engine (an engine which, incidentally, Dave had suggested would be a logical step for the company), Dave took over, borrowing from the bank to get production up and running and eventually was dealing with up to 10 engines a week. For a long time, Dave Nourish was world speedway.
Weslake then asked him to develop and build the eight-valve twins primarily intended for sidecar motocross but used in virtually all race applications, including a bike of which OBM is rather fond, John Hobbs’ Hobbit.
At the age of 82, Dave decided to retire and Nourish Race Engines was taken over and renamed by a Kent businessman in what proved to be an unhappy episode. But Dave didn’t quite get the grasp of retirement and continued to be as busy as ever. Even well into his 80s he would machine and balance parts himself, assemble and test engines and sponsor riders. He would spend hours talking to people and was generous with the vast amount of knowledge he had gained. His only regret was that, in an age dominated by CNC machining, there was no one to whom he could pass on that knowledge. But he will live on in the many, many motorcycles out there on which he breathed his magic. To his family and friends, we send our condolences.