The deal included many pieces: the engine, the seat, the main frame, the tank, the mudguards. Many other parts were missing.

The wheels

The wheels were found in a little old fashion market event by Roberto De Santis, payed 100,00 EUR for the coupple. The wheel state was perfect aboyt mechanics, but not good about the polish and the look. Two were the chanches: buying new parts or restoring the original ones just bought at the market. Restoring a Ducati Scrambler wheel is not so easy. It takes experience, skill and lots of patience. Just a few people are reknown to be able to restore cars and bike wheels in the Rome area. One of this is Mrs. Adriana, a great mechanic lady who runs a very special business with her husband, Vincenzo Battaglia, reknown 74 years old motorbike runner, who still partecipates to monthly competitions all over Italy, on his 1939 Guzzi Condor bike.

We decided to leave the wheels to Mrs. Adriana, who would have made the wheels band new for 200,00 EUR each.
In the pictures you can see Mr. Roberto De Santis, Mr. Brando (who sold the bike to Officine Di Matteo), and Mrs. Adriana, talking about the job to do.

The Engine

Another reason for going to Adriana’s house was to collect the Ducati Scambler’s Engine, that had been completely disassembled and re-assembled by her husband Vincenzo Battaglia.

Some parts of the engine were to be completely replaced due to it’s usage. It’s most likely that this has been one of the latest (if not THE latest) engine jobs of his life. The Engine was then stored at Roberto De Santis’s Garage, waiting for the rest of the bike to be re-assembled on the bike frame.

The rest of the Bike

In the meantime, the restoring process of the bike required a place where to re-assemble the bike. Due to overload of bikes at Officine Di Matteo, the Ducati Scrambler was took at Alex Racing Garage, in Circonvallazione Ostiense (Rome), where all the pieces had been assembled. Now the frame is up, exception made for the wheels and the engine. All the rest of the missing pieces are now known and the research for the original bits could begin.

As you can see, the bike had all cromium parts, ready to apply paint on it (on both mudguard and on the tank). The former owner had put yellow stickers on it that could now easily be removed.

The Restoration proceeds: the Tank

The tank was already in a perfect state, with 3 thik layers of great cromium coverage. The colour layer was not applied to the tank yet, and would have been soon.

A part from this detail, the tank had had only the cap missing, so were the Ducati Badges. During the restoration process of Ducati Scrambler 350 “Claudia” model, some original pieces were found in Mr. Flavoni’s Garage. A perfect state coupple of original ducati wings were found and brought home. This two wings are now attached on the Phoenix Ducati Scrambler’s Tank.

What about the cap? The truth is that the original cap is very hard to find. Many ebay sellers offer new replicas that look identical to the old original one. The truth is that we cannot restore a perfect bike if it has not “JUST” original pieces.

That’s when Gianni from Modena came in help, providing Officine Di Matteo’s Team a rare perfect original tank cap from years ’70. Gianni is a great Ducati Scambler restore expert, and in many cases we have dealed toghether exchanging original pieces to recreate perfect models.

Completing the wheels

Mr.s Adriana, after 1 month of wheels, delievered two perfect Ducati Scrambler wheels, bright and clean with new rays and with a perfect polish. Once again her knowledge was usefull to Di Matteo’s Team to restore one of the most important parts of the motorbyke.

The job was made in a perfect way. Once again Mr.s Adriana has done the job in the same perfect expected way!

The Ducati frame restoration

The motorbike is now completely ready, exception made for the engine, that will be restored in the very end. All the pieces are toghether and the bike can be unmounted and separated in pieces, in order to free the frame, wich will be unvernished and painted. Order is very important to split the bike in pieces keeping all of it’s parts separated and organized, to help and make sure that the rebuilding of the bike will be done in a perfect way.

Extracting the frame is easy. We have prefered to leave this job to the Alex Racing Team, who holded the bike du to our overload of motorbikes in our garage. Each single tiny bit has been numbered and put back in the Ducati Scrambler parts boxes.

We have extracted the frame and brought to our garage, where in the backgarden has been brushed and unvernished by hand (not sanded because sand machine can be very risky to clean some delicate parts of the frame).

Unvernishing by hand gave us the chanche to analyze any bit and part of the frame, checking the good state of each part, and using a brushing drill to remove any deep rusty coverage. We were very lucky. This frame was simply perfect, with just a little bit of rust below the battery holder (wich is quite normal). The unvernishing was made by 3M scotch bright disks, that can remove easily the paint without being aggressive with the iron.

The disks are special and very expensive. This disks must not be used on alluminium parts, that can be easily destroyed by the rotating blade. To brush or polish alluminium, different products must be used. In this case there is no worry because the frame of the Ducati Scrambler is fully realized with iron. This disk must be used without pressing it against the iron. This way it will last a lot longer (also 4 times more than pressing it hard on the iron).

The drill has been used with the brushes shown below, to reach the spots that the main rotating disk cannot reach.

Also the iron air filter box can be unvernished by using the two items (blade for main clean-up and drill for details).

Once cleaned up all of the iron pieces, the frame must be painted with the anti-rust base paing, to avoid rust appearing. Many people infact do not knot that if the pure iron gets in contact with damp or humid air (or even worse, with rain), the rust will appear all over the part in less than 2 days. In this cases, a new complete brushing will be required. It’s better to avoid waiting, because new rust can be very aggressive and invisible and coult turn up re-painting process into a nightmare. This is the reason why just 2 hours after unvernish, the frame and the air filter, were painted with grey base paint rust killer.

Now we can wait as much as we want to paint the frame with 3 bright black original Ducati Scrambler color paint.

To be continued…

History and Owners

Claudia is the first Ducati Scrambler ever connected to Officine Di Matteo and it’s where it all began. Registrated as “Roma 321235″ ni 1972 with as a Telaio Number 354503, was originally bought by Dottor Armando Maggiori, in date 31/12/2972 in Velletri (Rome) from Luciano Sambucci motors.

In date Juy 10 1975 the motorbike, in a perfect state was sold for 200.000 Lire (about nowadays 100,00 EUR) to a new happy buyer, Mr. Claudio Di Matteo, a man who run a polster company “Fratelli Di Matteo” (Di Matteo’s Brothers, Claudio and Marcello) in the navy italian industry. The Ducati Scrambler was used at first during the weekend trips for the first years of possession. At 1977 Claudio’s firs son, Fabio was given birth and Claudio decieded not tu run the Scrambler anymore. The Ducati Scrambler was covered with a special plastic transparent envelopement and stored in a backgarden, protected from the sunrays, until year 1999, when a friend of Mr. Claudio Di Matteo, named Franco Flavoni, saw the motorbike and started pressing for Claudio to sell it to him.

Although the bike was in a good state, Claudio decided to sell it to his friend, who would have better took care of the precious model. The bike was sold for just 1.000.000 Lire (about 500,00 EUR). The small price was due to the fact that the bike had a good state, but a bad documents situation.

In those years a particular law was operative: after 5 years of non paied government taxes, the vehicle would have been ereased from the state vehicle registration databases, making impossible for the Ducati Scrambler to run on the road again with the same registration number.

After 5 years a new registration number would have been necessary. This also meant that the motorbike should have followed the new rules about re-introduction to a new registration, like to add extra arrow safety lights, which would have drammatically changed the motorbike look, loosing it’s original shape.

The new owner, Franco Flavoni, as the motorbike was completely unusable on the road, thought of keeping it without using it, except from turning the engine on every few months. He also decieded not to apply for a new registration, thinking that would have been better to keep it as it was originally, also if this ment that would have been “jailed” in the garage, where in facts, it stayed until november 2013.

Claudio Di Matteo, although Franco Flavoni bought his Ducati Scrambler, decieded not to give him the plastic registration number, due to no real appearent reason. The registration, RM 321235 has been lost in the family backgarden garage.

In march 2005, Claudio Di Matteo died at the age of 62.

On November 13 2013, Fabio Di Matteo, Claudio Di Matteo’s son, who was already in the Ducati Scrambler recovery industry, decided to try to rescue the motorbike, starting a very long number of phone calls to reconstruct the owners path. Claudio’s Family had no idea about the name of Claudio’s Friend, and all chanches to find his name were in appearence gone since Claudio had passed away.

Finally, with the help of a friend family Lawyer Giuseppe Marzano, he found the contact of the man his father sold the Ducati to.

Fabio contacted immediatly Mr. Flavoni, hoping that he still had the original motorbike. The chanches to find the Ducati Scrambler “alive” were very few. Normally, over 12 years of time, the chanches of having the motorbike sold again from Mr. Flavoni to somebody else, were very high.

Also, Fabio knew from his father storytelling that Mr. Flavoni had already other Ducati Scrambler Bikes in his garage. Fabio was aware of the risk that Mr. Flavoni had bought his father’s bike to use it’s parts to reconstruct his personal bikes, so the chanches of finding the Old Family Scrambler intact, were very very few.

What better way to find out than calling Mr. Franco Flavoni?

F.F.: “I still have it. It’s in my garage, and it is exactly like your father gave it to me. Not a single change has been applied to the bike since i got it.”
F.D.M.: “Wow, that’s incredible. Are you interested in selling it back to me?”
F.F.: “Yes, I think i could. I have got 2 other Ducati Scrambler so i think I can let it go, but there is a problem. The bike has no registration number, no documents, and it’s been kicked out of the government registration database, so it’s not usable. It works. I turn it on often. The engine is perfect. Your father, gave it to me, but when I went in his house to load id on my lorry it had no registration on it and no document were available for me. Your father had took the registration off, and he would not tell me the reason. And also, there is another big problem… I promised it to another person in August, but he has not come to pick it up yet”.
F.D.M.: “August? Could you not consider it too late to come to pick it up? Come on, sell it to me! It’s my daddy’s!”
F.F.: “I’m a person of honour, and I cannot behave differently from what I have promised. So I cannot sell it to you untill I get in touch with this person who told me he was interested”.
F.D.M.: “Please, it’s my father’s bike and you knew him very well. Don’t let it go anywhere else”.
F.F.: “I told you, i cannot do it. Let me contact this person and I will see what’s the story”.
F.D.M.: “But anyway, in case you could sell it to me, what would be the selling price?”.
F.F.: “I think i could give it to you for 1.500,00 EUR”.
So that’s the end of the phone calls. Two main things should have been considered.

1) the price was completely undervalued, because even though the bike was out of the office database, the famous italian law that would consider the bike unusable had changed in 2008. Now, would have been very simple to go to the governement office to re-activate the original registration number, keeping it alive as it was before having been been erased due to no tax payed. The market price for a Ducati Scrambler loaded with original pieces in every part of it’s body is about 7.000,00 EUR if in good state. I well remember the bike. It was simply perfect, a part from one detail: our dog, Tom, had distroyed the rubber from the one of the pedals, bite after bite. Small detail that could have been fixed without problems.

2) if the other interested buyer would have known this, or if he was really interested to the Scrambler, the bike would have disapeared again from Fabio’s life right in the moment he was so close to it.

Three long days passed by, and 2 different phone calls to Mr. Flavoni were made. No news.

That’s when Lawyer Giuseppe Marzano came to help Fabio. He phoned his friend Mr. Flavoni, and convinced him to skip the other seller.

On November 16 2013 the final phonecall:

F.D.M.: “Mr. Flavoni?”
F.F.: “Yes, it’s yours! Come tomorrow to pick it up”.
F.D.M.: “Perfect, see you tomorrow. Do you accept a cheque?”
F.F.: “Yes”.

The deal was done.

Sunday 17 november 2013 – The Recovery

Fabio Di Matteo, Mr. Roberto De Santis,  and Gianni loaded long ropes on the pickup and drove up to Monteverde area in Rome (Viale Trastevere) to recovery THE BIKE, and finally parked the van in front of Mr. Flavoni’ garage. There it was, resting beside other old fashion motorbikes from every part of the world belonging to Mr. Flavoni. The only one without registration number on it was Claudio’s Bike. The bike was then brougth in Gianni’s Van and shipped to the Roberto De Santis’s garage for a detailed checkup and some ritual pictures. The following shot is about Gianni opening the Van.

The following pictures show the state of the Ducati Scrambler after over 40 years of life. The Bike was not in perfect state. The years have contributed to it’s rusty process. As you can see, the bike was secured in the Van during the transportation with strong ropes. The oil tank Cap was covered with superficial Rust. The most important thing was to recover the original Daddy’s Scrambler. It was time now to bring it back alive!

The Restoration

To be continued…