The Ducati Scrambler 350 Phoenix Model (one of the Seven Sisters)

This project is about restoration of a particular Ducati Scrambler. It’s about a completely distroyed Ducati Scrambler, recovered from Mr. Brando’s garage, an old friend of Mr. Roberto De Santis. The bike was bought from Fabio and Roberto at special price of 500,00 EUR.

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.

separazionecasa-di-adriana ruota-e-mozzo-ducati-scrambler-phoenix ruota-posteriore-ducati-scrambler-350-da-restaurare ruote-scrambler-phoenix-distrutte-da-restaurare signora-adriana-brando-roberto-e-ruota-scrambler signora-adriana-e-ruota-scrambler foto-vincenzo-battaglia guzzi-condor-vincenzo-battagliaseparazione

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.

separazioneducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-forcella ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-parafango-anteriore ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-profilo ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-profilo-2 ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-1 ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-2 ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-ammortizzatore-destro ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-ammortizzatore-sinistro ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-forcella ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-forcella-alto ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-interno ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-manopola ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-parafango-posteriore ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-sella ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-serbatoio-2 ducati-scrambler-350-phoenix-da-restaurare-telaio-serbatoio-3separazione

 

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.

restore-wheels-ducati-scrambler-350-before-and-after

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

separazionesignora-adriana-brando-roberto-e-ruota-scrambler restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-5 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-7 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-1 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-4 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-3 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-8 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-12 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-11 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-14 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-10 restauro-cerchi-ducati-scrambler-2separazione

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.

separazionesverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati-posteriore sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati-visuale sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati-sella sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati-dettagli frullino-sverniciatura-moto-ducati-telaio-dischi-3m sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati-asse disco-frullino-sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducati interno-disco-frullino-sverniciatura-telaio-moto-ducatiseparazione

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).

separazionerestauro-ducati-spazzola-trapano-per-sverniciatura restauro-ducati-spazzola-trapano-per-sverniciatura-confezione filtro-aria-ducati-350-scrambler-da-sverniciare filtro-aria-ducati-350-scrambler-sverniciatoseparazione

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.

separazionetelaio-ducati-scrambler-sverniciato-cromature-protette telaio-ducati-scrambler-sverniciato-e-preparato-cavalletto telaio-ducati-scrambler-sverniciato-e-preparato-completo telaio-ducati-scrambler-sverniciato-e-preparato-filtroseparazione

To be continued…

Lascia un Commento

L'indirizzo email non verrà pubblicato. I campi obbligatori sono contrassegnati *

È possibile utilizzare questi tag ed attributi XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Current month ye@r day *