Narnia Chronicles, the fantasy movie located in Narni (Italy) leads many events in 2013 at Officine Di Matteo. One important event was the recovery of a MV Agusta 125 TR model, a perfectly working bike from 1956, with original registration number and perfect state documents. The motorbike has been bought from a country farmer far a good price. The engine was in perfect state (working at the time it was bought).
The bike was brought home in december 2013.
Three terrible questions: the handlebar, the colour and the seat
As you can see from the pictures above, the handlebar were completely different from the original model, and so was the seat. Also the colour had been completely invented by the owner, who decieded to paint it with spray vernish in a very horrible way!
Restoring the seat
The seat was not original, and was clearly from a different bike. So that’s when internet comes in help. Googling for few months (4 months) it was finally possible to recover an original seat frame for MV Agusta 125 TR. Marcello Di Matteo, brother of Claudio (the owner of Ducati Scrambler 350 Claudia), famous roman polster, got engaged by the team to reconstruct the original leather polstry.
Recovering the colours
The decision wheather or not to reproduce the correct MV Agusta 125 TR color (completely red), or if to paint it half red and half cream, was hard to take. At one side, the wish to recreate the original color, at the other side, the chanches to introduce a new hybrid color mix in the Officine Di Matteo restoring processes.
Getting a correct MV Agusta 125 TR handlebar
Finding the original handlebar would have not be so complicated.