Having come to the conclusion that auto jumbles are dangerous places for me to be I decided to stay well clear for at least a couple of weeks. This strategy was working beautifully until Dave Street popped round to see if I had a coil for a vintage Honda he was working on. While he was here he told me of a 1934 French creation that he had acquired and had been unable to get running. This was clearly a ploy as everybody knows how I can't resist buying stuff that doesn't work.
it's definitely one of those bikes that has the right look, it's pre-war so can be used in all sorts of competitions and displays and appeared to be more or less complete. Legend has it that is was used in a circus, I have no idea if that is true but it would definitely explain the unusual colour scheme.
The bike is very rare, my searches so far have only turned up two other examples -- one in France and one in Italy, I would imagine that only a handful survive, finding numbers has not proved to be easy but I do have quite a few other sources to plough through yet.
I couldn't resist having a proper look at it, the reason for the non running showed itself pretty quickly - there was a good spark and fairly good compression but the only way I could get any life out of it was by squirting fuel directly in to the combustion chamber. I took the carb apart and soon realised that there was a rather vital part missing. On a modern bike that's no big deal but on a bike that was last built 90 years ago it's a bit more of a challenge. I found an old French parts manual that says the part is called the gicleur, google advises me that this translates to sprinkler. That kind of makes sense given it's apparent function, it's a weird arrangement that I have never seen before. I have phoned a few places but not got anywhere yet. I can bung a Chinese carb on there for testing, one can be had brand new for as little as a tenner. I have a few ideas as to how I can make the one I have work even if I can't find the correct part. In the mean time I will tidy it up with a view to passing it on.
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