A little while back I bought a 1934 Magnat Debon. The previous owner had stripped the tank, changed the levers, cables and fitted a villers carb in place of the original. Then his head was turned by the charms of a Norton and it came to me. The idea was to get it into regular running fettle and use it for the odd potter about.
Looking it over I found a couple of sheets of paper wedged into the back of the tool box. They are a copy of a travel permit for a grain merchant near Orleans to use the bike between August and the 31st December 1944. A proper piece of history, a bloke going about his business during WWII, and through the Battle of the Bulge.
That's put an entirely different angle on what I must do with the bike now. Fortunately I have all the removed bits in a box from the previous owner, so it's going to get returned to 'as found' but in running condition. I'll just have to work out how the tank can be repainted to look like it did without looking new. Other than that it's full oily rag time.
No idea what I'll do with it after that because my idea of using it to potter about doesn't seem like the sort of thing that you should do with a piece of history like that. We'll see I suppose.
