Author Topic: found a 100? year old tank.  (Read 1838 times)

Offline Scaleyback

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found a 100? year old tank.
« on: September 02, 2021, 12:02:16 PM »
Hi I found this in the woods behind our house (Live in France).
the nearest looking tank I could find is from a 1919 Bleriot 500cc.

I was wondering what bike this would have come off.


Offline R

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Re: found a 100? year old tank.
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2021, 10:53:54 PM »
the nearest looking tank I could find is from a 1919 Bleriot 500cc.

Maybe !
Not a bad natch in some respects.
Velocette Levis and Raleigh mid 1920s had similar looking tanks - and many others.
Simple to make.

It only looks to have one filler cap (?), so maybe that means it was for a 2 stroke (petroil).
(so no oil compartment for a 4 stroke).

What does the underneath look like - fixtures and fittings ?

Offline cardan

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Re: found a 100? year old tank.
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2021, 05:43:51 AM »
Hi Scaleyback,

You must have quality woods out the back! See if you can find more out there.

There are lots of identifying features of the tank: the little roll down for the last 10cm at the back, the straight fold from the filler down to the lower corner, the two angles at the front with the short straight section that follows the frame head stock and the longer angle coming back to the bottom. Not to mention the unusual way its all soldered together.

I've just spent an hour flipping through 1920s French magazines and there are lots of similar-shaped tanks, but only Gnome et Rhone seems a likely match, around 1925. As R points out, one filler cap may mean two stroke engine (Gnome and Rhone had one in their range), but there is another possibility since G&R in this period had a separate oil tank on the saddle tube, so only a petrol filler on the main tank.

The attached advert is from La Revue Motocycliste et Automobile, 15 Juillet 1925. Also a photo from the interweb. Not sure exactly what model your tank might be off, but I suspect it will turn out to be Gnome et Rhone. Someone familiar with G&R (I'm not!) will tell you whether the unusual folds in the sheet metal are correct.

Cheers

Leon