Moto Comet

Brevetti Drusiani Bologna

With Phil Aynsley

Moto Comet was founded by Alfonso Drusiani as BDB

Yet another pretty obscure Italian marque was Moto Comet.

Brevetti Drusiani Bologna (BDB) produced street machines

Alfonso Drusiani was the main engineer at F.B. Mondial and was responsible for their World Championship winning 125 singles.

Alfonso Drusiani came from F.B. Mondial were he worked on championship winning 125 singles

However he left Mondial in 1952 and founded Brevetti Drusiani Bologna (BDB) to design and manufacture street bikes which were then sold under the Moto Comet name.

The bike pictured here is actually the 173cc machine that followed the 160cc OHC parallel twin

His first design was a 160cc OHC parallel-twin but it was quickly followed by a more successful 173cc version (photographed here).

The 175 featured aluminium barrels and the camshaft was driven by a chain with the valves being inclined at 40º

The camshaft was driven by a chain with the valves being inclined at 40º. While the 160 used iron barrels and the primary drive was by chain, the 173 featured aluminium barrels and had a gear-driven primary drive.

An oil pump made a huge improvement over the 160

The most important improvement over the earlier model however was the adoption of an oil pump in place of the splash lubrication used by the 160. The 173 made 10hp at 6800rpm.