Gilera 98 Town And Country
GILERA 98 TOWN AND COUNTRY
CYCLE WORLD TRAIL TEST
THE NAME DESCRIBES THE GAME.
EXCEPT FOR A FEW minor flaws, the Gilera 98cc Town and Country may very well be one of the finest little trail bikes ever to come our way. We did not like the rigid footpegs, which led to getting trapped a couple of times in narrow places. The seat is too narrow, too hard and too slippery. Handling in the rough could be improved with 18-inch wheels. The 17-inch wheels on our test bike were too easily gathered up by ruts and hollows. We are pleased to say these items will be corrected on all Town and Country models to leave the Gilera factory from now on.
One problem that will not be quite so easily solved (although we have been assured it will be) is an extremely large gap between third and fourth gears. This happens rather frequently with Italian motorcycles, where gas mileage is an important consideration. Faced with the conflicting demands of trail riding, where high pulling-power, high-reduction ratio gearing is needed, and highway cruising, where a low “overdrive” gear ratio is required for fuel economy, designers tend to take the easy way out. They give the bike a low (numerical) ratio in top gear, and then provide an unusually high reduction in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd transmission ratios. It is a solution of a sort, but not without its drawbacks (or should that be “drawsback”). In the case of the Gilera Town and Country, there has been too extreme an attempt made to satisfy all conditions, with the result that the jump between 3rd and 4th gears is inconveniently wide. The bike has to be pushed almost to valve-float in 3rd before the rider dares to catch 4th — and even then the revs drop to practically nothing. In 4th, the bike is most reluctant to pull past the torque peak unless aided by a tail-wind or a down-hill run. This is terrific for economy, but most Americans would probably prefer something a bit less extreme.
Where the little Gilera really shines is in rough, almost impossible terrain. We have said that the lower gears were nicely spaced and these are the ones the rider will be using most of the time. First gear gives a very high reduction and that, coupled with the rather good torque characteristics, leaves few obstacles impossible to overcome. We concluded that it would make an almost ideal small displacement trials machine, even for the experienced, old-time motorcyclist.
Steering and general handling are excellent. The little engine is very smooth at all engine speeds, with an instantaneous, predictable throttle response; all the things needed for a trials winner.
We feel obliged to mention in praise the clutch and brake levers. CYCLE WORLD has almost continuously criticized the typical terrible straight Italian levers, and obviously Gilera is trying to please Americans. They have fitted solid aluminum, ball end levers with which even we cannot find fault. The handlebars are a compromise: wide enough for good low speed control, while being narrow enough to enable getting through dense brush with the least effort. Bar height was comfortable for all our staffers.
The Town and Country has one of the lowest seats of any machine we have tested, 28.5 inches from ground to seat-top, making it ideal for the small of stature. Wives, particularly those with short legs, will be delighted by the lack of effort needed to ride this machine. You may have noticed all of the things we have said indicate a motorcycle well suited to the novice rider as well as an old master.
Very Italian in appearance, the Town and Country is finished in deep Italian racing red and black. Highly polished castings house the in-unit construction engine and gearbox internals. A simple flat combustion chamber has parallel overhead valves within a rocker chamber that is part of the cylinder head casting. A vertically finned rockerbox cover matches the head finning, so clean as to give the engine an almost two-stroke appearance. The pushrod tunnel is cast into the heavily-finned cylinder to further enhance engine tidiness. Wet sump lubrication feeds the crankpin and rocker assemblies, the oil being carried in a finned chamber in the bottom of the crankcase, where it is picked up through a removable filter by the feed pump. A multi-plate wet clutch is exposed to resulting engine oil mist on its way back to the crankcase.
To say the Gilera Town and Country has an efficient means of silencing would be an understatement. The high level, outof-the-way exhaust pipe terminates at a muffler that does a superb job of quieting, something which will please the neighbors as well as non-motorcycling trail users. The little machine is no ball of fire, but then it was not meant to be a racer, only an extremely pleasant, truly Town and Country motorcycle. To this end Gilera has been very successful. ■
