Bultaco 360 Frontera

BULTACO 360 FRONTERA

Cycle World Road Test

The Pursang Gets Lights And A Lust For Medals Made Of Gold.

BULTACO HAS, like most manufacturers, made two different motorcycles for motocross and enduros. Pursangs for MX and Matadors for enduros. It seemed the logical thing to do. In those days, everyone was clamoring for high-horsepower racers that did not lend themselves at all to plugging along through a thicket of trees or muddy streams. For enduros, the Matadors had many of the better features of the best off-roaders and they handled better than just about any other enduro machine.

Recently, Bultaco has reversed its high-horsepower philosophy regarding MXers and has produced what amounts to the torquiest Pursangs ever. Particularly the 360. The bikes are no longer horsepower kings, but the tractable grunt they produce makes them slingshots out of corners and very acceptable play bikes.

The Matadors have remained sluggish because of their weight. And high-speed handling suffers, as well. But Pursangs have no lights and therefore are not enduro legal. Also, their close-ratio transmissions would not work well in the wide-open spaces. So Bultaco took on the task of incorporating the best features of the Matador with the strongest features of the Pursang. At first glance, it appears as though all they’ve done is installed lights on the MXer, but lights are not the only thing that make the Pursang and the new 350 Frontera different.

The new bike sports a set of wider ratios in the transmission, as well as some additional silencing that includes a built-in spark arrester. Other changes include a larger fuel tank, different type carburetor and a speedometer. The pointless Motoplat ignition has been replaced with a conventional magneto/coil system because it is easier to operate a lighting system off the latter. But the important parts of the Matador still lives; but for something that gets on with the gettiiT on, the Frontera does it best.

The Frontera is one of the few machines that can get away with having its engine unchanged. Hie stock motor pulls strongly from the word go. Port area is abundant, but not radically timed. Compression ratio is 10.5:1 (uncorrected), which allows the mill to deliver good power without the high heat buildup caused by smaller squish volumes.

If there was a shortcoming in the old Pursang engine, it to be carburetion. Once running, the Amal earb would well, but getting the engine to fire was a chore at times. To alleviate the possibility of the occasional difficult start—since the machine was designed for two-day trials where points are deducted for failure to start within a given time period-a new Amal carburetor has been put to use on the Frontera. The carb has some very Mikuni-like features and characteristics. There is an enrichening lever to eliminate the need to tickle the carb until gas flows all over your hand. With the enrichener deployed, the engine springs to life after just a few prods on the kickstarter. And you can ride off immediately, with the choke depressed if necessary, to avoid penalty points in a qualifier. Carburetion on our test bike proved to us that the switch to the new Amal was worth it. Only once was the machine hard to start, and then all it took was a few extra

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BULTACO 360 FRONTERA

$1595