Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Cycle News 1973 05 01

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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Jerome R u zic ka was the hot flash last year on the 250 AJS but things kept going wrong. Jerome got a new 500 Yamaha from Glendale Yamaha · and maybe this -rno ve into the heavyweight class is what he needed. He finished sixth overall which is better than h e had done in a lo n g time. It isn't usual for a N ovi c e to have a full sp on sor, b ut Mike Powe rs isn't th e usual Novice. Seems like eve ry th ing Mike fin ish es h e is firs t Novice an d Westminster Sp ortscycle, believin g Mike has gr eat p oten tiaI scooped him up and sat him on a new 197 3 Mon te sa. Mike repay ed their fa it h b y taking ye t another first No vice today. Desert Barons wh o were ke epin g track said Mike finished the firs t loop in exactly the sa m e time as Tom Brooks made. C'rnon, Haile y, transfer th e kid an d lets se e what h e can do aga inst the Amateurs and Experts. Sixth Novic e overall and first 400 Novice was Robert Williams who said he and his 400 Husky fell down over 1000 times. Not a bad finish for all those get-offs. The n ext time you see Mike Le ckich he will probably be an A mateur. He ro de his Hodaka 10 first overall in the Trail Novice class in spite of h avin g the flu and, lik e overall winner Brooks, h a d time to wash h is face, h ave a drink and catch his breath before second p lace Bill Binyon (Hod) came into sight. Has anybody seen Bill Firan t since home check? One thing the Barons d id really impressed me. They had riders stationed along the pit road all morning and they ran down anybody who was speeding and gave them a little talking-to. And if y o u think you can out-run the pit patrol, well, how many o f y ou can ride faster than Jim Fishba ck? (Continued from page 381 . installing a proprietary silencer, welded on to the pipe. We h ad run on the same plug all day. When we retrieved the Pu rsang 2 50 from Bay Area , the ch ro m e pickle h ad disappeared and a neat welding job had attached a J&R sile nce r. The shock oil had been replac ed with 10 weigh t American petro leum product and, as far as we co u ld tell, nothing else had been touc hed . The carb jelling was left the same with the notion that what ran ri ch with a restrictive muffler would be abo ut right without one. Carburetion seemed just about right in subsequent running. The en gi n e response was noticeably changed as soon as we let the bike warm up and dropped the clutch. It was a lot cri spe r righ t off the low e n d of the rev range and this time it would wind on ou t, d eveloping respectable speeds before it ran out of power. The Pursang had been slow c om p are d to so m e 25 0s, including other Pursangs, previously . Even the most ske p tic aI. rid ers all owed as how this Bultaco was now a pretty fast motorcycle. It was, but it was still torquey enough for about any grubby MX situation thrown at it. The higher speeds m ade it a lot better cross-country mount, however. Greatly aiding the performance. by allowing the rider to ride it fast more comfortably, were the newly filled shocks. They never bottomed after getting the fresh oil and provided good feel an d smooth rear end mo tion whether straigh t line ch argin g or sliding the comers of fire roads. Even at the higher speeds attainable sans pickle. the Pursang n ever did anything surprising or nasty to the riders during the entire test (except smack us in the rea r with the too-hard se at) . It was one of the most confldence-insp iring rno tocrossers we've ridden and one of the few that was never d ropped during th e d ay s of the test. We rode it h a rd ; it just neve r got so o ut of shape we couldn 't recover. One of th e testers liked its manners particularly w ell . Th e others were m ore d ivided about the handling. All agreed th at it was surpassingly go o d at some things; pretty good in all a spec ts of handling an d p ower. What's this jive about breakage-prone Buls ? The forks n ever did leak. We did nothing more than lube th e ch ain and cab les and put pre-mix in it (T h a t was kind of a drag with the backbone up against the filler cap .) , never changed the .plug; and n ever had any trouble with it. Nothing rattled loose or fell off. We had to bump start it twice out of 15 starts on the last day of testing. Bultaco has a win ner and not just for Jim Pomeroy. CAUTION••· ••••••• -'.. • DON'T BE FOOLED BY -IMITATIONS. CYCLE NEWS CE TRAL IS ALIVE AN DWELL IN AUSTIN, TEXAS. LONE STAR BROTHER TO CYCLE 'N EWS WEST & CYCLE NEWS EAST/DIXIE. > ::;: ~ w Z W ...J U >- U • SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER $6.00/YEAR P.O. BOX 13245 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78711 512/476-7571 SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTHENTIC ONE!!! - • CLIP OUT AND MAIL TO'~- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - , Cycle News Central, Box 13245, Austin, Tx . 78711 . .. Please send me a one -year subscript ion to Cycle News Cent ral (25 issues) at the Charter Subscriber price. I enclos e $6 o cash o check or o money order. 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