| ►It's a vicious cycle,
this business of observed trials. Just about every time a better bike comes
along that could make trials riding easier, the clubs that lay out the events
just make the observed sections that much harder to ride. So despite the ongoing
availability of ever-improving machinery, a trials rider's challenge never seems
to get any less difficult.
That serves to notify all of you trials types that there
should be a whole new crop of tougher sections in your immediate future, because
Montesa's new 349 Cota is finally available. And it unquestionably is one of
those "better" trials bikes, a fact that it proved while winning an American
championship, the British championship, four world-championship rounds, the
Scottish Six Days Trial and the classic Scott trial, none of which are what you
would call lightweight accomplishments.
Anyone
familiar with Montesa trialers has to wonder how this new 349 can be so much
better than the 348 Cota it supersedes, since the previous model was a mighty
good bike in its own right. The answer is simple: There is more than a one-cc
displacement increase between the 348 and the 349. The truth is that for reasons
related to rideability and engine-efficiency, both of which were problems
encountered during its development, the 348 Cota's engine was continually scaled
down from 348cc until it measured only 305.8cc, whereas the new engine displaces
a full 349.6cc, an increase of over 14 percent.
Cubic
displacement, however, does not a better trials bike make, nor does cubic
horsepower. And they never will. Only if every piece on the motorcycle is
perfectly attuned to this highly specialized task can a trials bike hope to be
successful, regardless of displacement. Bultaco found—the hard way, of
course—that simply increasing the displacement can lead to lumpy running at low
rpm, the engine speed at which trials bikes do their most serious business.
Contrary to
other branches of dirt competition, trials bikes seem to work best when they
achieve their healthy low-rpm torque through wildly oversquare engine
dimensions. The Montesa is no exception, doing the job quite well, thank you,
with a bore that's 5.4mm larger than on the previous version, yielding 43 more
cc. The 83.4mm x 64mm dimensions give all the torque a rational person could
want or use. Additional crankshaft inertia was needed, though, to smooth out the
power pulses at low revs, so a heavier auxiliary flywheel was used on the
primary-drive side of the Cota's crankshaft, and the crank's flywheels
themselves were enlarged.
Given all of
those improvements, it's no surprise that the 349 chugs out enough low-rpm power
to win a tractor pull. There's even an inordinate amount of power at higher
revs, as well, but what the experienced trials rider will appreciate most about
the 349 is its impressive bottom-end response. Montesa's engineers fought the
good fight while developing the 349, refusing to trade too much bottom-end for
the sake of pure hill-climbing power, although the latter is a welcome addition
when you're faced with a long, near-vertical climb that calls for sheer grunt.
That's why the designers fiddled with more than 50 different cylinders in their
quest for the ideal balance of power before arriving at the final production
porting found on the new 349 Cota.
Getting all
of that velvet-smooth power to the ground depends largely, of course, on having
a proper gear ratio available for each kind of trials challenge. And Montesa has
done a lot of work in that area, not just changing ratios, but redesigning the
entire transmission. The 348's archaic three-shaft gearbox, notorious for
jumping out of gear at the most inopportune moments, is no more. In its place is
a more conventional two-shaft six-speed cluster. And with one more gear than in
the opposition's five-speed trialers, the Montesa can have its first three
ratios closely spaced for use in the sections, with the top three (as opposed to
the top two on five-speed trialers) more widely staged for use between sections
or on the occasional trail excursion.
There is
more newness to be found in the 349's chassis, including a slightly
longer-travel fork, Telesco gas-bag shocks and a swingarm that's more than an
inch longer than the 348's. The suspension changes are for obvious reasons of
better wheel control, and the lengthier wheelbase aids the Cota's directional
stability when it's traversing rocks and other rubble at more than a plonking
pace. That greater length also improves the 349's climbing ability by making the
front end less prone to lift during steep ascents. The rider still can easily
loft the front wheel when he feels that it's necessary, but now he must make it
happen rather than having it occur unintentionally.► |
Bike Tests 
