1966 Gilera 98 Town and Country - 2-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article for Sale

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1966 Gilera 98 Town and Country - 2-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article For Sale

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1966 Gilera 98 Town and Country - 2-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article:
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1966 Gilera 98 Town and Country - 2-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine articlePage Size: Approx. 8\" x 11\" (21 cm x 28 cm) each pageCondition: Good
Except for a few minor flaws, theGilera 98cc Town and Country mayvery well be one of the finest little trailbikes ever to come our way. We did notlike the rigid footpegs, which led to gettingtrapped a couple of times in narrow places.The seat is too narrow, too hard and tooslippery. Handling in the rough could beimproved with 18-inch wheels. The 17-inchwheels on our test bike were too easilygathered up by ruts and hollows. We arepleased to say these items will be correctedon all Town and Country models to leavethe Gilera factory\'from now on.One problem thatWill not be quite soeasily solved (although we have beenassured it will be) is an extremely largegap between third and fourth gears. Thishappens rather frequently with Italianmotorcycles, where gas mileage is an im-portant consideration. Faced with the con-flicting demands of trail riding, where highpulling-power, high-reduction ratio gearingis needed, and highway cruising, where alow “overdrive” gear ratio is required forfuel economy, designers tend to take theeasy way out. They give the bike a low(numerical) ratio in top gear, and thenprovide an unusually high reduction in1st, 2nd, and 3rd transmission ratios. It isa solution of a sort, but not without itsdrawbacks (or should that be “drawsback”).In the case of the Gilera Town and Coun-try, there has been too extreme an attemptmade to satisfy all conditions, with the re-sult that the jump between 3rd and 4thgears is inconve.nie.ntiy The bikehas to be pushed aho-.? io valve-float in3rd before the rider dares to catch 4th —and even then the revs drop to practicallynothing. In 4th, the bike is most reluctantto pull past the torque peak unless aidedby a tail-wind or a down-hill run. This isterrific for economy, but most Americanswould probably prefer something a bit lessextreme.Where the little Gilera really shines is inrough, almost impossible terrain. Wehave said that the lower gears were nicelyspaced and these are the ones the riderwill be using most of the time. First geargives a very high reduction and that,coupled with the rather good torque char-acteristics, leaves few obstacles impos-sible to overcome. We concluded that itwould make an almost ideal small displace-ment trials machine, even for the exper-ienced, old-time motorcyclist.Steering and general handling are excel-lent. The little engine is very smooth at allengine speeds, with an instantaneous, pre-dictable throttle response; all the thingsneeded for a trials winner.We feel obliged to mention in praisethe clutch and brake levers. Cycle Worldhas almost continuously criticized the typ-ical terrible straight Italian levers, andobviously Gilera is trying to please Amer-icans. They have fitted solid aluminum,ball end levers with which even we can-not find fault. The handlebars are a com-promise: wide enough for good low speedcontrol, while being narrow enough toenable getting through dense brush withthe least effort. Bar height was comfortablefor all our staffers.The Town and Country has one of thelowest seats of any machine we havetested, 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 effortneeded to ride this machine. You may havenoticed all of the things we have saidindicate a motorcycle well suited to thenovice rider as well as an old master.Very Italian in appearance, the Townand Country is finished in deep Italianracing red and black. Highly polishedcastings house the in-unit construction en-gine and gearbox internals. A simple flatcombustion chamber has parallel overheadvalves within a rocker chamber that is partof the cylinder head casting. A verticallyfinned rockerbox cover matches the headfinning, so clean as to give the engine analmost two-stroke appearance. The pushrodtunnel is cast into the heavily-finned cylin-der to further enhance engine tidiness. Wetsump lubrication feeds the crankpin androcker assemblies, the oil being carried in afinned chamber in the bottom of thecrankcase, where it is picked up througha removable filter by the feed pump. Amulti-plate wet clutch is exposed to result-ing engine oil mist on its way back to thecrankcase.To say the Gilera Town and Countryhas an efficient means of silencing wouldbe an understatement. The high level, out-of-the-way exhaust pipe terminates at amuffler that does a superb job of quieting,something which will please the neighborsas well as non-motorcycling trail users.The little machine is no ball of fire, butthen it was not meant to be a racer, onlyan extremely pleasant, truly Town andCountry motorcycle. To this end Gilerahas been very successful.
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