Awesome bike in the segment.

Awesome bike in the segment.

Hello everybody, the technology, specifications, and more passion is a small word for defining my attachment to bikes. I eat, sleep and dream about them during most of my free time, hence it is with a lot of due consideration that I buy them as well. Let’s go down the lane of my own experience of the 220F. Back in 2011, the 220 was Bajaj’s flagship brand and that meant you could only get one from their premium Probiking outlets. This in itself was an experience! The sales-guys would sit with you through hour-long discussions and explain every technological detail to you, you will receive an exclusive membership into the Probiking fraternity and the sales center team will assign one exclusive person to each customer who will act as the individual point-of-contact from the day a customer buys the bike to its third free service! Must say, this attitude in itself instills a lot of buyer confidence in the 220’s customers. Bajaj would also deliver the bike to your house in a freight truck. Pretty awesome when the bike is rolled down from its delivery van onto your doorstep with the whole neighborhood looking! I don’t plan on giving a detailed description of the bike’s specifications as they are available on any bike website.
What I will do instead is highlight the areas where the bike stood out from its competition. Bear in mind that all of the below are with respect to the Indian market in 2011. There are a few bikes today that are more advanced than the 220F but that is only natural. What I plan to bring to light is why the bike was the best in its class back in its D-days (apart from a few obvious imports like the Baby Ninja). I bought this bike in 2011, so I have the carbureted version and not the fuel-injected engine. I think this was Bajaj’s way of making the bike more affordable to the masses as fuel injection, though more performance-oriented, increased the price by almost 10k. But keeping this downside in mind the engineers gave the bike the country’s biggest 32mm UCAL UCD 32 Venturi carburetor replacing the Delphi-supplied throttle body type fuel injection system loaded in the earlier Pulsar 220 DTS-Fi. But here’s the interesting part, after introducing the carburetor, Bajaj was still able to churn out an immense 21.04 PS of power from the bike as compared to the earlier 20 PS at the same RPM ranges. Remember, this was in 2011 when Indian bikes were struggling to reach the 20PS+ benchmark. Alongside this, the bike maintains a torque of 19.12 Nm which is the same as the earlier version but it is achieved at a higher rpm of 7000 which is close to 500rpm more than the earlier. Due to this, the bike is pretty revvy with more than enough torque available to the rider all through the rpm curve. Let me give an example, the bike (remember it is 220cc) can pull at 25-30kmpl in 4th gear with very fewer vibrations! Including a carburetor also meant introducing a catalytic convertor and this ensured that the bike was green (as per Bharat Stage 4 Pollution Norms). The bike also had a bigger than before air cooler which ensured that the bike remains cool most of the time. Although, from experience, I know that the bike does heat up after riding at a stretch for more than 5 hours. Which bike doesn’t though? Bajaj’s most insistent and consistent problem with the Pulsar line as everyone who owns one will know used to be its gearbox and clutch assembly. Clutch slipping, wear-tear and in-responsiveness.