Bajaj Pulsar 135LS

Received an SMS for test ride for the new baby Pulsar yesterday, which meant that the ticking clock has stopped. I quickly checked the Bajaj site and found that the Pulsar 135 site was up.

Styling
First look impression... hmmm.... not bad actually!! The looks seems to be an amalgamation of many bikes both from Bajaj and other manufacturers.

The biggest let down from my point of view are the Head Lamp assembly and the Exhaust!! Both of them don't gel well with the remaining of the package.

After gazillion feedback, finally Bajaj decided to change the design of the Petrol Tank and make it more sculpted. The new design matches well with the angular end of the bike.

The biggest thumbs up from my side for the design of the bike is the rear fender. The R6 style rear fender is a first for any Indian bike and looks great. Also, a pat on the back for the sensible designing thoughts for implementing the rear tire hugger. Even though it seems a bit too over extended, but it would do the job of stopping debri flying out of the rear tire well.

A close look at the Engine design also show signs of change. A dual tone Engine coloring is again a first of any Indian bike. A Silver Engine body section with a Black Engine head section looks neat. The styling of the Oil Sump section is also revamped and is more on the lines of the foreign players.

Engine
The bike boasts of India's first (I don't believe calling everything World's first) DTS-i 4 valve cylinder block. Which means that the bike's capacity to build speeds is gonna give bike of it's genre and a couple of genres up, a real run for their money. The performance figures are the same as the existing Discover 135, but the main difference lies in those valves!!

It might not be that peaky on top speeds but overall engine performance should see an improvement because of those couple of extra valves.


But really I have a couple of questions for Bajaj -
1) Why would Bajaj decide not to exploit the advantages of DOHC and kept the engine SOHC
2) Nobody would ever gonna use the baby Pulsar as a Performance machine, so why didn't Bajaj go for the 4 valve architecture for the "Fastest Indian", which would have made more sense!!

But I must say, the overall package and pricing, should make this Pulsar another success story