• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

1972 450CR

Got a flu shot last night and today I felt to crappy to work, well my real job.
After talking some Tylenol and sleeping in I felt well enough to putz with the Husky.

So I turned to in the carburetor. I placed it in the ultrasonic cleaner then made sure all the little ports were clear. Put all the correct size jets and bits in then mounted it to the bike.
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The air cleaner strap was busted as you can see. I had an extra longer strap so I'll cut it and add the 6mm elongate hole. That should have this part of the project done.
 
Hooya!

Soon as they get here I'll mount them up and post some photos. Thanks again Scott!
On the down hill stretch.

I picked up a couple of extra shifts and ordered the fenders yesterday.

Saw two countershaft pullers on eBay, maybe I can win one of them.
 
Very nice work MarkVMod0! Can't wait to see it finished!

And yes, Scott is the man when it comes to Curnutts! Hope to get a set for my latest project soon.
 
MarkVmod, You mentioned early on in this thread that you suspected the ignition might be bad on this 450. I think you also said you were sending it off to Vance. I'm curious what developed with the ignition. I'm assuming its the stock Motoplat. Did you need to replace it or was it okay?
 
I never got satisfactory readings so I sent the Motoplat to Vance and he replaced a coil. I have it back on the engine but have yet to time the system. I have it closely set just to test and there is a spark when I kick it over. Not being familiar with the motoplat I can't comment on the quality of spark but it look anemic to me.

I cleaned all my engine to frame and coil to frame mount surfaces to bare metal and still no improvement. Once I am ready to fire it up I will know if the spark is sufficient or not.
 
The reason I asked was because I'm dealing with a weak Motoplat spark on the same bike so I was hoping you found an inexpensive source (i.e. less than $200) to fix the stock Motoplat.

I've looked at the many different makes of after market ignitions and its quite discouraging to say the least. Theres little info on what after market unit is recommended for a 72 Husky. I don't think a light weight internal rotor is a good for this year of 450 as maximum HP is obtained at 5000 RPM. These motors need to build up to their respected RPM slower than the later model 390's, 430's and 500's so as to not experience excessive rear wheel spin, not to mention RPM's higher than 5000 is just going to lessen motor durability/reliability.

The heavier external flywheel after market units are as high as $575 with tax and shipping :eek:. I saw on here that someone paid $600 for a Power Dynamo.

Electrex World recommends the internal rotor. I'm currently attempting to find out what that rotor weighs compared to my stock flywheel, which is about 2.35 lbs.

The PVL is reasonable at around $400 but the pictures I've seen show the internal rotor. Plus I've seen some poor reviews.

The 72 450cr has a unique stub shaft that was used on Huskys for only a couple of years. At this point I think this makes the ignition selection pretty narrow.

I wouldn't trust a used Motoplat either unless I knew it worked and I could get it for $50.

How I wish it had a Femsa instead of a Moto-Splat :D .
 
I'd say you are better off with the Moto-Splat than the SEM (Seldom makes electricity) I saw a not a bad looking Motoplat on Ebay yesterday for a reasonable price.
 
I've checked out many Motoplats on Ebay but I don't know enough about them to determine if ignitions off other motorcycle brands will fit a 72 450. Also, when it comes to electrical stuff sellers typically don't allow returns and I don't blame them.

I have noticed that some Motoplat models are made for the opposite direction of rotation than a Husky. Probably because they're mounted on the left hand side of the bike they came off of.
 
when checking the motoplat for spark, are you kicking over the bike with a good sharp kick like you are trying to start it? spark may be small but should be blue..do you have a kill hooked up? if so it could be grounding slightly..
 
when checking the motoplat for spark, are you kicking over the bike with a good sharp kick like you are trying to start it? spark may be small but should be blue..do you have a kill hooked up? if so it could be grounding slightly..
Click to expand...

These are good things to check for. I'm able to get a pretty good kick because of my height (long leg syndrome). When checking spark via the spark plug its not as blue as the Femsa's I've checked over the years. With this in mind, its my understanding that a weak spark can be problematic when under compression. So I think the ignition has seen better days. As for the kill button, I have it hooked up to the blue coil lead with a bullet connector so I'm able to easily disconnect it when testing for spark.

These early 70's five speed big bores are hard to start as it is, a weak spark certainly doesn't help the situation.

This ignition looks almost new. Goes to show the risk involved with buying a used one that look really nice.
 
Crashaholic said:
These are good things to check for. I'm able to get a pretty good kick because of my height (long leg syndrome). When checking spark via the spark plug its not as blue as the Femsa's I've checked over the years. With this in mind, its my understanding that a weak spark can be problematic when under compression. So I think the ignition has seen better days. As for the kill button, I have it hooked up to the blue coil lead with a bullet connector so I'm able to easily disconnect it when testing for spark.

These early 70's five speed big bores are hard to start as it is, a weak spark certainly doesn't help the situation.

This ignition looks almost new. Goes to show the risk involved with buying a used one that look really nice.
Click to expand...
and i have a motoplat that i have run for a looong time that looks awful. its missing chunks of potting and under my ownership has been on 3 motors. still has a bright-ass blue kernal! looks do not tell the story with ignitions, thats for sure. especially the sems that look new and dont work at all.
 
Good information. I'll have to wait to pass judgement until after I have this bike running. I think I paid $220 for the testing and rewind.

I keep looking at the stuff on eBay but that's been a real Crap shot for me....and I am not ready to blow any more money there.
 
Maybe I spoke to soon....I need a counter shaft sprocket puller. There are two on eBay and I can get one from the HVA factory but shipping kills the deal. 35 British pounds is about $55 US. I can't justify that shipping cost.
 
When you had Vance diagnose your Motoplat did he check the magnetic strength of the flywheel or at least comment on whether or not that's important? I've seen articles in the past that claim it can add to a weak ignition spark although I've had weak magnets on Femsa flywheels that produced a blue spark and the bikes ran fine. I'm wondering if the Motoplat may be more sensitive to a weak magnetic field.
 
You might check with John at Vintage Husky for the sprocket puller... He used to have a box of new OEM ones... but that was several years ago.
 
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