• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

1979 390 OR...a little help please!

Panerai

Panerai

Husqvarna
B Class
Hello to all! I'm new to the forum and hoping to get a little help from you guys please. I'm in the process of buying a 390 OR and I had a couple questions before I do the deal. It is currently a rolling chassie with all parts but the motor is out of the frame.

My question is the reason the motor is said to be out is the main center gasket between the cases has dried out and failed mainly right at the top of the motor just below the intake manifold. Owner says it is pulling air from there which makes it hard to start.....does this make sense? 2nd question when looking at the top of the head I see 4 head bolts/studs plus 2 other places that look like they could/should have bolts but don't. Is this correct? How many head bolts are there 4 or 6? I'm sorry I have no pics at this time.

I assume to split the cases to replace the center case gasket is a bit of a job that takes special tools? Are there any other percautions or advice that might be offered up that I may want to be aware of?

Thank you in advance for any help that is provided. Looking forward to enjoying this great forum.

Mike
 
Yes, to split the case does require some special tools. You can't just go pounding and prying, because the magnesium cases are too weak and the crank will be knocked out of true and/or ruined. It's a VERY tight assembly (good for engine longevity, bad for an otherwise quick/easy gasket change!).

You need a case splitter to get them apart, and a crank installer to get them back together. I had them custom made and now that I have the tools it's a snap. The actual gasket part is easy. It's getting together and apart that takes some tools and know-how. I would not personally let that deter me from picking up a good builder bike, but I don't have to pay someone to do it.

Be wary of "I know a guy who can do that for you" advice... lots of people think they can, and many of them have NEVER done it! Verify!
 
As for the the center gasket story,don't believe it.Probably needs top end rebuild.The head has 4 cylinder studs and 2 head bolts.If the bolts are missing that might cause low compression and hard starting
 
Thank you for the input and advice. I think the bike is worth buying I'm just trying to hedge my bet because of all the unknowns that go with the hobby. It does seem odd that the 2 bolts are missing. I better take a closer look and see if they are broke off in the cylinder by chance.

Thanks again

Mike
 
Good advice from auto. Yes, always assume the worst. If those bolts are missing it's either because they're broken off, or because somebody's incorrectly installed the head, or had the head off looking around (and maybe found problems and just threw it back on).
 
Husky have a starting technique

Mike,
Yes assume the worst when every buying an old bike,you'd be amazed
what people in the past have done to them :eek:

As far as harded starting, Husky have a starting technique, i bought a
78 250OR a few years back - restored for $750! Owner said
he dumped a ton of money into it & it always was hard to start,
so it had to go.
I picked the bike up & it fired up for me 1st kick:D he damn near
died :banghead: He said i guess you know your Huskys

Hay they don't call me Husky John for nothing
 
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