I just got my first Husky. I've never owned a bike that didn't already have a few thousand miles before, so I've never had to break one it. Can someone point me to a thread that talks about this? I've done some looking and seen ideas from going on the street, pounding on the throttle to "seat" the rings fast, to babying the the thing, not going above 3000 rpm for 600. I don't know who to believe.
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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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!
2010 TE 510 Break in
- Thread starter Squidman
- Start date
crillyiv
Husqvarna
AA Class
I just got done breaking in the same bike. I bought it from George at Up-Tite and did what he told me. I'm very happy with the results. The abbreviated version is to ride it restricted for 20hrs/600 miles or so. The first oil/filter change is at half that. The more heat cycles, the better. Ride it at varying speeds and shifting gears like in the dirt or tight canyons, not highway cruising at a steady speed. It won't go much over 6,000 rpm when restricted so don't worry about that. Definitely let it get good and warm before riding or revving the engine. There's a lot of junk floating around in there and you don't want to blow the cold junk filled oil past the filter element by revving it before the oil has warmed up.
Give him a call and I'm sure he'll tell you as well. It sucked riding the bike restricted like that for so long but I'm gonna trust in George's experience on this one. I know the engine was incredibly tight at first and loosened up noticably as the miles added up. By tight I mean it had so much internal friction it was slow to rev and down on power. By the time I got to over 500 miles it was obviously revving much more easily. It seems to make sense to me to wait to do the powerup until the engine has been broken in.
George, Up-Tite Husqvarna 714-540-2920
I've usually had good luck getting him when I call. There's no receptionist so leave a message and/or call back if he can't answer when you call.
Give him a call and I'm sure he'll tell you as well. It sucked riding the bike restricted like that for so long but I'm gonna trust in George's experience on this one. I know the engine was incredibly tight at first and loosened up noticably as the miles added up. By tight I mean it had so much internal friction it was slow to rev and down on power. By the time I got to over 500 miles it was obviously revving much more easily. It seems to make sense to me to wait to do the powerup until the engine has been broken in.
George, Up-Tite Husqvarna 714-540-2920
I've usually had good luck getting him when I call. There's no receptionist so leave a message and/or call back if he can't answer when you call.
crillyiv
Husqvarna
AA Class
I may be misunderstanding you, and apologize if I am, but; I don't think George's way is the slow way. You're still giving it "full" throttle and getting good compression to push the rings into the walls of the cylinder etc. It's just not doing so at full power before things have a chance to breakin a bit. Maybe it's a middle way?
I'm certainly no expert, I'm obviously putting my trust in someone I think is.
I'm certainly no expert, I'm obviously putting my trust in someone I think is.
MXRider
Husqvarna
A Class
Slowpoke;126792 said:
+1
mine was on the race track with under 2 hours on it. run them hard and change the oil a lot. Ive done this with about 6 different 450/250f bikes and it has yet to prove to be a bad thing.
my road race bike was broken in on a dyno, it had 1 mile on it when I brought it to them in the back of my truck.
Slowpoke
Husqvarna
AA Class
When I say fast way, I should clarify; the entire engine break-in process is done in about 20 minutes.
Start it up first time, let it idle. Get your gear on while it warms up in the driveway. Once geared up and engine is warm/hot to the touch, hop on, put it in gear pull out on the street and let 'er rip like the cops are chasing you.
At least 80% throttle or more thru each gear accelerating, then downshift like you're gonna back it in at every corner - lots of engine braking... lather, rinse, repeat a whole bunch of times. After about 20 minutes a few calls should have been made to the local cops about your riding behavior and it's time to head home and change the oil and put 'er away. The rear knobbie should now be in considerably worse condition than the new tire you started with. Break in is done.
The engine will now be able to put out the most it's designed to do for the rest of the service life of the top end.
Heat cycling is mostly a waste of time on aluminum alloy engines, so it doesn't really need to be bothered with.
Any other method requiring limited throttle application and that takes longer than 20 minutes, is the slow way and limits the ability of the rings to seat properly. Engines using the slow method never put out as much power as they otherwise could and often start using oil long before they should.
Start it up first time, let it idle. Get your gear on while it warms up in the driveway. Once geared up and engine is warm/hot to the touch, hop on, put it in gear pull out on the street and let 'er rip like the cops are chasing you.
At least 80% throttle or more thru each gear accelerating, then downshift like you're gonna back it in at every corner - lots of engine braking... lather, rinse, repeat a whole bunch of times. After about 20 minutes a few calls should have been made to the local cops about your riding behavior and it's time to head home and change the oil and put 'er away. The rear knobbie should now be in considerably worse condition than the new tire you started with. Break in is done.
The engine will now be able to put out the most it's designed to do for the rest of the service life of the top end.
Heat cycling is mostly a waste of time on aluminum alloy engines, so it doesn't really need to be bothered with.
Any other method requiring limited throttle application and that takes longer than 20 minutes, is the slow way and limits the ability of the rings to seat properly. Engines using the slow method never put out as much power as they otherwise could and often start using oil long before they should.
MXRider
Husqvarna
A Class
Thanks all for your input. I took it out and went with the method from mototune usa, more or less. Just did the first oil change, amazing how much crap was in it after only 20 miles. Its running a little ruff, well not ruff, it just tends to stall at stop lights. The shop guys said it is because of the all the garbage on it to make it street legal. So I'm going to do the power up over the weekend. May keep the throttle limiter in place for a few hundred miles to keep from pushing the engine to hard.
firebolter
Husqvarna
AA Class
alot of the old school methods with heat cycles and such just aren't as relevant today as the past decades where the tolerances in modern engines are so well engineered and manufactured and then the materials used as pointed out. My last 7-10 off road bikes (4x 4 stroke and 3x 2 strokes) have all been the same. 2-3 15 minute rides where I do just like what Slowpoke recommends. Then after that, ride it up and down the throttle range with no sustained full throttle ops till after the first oil change. After the first oil change (anywhere from 10-20 miles or 2-3 hours of use for me) I ride it like I would any other bike, i.e. like I stole it...........Then I go to the manufacturers schedule for maint. Sometimes I change the oil sooner depending on conditions or time in between.
Keep the filter clean and the oil fresh, and these bikes will live a long time with just valve checks and a new cam chain when the wear is at the point of replacement.
Keep the filter clean and the oil fresh, and these bikes will live a long time with just valve checks and a new cam chain when the wear is at the point of replacement.