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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

85 LC 500xc Low Compression

Motosportz said:
Is your cam timing right? Valve lash correct? Its a fresh piston ring and bore and you seem to have that in order I would look at cam timing, valves and head gasket at this point. This doe snot have a compression release right?
Click to expand...

it's a 2 smoke
 
TWO Plug test....GPremo...you are on to something!

Did the two plug test in a dark garage. No spark....numerous attempts still no spark! Pulled the plug from the cylinder and hit it a few times and the grounded plug sparked..not great, but it sparked.

Now to my question: What does this indicate? A weak ignition system that needs to be replaced?
 
Four Digit said:
TWO Plug test....GPremo...you are on to something!

Did the two plug test in a dark garage. No spark....numerous attempts still no spark! Pulled the plug from the cylinder and hit it a few times and the grounded plug sparked..not great, but it sparked.

Now to my question: What does this indicate? A weak ignition system that needs to be replaced?
Click to expand...


yep probably stator.
 
Four Digit said:
TWO Plug test....GPremo...you are on to something!

Did the two plug test in a dark garage. No spark....numerous attempts still no spark! Pulled the plug from the cylinder and hit it a few times and the grounded plug sparked..not great, but it sparked.

Now to my question: What does this indicate? A weak ignition system that needs to be replaced?
Click to expand...

Post 6 "All that aside, the current system does provide a bright and consistent spark."

It probably means you just don't have the knack of kicking it in a manner to make it start. As I suggested in post 4 close down the plug gap. These motorcycles aren't the only husqvarna products that need this treatment though the chainsaw ones are much less costly parts with a warranty that lasts until that model is discontinued on the coil. The engine should be attached to the frame where paint is removed or a seperate ground wire run to where the coil is would probably be an alternative.

It is hard to diagnose looking at post 6 and post 23.
 
fran...k. said:
Post 6 "All that aside, the current system does provide a bright and consistent spark."

It probably means you just don't have the knack of kicking it in a manner to make it start. As I suggested in post 4 close down the plug gap. These motorcycles aren't the only husqvarna products that need this treatment though the chainsaw ones are much less costly parts with a warranty that lasts until that model is discontinued on the coil. The engine should be attached to the frame where paint is removed or a seperate ground wire run to where the coil is would probably be an alternative.

It is hard to diagnose looking at post 6 and post 23.
Click to expand...

You are probably correct. Being 70 years of age I just don't have the kick I use to....Last year I started it and this year I can't. It happens so quickly!
 
fran...k. said:
Fixed some capitalization and punctuation keeping in line with the top class intent of the fourm creator's preference.

The half milimeter increments in bore and also 20 thousands for a lot of stuff using inch is enough to get good results. If some calamity occured perhaps not. Even if you send it to a shop that sells the piston chances are they will write on the side of the box the clearance and send the piston in the box out to another business.

I am not sure the honing and the holes in the cylinder are a good match for the abrasive balls on stalks or the spring stone ones normally seen that don't limit how far the stones can go out. The compression should depend on the bore above the ports.

To the origional poster here, It is pretty impossible to put the ring in upside down isn't it? Pressure from the top gets behind the ring and usually there is a little cut out on the inside top of the ring to aid this phenomenon. It sounds like you had the ring off and put it in the bore and checked the end gap. Did you do this in multiple spots. Kind of hard to figure what could be different if you take it apart. I have been able to start engines that had the ring stuck in place. Have somone to pull start it with?
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fixed some capitalization and punctuation? why is my quote above that?
 
Four Digit said:
You are probably correct. Being 70 years of age I just don't have the kick I use to....Last year I started it and this year I can't. It happens so quickly!
Click to expand...
I think the second husky I bought was an 85 xc500, the guy I got it from could start it, I could start the 83 xc500 with either leg one off the bike or the other way straddling the bike. I don't have much luck with the straddle way lately. I kind of gave up on that bike and made it a parts pile which eliminated the need to try and start it. I do have a nos piston for one of them not sure I will get a chance to see if I can reliably start it with a fresh top end. I discussed it with the dealer at the time and he said something about the ring didn't really understand what he had in mind was kind of insistant folks should be able to start one before getting one. It is encouraging to hear at 69 you could start one of these things, probably at 90+ it is pretty much a moped around the parking lot or at least that is about what I have observed I am only 10 or so years behind you.
 
Four Digit said:
TWO Plug test....GPremo...you are on to something!

Did the two plug test in a dark garage. No spark....numerous attempts still no spark! Pulled the plug from the cylinder and hit it a few times and the grounded plug sparked..not great, but it sparked.

Now to my question: What does this indicate? A weak ignition system that needs to be replaced?
Click to expand...

the original spark was Ok but never really great, two things actually 3 to consider,
one, learn the trick of kicking it faster but at 70 it is a short time before that will be an issue
two, another thought aftermarket ignitions seem hotter
third thought a lot of people add decompressors

did you run a wire from the backing plate to the coil? if not this helps to prevent an intermittent issue from grounding problems
 
Did you just paint the engine and frame?
Maybe not grounded properly from engine - frame - coil?
Try a seperate grounding wire from stator directly to coil?
 
my plan of attack would be to have someone kick her over fast enough for a genuine compression reading or try to bump start it , you need to confirm the compression first, if its all good have a machine shop install a decomp valve this will make starting easy and also safe guard against case breakage around the kick starter, if your ignition is found to be the problem that can be fixed aswell, plenty of threads on this site that can show you fixes.
 
outdoorsman166 said:
For my own knowledge. Why would spark issues have any effect on compression if the leak test was very stable?
Click to expand...

the question asks a few things
I will try to make sense of it
if you have no spark at kicking speed it will not start, put a spark plug in to replicate this due to resistance vs. a free wheeling engine
an engine with low compression will start just won't make any power
a leak test is not relevant to ignition or compression it has to do with carb tuning once it is running unless the seals were missing entirely and he would not have a wet plug
he commented he had a wet plug which usually means no spark
hope this helps your understanding
not starting was the issue
 
2premo said:
the question asks a few things
I will try to make sense of it
if you have no spark at kicking speed it will not start, put a spark plug in to replicate this due to resistance vs. a free wheeling engine
an engine with low compression will start just won't make any power
a leak test is not relevant to ignition or compression it has to do with carb tuning once it is running unless the seals were missing entirely and he would not have a wet plug
he commented he had a wet plug which usually means no spark
hope this helps your understanding
not starting was the issue
Click to expand...

I understand now that it was two seperate issues. My bad
 
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