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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Actual news on the KTM purchase of Husqvarna

Maybe thats the prototype look into the future next week at EICMA show on Tuesday at 4 in Italy
 
Motosportz said:
That is exactly the bike BMW could have taken their massive resources and creativity to have dropped on us and kicked the door down. They missed the boat.
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Looking back now ... I just don't think the previous owners actually wanted to sell (or knew how to build) dirt bikes ... A CORP that big can go in many directions at the same time without actually delivering results the average customer is expecting or wanting ... Then, as shown, sell out and move on and will never explain what happened other than a few fancy white-collar words. These guys only answer to stock-holders really in the long run ...

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A dirt bike is anti-bmw ... A dirt bike is a small and light and simple as possible ... That's the opposite of bmw ... They can't even mount a front fender without over engineering it. That's what they do ...Works for cars and big street bikes ... But not dirt bikes..

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MonoShocker said:
How cool would it be if it was the street-legal, direct-injected, two-stroke-powered dual-sport that Husky exec's said they were working on last year, see the article below.

http://www.cycleworld.com/2012/08/13/two-stroke-resurrection/

I really hope it's a street legal Dual Sport Adventure version of the 690 but I doubt that it will be, but a street legal 2 stroke would be a big game changer imo.....of course it would be the new colors but I could live with that, make mine a 600 2 stroke twin...we can dream until the 5th.
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The last 2t street bike I remember was a 72(?) yamaha 250, 2 cylinder bike and it was fast! It had a build in steering stabilizer also ... Just a big knob you twisted to lock the steering column really ...

Maybe a streeter version of DI 2t will be easier to write the software for other than a full blown woods racer version ... Then if that code base is some-what respectable, it can be used to base the true off-road bikes on... If you know anything about software coding, no one hardly EVER starts with a blank page and old code is always tweaked and brought forward for the newer codes. If this is true with the codes being developed now for the bikes, its just patch work and sooner or later, that crap code brought forward is gonna get bulky and will get harder and harder to maintain and test...Same as any other code existing in the world today ... BUT, if someone can write a good base code, it can live till the ELEC bikes take over.
 
ray_ray said:
A dirt bike is anti-bmw ... A dirt bike is a small and light and simple as possible ... That's the opposite of bmw ... They can't even mount a front fender without over engineering it. That's what they do ...Works for cars and big street bikes ... r.
Click to expand...
BMW may not have invested in Husqvarna as everyone would hope but without a doubt they know more about race appilications than even KTM. Without even mentioning their race programs for cars read up on the S1000r and KTM's RC8. If they had cared to they would have devoloped a bike that would put everything else to shame.
They were innovative for how and it's considered a failure. The bikes admittedly are love/hate but so is everything else like that, reverse engines on yzf's, and PDS on KTM's.

I think if anything they had trouble coming up with a design that was cheap enough. Going all out would have been easy for them but would people want a 15k bike? Another issue is branding. Husky wasn't all that strong before hand and they definately marketed the product. I don't ever remember seeing Husqvarnas in magazines until BMW had them.

I look at KTM's how I look at Harley. They aren't the best for the money but they invested in making it seem like you joined a fraternity. T-shirts, coffee mugs, and a fancy shiny parts catalog. They sell them for quite a bit over the competition because of this, not because they're better. Think of the bikes they have that are considered great, 2strokes? Simply put, it's because they continued to make them. Look at Beta, one year in and they've won quite a few shootout and bike of the year awards. Also, their enduro models, they have no real competition there either. What a crf250x that gets no real updates or a Wrf with an old engine design.

I'm not saying they don't have a good product and I believe that Husky will do better in sales with KTM but I don't believe for a second they are a better company for the job other then their interest in it. This is all KTM does and they cater to smaller markets and have had success. I really wish we could have seen what BMW could have done and I hope someday we will. I also don't believe their 2 stroke DI was worthless. KTM may even use it and we'd never know. There may have been more gain then we were led to believe.
 
"Code", for EFI / DFI, would be harder to make workable / get to the optimum for "streeter versions" than a racer - Woods or otherwise. The bane of 2ts, is steady throttle, and, steady throttle at a lot of different rev points. Racing / competition use, is much more on the side of On / Off. Cripes, even my scooting around in my local tight terrain, on a big capacity 2t, is just that - On /Off.

Think for a while about it - street use, calls for civility / usability in a huge range of revs.

And, as I've said all along, "New Tech" for 2ts, doesn't have to be all Electronic 'Carb'd' based. All that we see, may not be EFI / DFI variations. Though, I have the feeling that Electronic tech, will be the predominant force in any resurgence of 2t usage. It's what ICE powerplants in transport have, for the vast majority, gone to.

The big thing for E Tech 2ts, is that a hell of a lot has (I hope) been learned during the EFI change over in Road Bikes / 4T Off Roaders. There is no excuse for manufacturers making mistakes, ending up with ECUs, wiring / injectors / fuel filtering / fuel pumps etc etc being sub par. Unless they, the manufacturers are idiots. And 'they' couldn't be that, could 'they'.................... ?

Quite a few people just don't get it - most markets, around the world, require bikes to be registerable, to be legally usable, to get real sales - Dual Sporters, basically. It's why you may have seen Huskies / KTMs / Betas / TMs etc with full blinker kits and mirrors in other countries. Cripes, my dinosaur CRE500, was specifically set up as a Learner Legal bike - well, not really, but by the time they were set up to get through ADRs (Australian Design Rules) they were fitted with a muffler with a 16mm outlet, a washer in the header with a 20mm centre Dia., a slide stop, and reed petal replaced with a steel plate, I think it put out power that could be rated as "Sweet FA "..........
 
LandofMotards said:
BMW may not have invested in Husqvarna as everyone would hope but without a doubt they know more about race appilications than even KTM. Without even mentioning their race programs for cars read up on the S1000r and KTM's RC8. If they had cared to they would have devoloped a bike that would put everything else to shame.
They were innovative for how and it's considered a failure. The bikes admittedly are love/hate but so is everything else like that, reverse engines on yzf's, and PDS on KTM's.

I think if anything they had trouble coming up with a design that was cheap enough. Going all out would have been easy for them but would people want a 15k bike? Another issue is branding. Husky wasn't all that strong before hand and they definately marketed the product. I don't ever remember seeing Husqvarnas in magazines until BMW had them.

I look at KTM's how I look at Harley. They aren't the best for the money but they invested in making it seem like you joined a fraternity. T-shirts, coffee mugs, and a fancy shiny parts catalog. They sell them for quite a bit over the competition because of this, not because they're better. Think of the bikes they have that are considered great, 2strokes? Simply put, it's because they continued to make them. Look at Beta, one year in and they've won quite a few shootout and bike of the year awards. Also, their enduro models, they have no real competition there either. What a crf250x that gets no real updates or a Wrf with an old engine design.

I'm not saying they don't have a good product and I believe that Husky will do better in sales with KTM but I don't believe for a second they are a better company for the job other then their interest in it. This is all KTM does and they cater to smaller markets and have had success. I really wish we could have seen what BMW could have done and I hope someday we will. I also don't believe their 2 stroke DI was worthless. KTM may even use it and we'd never know. There may have been more gain then we were led to believe.
Click to expand...

You hit the nail on the head, ktms are good bikes, but the real magic is in the marketing kinda like harley just a different segment. Marketing can make an average to good product seem great. Lack of marketing can make a great product seem poor. Both Harley and ktm get it.
 
LandofMotards said:
Completely agree with this - KTM still don't have an aluminium frame and are $2000.00 more than a Jap dirt bike in this market. I think they only got a linkage in the rear suspension recently. Aside from WP which they now own I think they are over priced. The 449 / 511 are innovation impressive and too bad they won't be continued. Only birght side was the fire sale prices as result of BMW exit.
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It's a 17 inch Michelin supermotard slick, so it's not going to be a SMRR (limited edition, which would have a 16.5) it's got a single curved radiator like the 690 (from the pics I've seen). It's probably a non street legal motard like the KTM SMR450 which has an SX motor, Peirer did say there would be a BIG motard, might be too heavy though...
 
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