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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Advice on 1983 xc500

Nordic

Nordic

Husqvarna
A Class
I have a chance to buy one of these post-vintage machines and would like to use it to race some mx events designed for vintage machines.

Can any of the experts on the site advise me on things to pay particular attention to when considering this machine? It has been restored and appears to be in quite nice shape. What about the availability of parts? Is that a concern?

Thanks in advance.

Best,
 
Hi Scott, the big issues appear to be badly worn engine mounts from vibration. the rear mount acts as the swing arm pivot and is a steel sleeve in each case which can wear badly if left loose. check for severe movement there and look carefully. its fixable just difficult

conrod kits for 500's are also an issue I believe but I am not positive on that. some 500 owners may have more info.

all bearings and seals are std sizes and can be obtained at most bearing shops

phil at Huskvarna parts .com has great spares as does Andy at HVA

Rims generally can have a crack in them where they are welded but rims are cheap

the forks need checking for both rusted or pitted chrome and or worn internal bushes, seals generally leak

Ohlins shox can be rebuilt without issue. exhausts are available.

They are a beast and a recluse clutch would make them a sweet ride...go for it
 
suprize said:
Hi Scott, the big issues appear to be badly worn engine mounts from vibration. the rear mount acts as the swing arm pivot and is a steel sleeve in each case which can wear badly if left loose. check for severe movement there and look carefully. its fixable just difficult

conrod kits for 500's are also an issue I believe but I am not positive on that. some 500 owners may have more info.

all bearings and seals are std sizes and can be obtained at most bearing shops

phil at Huskvarna parts .com has great spares as does Andy at HVA

Rims generally can have a crack in them where they are welded but rims are cheap

the forks need checking for both rusted or pitted chrome and or worn internal bushes, seals generally leak

Ohlins shox can be rebuilt without issue. exhausts are available.

They are a beast and a recluse clutch would make them a sweet ride...go for it
Click to expand...
Thanks so much. I really appreciate the detailed input and will be certain to fill you and the others on the HC in on my progress.

Best,
Scott
 
XC ratios very tall for MX and general riding. 11 and 12t front sprockets last like one ride on a 500.
39t crank gear, spinning gearbox internals and kickstarter gears much faster than WR or CR. Wear. Ensure those little kickstarter bearings as well as gearbox bearings in perfect condo.
Starts more difficult because you get less crank rotation per kick stroke. 250 and 430 you can wind up with a series of quick kicks, not a 500 unless some kind of decompression device is fitted.
Clutch was allu basket 7 plate and slips easily when brutalised or slightly worn. Replace blue rated springs with stiffer ones like on 4Ts, much harder pull though.
Check for cracks on LH engine casing between input and output shafts.
Kicker gear behind basket ring-gear has 17t and best be in perfect condo or it will jam sometime and toss the kickstarter idler gear through the casings.

For general riding i preferred to convert the clutch parcel and crank gear to much more robust and reliable later model 8plate WR, and sprocket 17/48 if you still want to run at 100mph.
Saved the XC stuff for dry lake bed racing only. Original XC ring-gears in good condo hard to find and expensive.

Its a "whos your daddy" machine and in a straight line will put all but the fastest moderns to shame.
Good luck and enjoy the ride.
 
Thank you for this additional info. It is greatly appreciated. Sounds like it will be a real beast! Will update if and when I bring her home.

Best
 
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