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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Another WRX saved from the scrap heap!

Fine, I'll goop up the stink end of my expansion chamber.

On a side note, the "Stainless Works Blue Exhaust Grommets" model "EXGRO" fit pretty well as mounts for the expansion chamber.
They are SAE, so I have to eat some of my earlier criticism of putting SAE components on a metric bike, but I've got the exhaust grommet attached to the mount tab/hole on the expansion chamber, then a bushing (ID 1/4, OD, 3/8, 7/8" long) on the inside of the exhaust grommet ('through hole' is 3/8"), and M6 socket cap bolt through the bushing with a fender washer on the exposed side. It's a nice snug fit (and i didn't even have to goop it up with silicone sealant). I'll have to get some time on trails to see how it wears. The last black rubber mounts I picked up from a bonafide Husqvarna part suppliers didn't hold tight very long, so the bar is not that high in my book.
 
Lookee what the FedEx guy brought...0826161905.jpg

I sent it to HusqvarnaOutlet 6 months, 12 days ago, and the guy who sends out the invoices charged me about 30% more than the guy who did the repair quoted me (after the repair was completed, which he had said was done on April 1), but at least now I've got it. Never mind the fact that I was otherwise on pace to have the bike together by Memorial Day, and now it's just about Labor Day.

If by some twist of fate Husqvarnaoutlet ever becomes the primary source of Husky parts, I may have to take up Vespas.

Now to eke out some garage time and see if I can get the thing to fit!
 
Eric The Leg said:
Lookee what the FedEx guy brought...View attachment 71155

I sent it to HusqvarnaOutlet 6 months, 12 days ago, and the guy who sends out the invoices charged me about 30% more than the guy who did the repair quoted me (after the repair was completed, which he had said was done on April 1), but at least now I've got it. Never mind the fact that I was otherwise on pace to have the bike together by Memorial Day, and now it's just about Labor Day.

If by some twist of fate Husqvarnaoutlet ever becomes the primary source of Husky parts, I may have to take up Vespas.

Now to eke out some garage time and see if I can get the thing to fit!
Click to expand...
so what all did he do to it?
 
justintendo said:
so what all did he do to it?
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Based on what they advertise on their site it is "restored to like new condition".

The pipe is the one from my WR that I've had forever. I used to ride it in an area with tall grass and beavers, so after hitting a few of those pointy tree stumps, the header was trashed. It had been "fixed" a few times over the years, but that wasn't holding up any more, so he cut off the header and welded one on from a donor pipe.
And painted it (actually the paint does appear to be well done).
Doesn't look like he plugged and popped it, the pipe itself didn't have that many dents (other than the header) to begin with, and still has one or two (visible in the picture).
I asked him to put new packing under the leg guard, but I am not sure that he did (though I haven't checked).
 
well, at least the pipe is back in your hands and not lost...bad feeling though not getting good service or your moneys worth. i wouldnt be happy sending a pipe out for total repair and still having dents like that
 
I'll get over it, even after they raised the price post-repair (20%, now that I check my notes), in the long run, I didn't pay a ton for the repair. I am concerned that when I held it up to the WRX, it wasn't a clean fit. I'll have to pull the other pipe off of my WR and compare the two, as well as how the coolant hoses lay to see what's going on.

If it does need to be cut and re-welded to fit, can that be done with my MIG, or does it need to be TIG welded?
 
Eric The Leg said:
I'll get over it, even after they raised the price post-repair (20%, now that I check my notes), in the long run, I didn't pay a ton for the repair. I am concerned that when I held it up to the WRX, it wasn't a clean fit. I'll have to pull the other pipe off of my WR and compare the two, as well as how the coolant hoses lay to see what's going on.

If it does need to be cut and re-welded to fit, can that be done with my MIG, or does it need to be TIG welded?
Click to expand...
shouldnt have a problem using mig..at least i have with no issues. tig is always nice as it doesnt overheat.
 
Eric The Leg said:
Yeah, nice, but I don't have TIG...
Anything you drop in the tube to use as a heat sink, i.e. fill it with sand or anything?
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no tig for me either! likely never will..
i use my little 110v for thin stuff like this..set up for gas of course. if you are concerned with too much heat buildup you can always "trigger" the weld, using a series of overlapping spot welds. im pretty familiar with my lil 110 unit, so i would tack it up a bunch of places and weld it in 1 inch welds to keep it cool.
i would be nervous about filling with sand, and getting it all back out!
 
Good news everyone!

I no longer need to debate welding the pipe. After pulling the one I had on my WR off (the bike that specific pipe came off of anyway, they are supposed to be interchangeable), the pipes look fairly identical. The one that came back from H.O. does fit the WR fine.

As you'll remember from the start of this whole thing, I had to replace about half of the coolant hoses on the WRX, so I probably just need to tweak a few of them to get a pipe on the WRX.

The leg guard needs repacked though. I suppose that's probably something I go to my local bike shop for. Maybe next week....
 
6 months J. C. what the hell did they even do, that's like a days job not even... That's B.S. that these company's can do this kinda crap to their customers . Really sad now days , did they even call you once and let you know what was going on ?
 
84scrambler said:
6 months J. C. what the hell did they even do, that's like a days job not even... That's B.S. that these company's can do this kinda crap to their customers . Really sad now days , did they even call you once and let you know what was going on ?
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We did have a few phone conversations. Generally I was calling them though.
The guy who was doing the work, and the guy who does the billing are different people. The one doing the work was generally apologetic and cordial, and described having a lot going on in life that was impacting his ability to follow-through on the Husky side business (Like Huskydoggg, this is a side gig for him). If what he shared is true, he's going through a lot, and I am OK cutting someone some slack when life comes along and slaps them in the face.

Things happen, and when they do, a well run business takes care of their customers. I don't expect free stuff because things got a little backed up for them, but the fact that prices on everything went up between when they were quoted (verbally over the phone of course), dropped the ball for a while and then finally invoiced me is a bit infuriating. The guy who does the billing at H.O. gets an "F" in my book.
 
wonder if the person running things even knows this? either way, glad you have it back, and its quite serviceable. its tough when we have to learn things the hard way.
 
Agreed , at least its back and it fits. Don't ever feel bad for wanting your property back from someones shop or place of business. Yes you may owe them a little to get it and go some where else but I don't care, that's what happens when you say your going to do something for a customer and then don't follow through... The same goes for friends , if you say your gonna do something well then by god your ass better be there and doing it and with out 5 phone calls telling them your on your way... Rant over now back to your build. Whats next ?
 
84scrambler said:
Whats next ?
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Next?
1) Put shit together.
2) Visit my local DMV for trail stickers.
3) Call up my buddy Jorge and tell him to come over and bring his helmet.
4) Feel like a bad-ass heading down I-5 with two functional vintage Husqvarna 400's in the back of my truck, even though the chance of anyone noticing and/or caring is remote.
5) Dig trenches.

After the first ride sort out details like headlight, taillight, number plate decals, whatever I broke on the first ride, etc.
 
Feel like a bad-ass heading down I-5 with two functional vintage Husqvarna 400's in the back of my truck, even though the chance of anyone noticing and/or caring is remote
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Yep.....know that feeling...& you are right, few care. Digging trenches is fun.
 
when I go anywhere with the twin shocker in the ute its like a magnet for bike people. ive had so many traffic light conversations with keen bike riders all loving the old twin shock and all "wanting to do one up" --yeah right.
 
suprize said:
when I go anywhere with the twin shocker in the ute its like a magnet for bike people. ive had so many traffic light conversations with keen bike riders all loving the old twin shock and all "wanting to do one up" --yeah right.
Click to expand...

Usually one in 5 knows what they're looking at, the rest just know it's not a Kawasaki or Honda and think that's cool. Hipsters like European and/or old bikes, so some of them can sort-of tell, but not really in most cases. Occasionally one knows more than you realize until you look something up later. One time a guy looked at my bike and made a reference to Husaburg, at the time, I wasn't sure what he was talking about, after googling Husaburg, I realize we probably could have had an interesting conversation.

I've had the guys in crotch rockets give me biker waves, not sure how far down the spectrum I'd consider them to be.

So yeah, it gets some attention. But it's really unlikely that someone would flip a nut the way I would if I saw two old huskies in the back of a truck going down the highway.
 
Eric The Leg said:
Usually one in 5 knows what they're looking at, the rest just know it's not a Kawasaki or Honda and think that's cool. Hipsters like European and/or old bikes, so some of them can sort-of tell, but not really in most cases. Occasionally one knows more than you realize until you look something up later. One time a guy looked at my bike and made a reference to Husaburg, at the time, I wasn't sure what he was talking about, after googling Husaburg, I realize we probably could have had an interesting conversation.

I've had the guys in crotch rockets give me biker waves, not sure how far down the spectrum I'd consider them to be.

So yeah, it gets some attention. But it's really unlikely that someone would flip a nut the way I would if I saw two old huskies in the back of a truck going down the highway.
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youd be surprised how much one of those guys on a kawasaki "crotch rocket" might know about your bike..hopefully id be a little higher in your spectrum tho, i could have told you about husaberg...:eek:
 
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