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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

bitza 430

piston turned up ex usa wossner unit, seems lighter than the mahle but didn't waste any time weighing it just took that and the cylinder straight down to the machine shop for honing.owner informs me that they have a backlog and probably won't be ready til mid next week......shit.. anyhow everything else is ready to go, made up my crank puller and made a aluminium exhaust bracket to replace the knackered one that fixes to the frame under the tank, i fitted a longer aluminium kicker from a husaberg by cutting and welding the original steel section that fits on the spline.
i have asked the machine shop to work on the crank first as this will let me put the bottom end back together ready for the cylinder, still don't know the condition of the stator and ignition system so that might be another hurdle but all in all making good progress, i will need to buy a set of early yz fork protectors, new side panels and front number plate and mudguards, later on will be headlight, brake light, switches and seat cover.
 
sorry forgot to mention that i had a hrd time finding a 14 x 1mm threaded nut to make my crank pullerbut after a quick google went down to my local puhbike shop and picked up 2 for $2 thay use the nuts on the axles of bmxs etc.
 
jo360 said:
piston turned up ex usa wossner unit, seems lighter than the mahle but didn't waste any time weighing
Click to expand...

The origional air cooled husky/mahle with the longer wristpin and less or no side cut outs is heavier than the later mahle ones, the wiseco ones, and the woosner ones. There is a way to get the two little dots over the o but I have to look it up. I kind of think husky would have sold you the lighter water cooled version after a while. There are some other differences if you take time to examine various choices side by side.
 
thanks fran i will take a look when i get everything back from the machine shop the piston was advertised as 2003 onwards and was delivered without the bearing i think the bearing was an oversight but had to wait a bit longer for delivery as they had zero stock.
 
machine shop phoned yesterday cylinder and crank ready for pickup, reassembled engine 5 minutes ago but managed to buy the wrong size id seal for the crank on the stator side so will need to swap that out.
everything seems very tight and heaps of compression the decomp valve works amazingly well and i can turn the kick starter by hand with the valve pulled otherwise not a hope in hell.
gears all shift well and can easily find neutral.
leave for england on monday but hope to have te bike back together and heat cycled and ridden
 
P1030557.JPG P1030556.JPG
here is the cylinder with the freshly bored sleeve, now 87.5 mm i tidied up the already ported work carried out by paul rooney in 1985 matching the new cases to the cylinder and the gasket to both, squish checked out at 1.2mm using the solder method.
the yz front end fits easily on the husky frame with the aid of some mitsubishi wheel bearings and a 10mm spacer.
 
Just bought a set of new plastics for my sons wr125 so I will be fitting his old fenders to the 430 together with a new front number plate side panels and a crf clutch lever with a built in hot start lever, the hot start will be connected to the decomp valve.
Managed to leave my computer back home so been having issues connecting my camera to the I pad iam using at the moment, the photos I posted yesterday were on a borrowed computer so I will post more photos later when I have got a bit more down time to load them onto my sons apple in between the boys arguments on who gets minecraft time.
 
got back from blighty sat morning and had the old girl ready to ride sunday.
did three heat cycles followed by a 15km putt around the bush.
initial problems:
clutch grabbing on steep hills.
lean jetting all round with poor transition.
hard to start when hot.

initail verdict:
very pleased plenty of low end grunt, no issues mechanically, smooth gearbox, gearing is good and once the run in is complete this will be an absolute flyer.
the rear springs are white and need more compression, bike seems to sag at the rear.
low centre of gravity, turns easily and feels very light, the exhaust is a bit too noisy but the muffler has been cut down by about 150mm.

i rejetted the carb which was set up very lean= 35 pilot, 420 main,2 slide. to a near perfect 45 pilot, 470 main and 3slide.the clutch grab was resolved with the use of atf fluid.hot starting resolved by retarding the igntion 2mm.gave her another heat cycle ready for a decent ride this weekend.plug is now a rich coffee colour as opposed to the previous grey.
had problems with the revs not returning to idle quick enough which turned out to be a snagging cable.
 
thanks Suprize, gave her another small outing today, feels very nimble with the low cog and seat height. what sprocket ratios are you running?.the clutch cable nipple was too small for the adjuster on the crf lever and was wallowing around but some heat shrink on the nipple made it a tight fit.
decided against fitting the decomp to the hot start on the crf lever going to mod the exhaust (belt with hammer) to give more space above the valve and stop the smell of burning pandys.
need to ride it a few times to settle in the rebuilt yz forks will tune them from there prob lower oil level and maybe re valve, did the sag on the rear but the front definately needs to be a tad softer, saying that they performed better than the wp45s and the 45 shivers before they were modded.
i think this is going to be my new favourite bike.
 
ok been working all day sat/sunday for the last 2 weeks so this weekend will be the first real test, i discovered an air leak at the head due to me not tightening up the two allen bolts in my haste to get things running.
the leak was causing surging once hot, i initially thought it was a jetting issue but a leak down test showed the head and a manifold were not sealed properly any how all sorted now and the jetting is now set at 40 pilot and 400 main.
gave it a little ride around the block today and man does this thing move, heaps of power everywhere, gave my son a shot and he thinks its too powerful, will lift the front wheel in third at half throttle also dropped the forks through the yokes about 20mm to try and balance the suspension and get traction on the front end.
 
was still having a surging issue at idle when hot so i decided to double check everything, timing ,base gasket, installed new viton seal behind the flywheel, head, cylinder and piston all checked out fine and any thing that might look like leaking got some high temp rtv.started changing out pilots and ended up at 65 this would stop the surging but was way rich.
i fitted the pwk 38 from my gasgas and it worked fine ended up at 35 pilot and 170 main so the vm was worn out and air was being pulled around the slide, what a pita.
first ride new carb was a real blast initially i just lugged around amazed at how much torque this engine puts out, next some wot and boy does this move seems to top out at about 7000 rpm maybe more gets a bit scary as the yz front end needs a HSC shim stack tune and the front gets twitchy and unpredictable hitting sharp edges, really impressed with the rear drum and itc rear, i would go stronger springs but my sag is spot on just seems to move more in the initial part of the stroke, front end traction is better than before and suspension feels balanced over small jumps and handles whoops well too.
engine revs cleanly and seems unstallable, it spools up quickly but the speed you are travelling at is amazing the gearing seems to be great for this environment.
it doesn't change line as quickly as the gasgas as i tend to pick my way through the loose rocks steering by weighting the pegs and leaning the bike over but i think once the forks are sorted i will be able to just plough through and not worry about changing lines so much.
i won't be faster on the husky but its great fun to ride and gets some attention out on the trail.
i will put my next ride on the go pro post up on the forum.
 
i won't be faster on the husky but its great fun to ride and gets some attention out on the trail.

thats a great line there
 
ive noticed the "plough straight through" with my husky compared to the KTM 300. I feel its a better ride to a degree and I wonder if we have been "sold a pup" with the finicky steering of the modern bikes. the 83 has an even lazier rake than the LC and having ridden plenty, I know how easy they go "over stuff".
If you had discs at both ends, only tight single lane tracks would give the moderns an advantage as everywhere else I rekon the older bikes are easier to ride.

I rode a vinduro on flat hard packed clay recently (with ruts all through it) and at the end of the day I went out to do a final sweep on a new husaberg 500 4t. seriously, the big berg was a nightmare, struggled to get it in a position to power it up anywhere and it was twitching and rough as guts to ride. the brakes were AWESOME as you would expect and no shortage of power... I struggled to get any speed up and or maintain it.. interesting comparison.
Obviously the forks will perform better when it gets rough on the berg and you can go faster with good forks....

sounds like the motor is a real hummer. don't stress about the soft rear shox as that's the ITC process, plusho ride with the capacity to take big hits and stay in line. they feel like a wobbly whale initially but you will get used to the armchair style and love its comfort level.
 
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