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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

BlackZ's Husqvarna CR 500 Silver Streak 1982.5

Yesterday I took whole day time to learn to live with Silver Streak :D This was just my 4th time when riding this SS. Before trip to woods and trails, I checked tire pressures. I noticed that I had rear tyre pressure below 0.5bar, to easy up riding I increased pressure a bit above 1.0bar. This might have been one thing that made traction last times a bit challenging, normally I use something like 0.8bar in terrains where I ride.

Yesterday I had only one target, to learn to control Silver Streak powerband and handling. And I drove total several hours with it (yes, I was tired as hell after that :D) in all kinds of terrains/situtation like woods, trails, climbing, small jumps, loose sand, dirt roads, challenging slow places, 4th speed wide open throttle top speed, everything was tried where I usually take my bikes! :thumbsup: Just to learn, learn and learn.

And pretty fast I started to feel that I can control this megalodon as is, no need to "smoothen" anything at all. Actually I started to really love this SS powerband and how it handles as an classic dirt bike. And it doesn't feel anymore unpredictable. Powerband is actually very linear without any surprises or "peaks". You just need to remember all the time throttle control, there is that much power that it will "kill you" if you forget it. But when you learn how to use it and take full advantage of it, holy shit it is fun :cheers: Top end is pretty basic what also modern 250cc 2-stroke can almost do, but low to mid powerband is something unbelievable, when you learn to use it, anything less doesn't do for you anymore :D

At first this was just to me, who is not professional dirt bike rider, a bit too much after years with 250cc 2-stroke. I learned with more modern 250cc 2-stroke dirt bike, that I can use full throttle pretty much always when I want to play with it and I was able to control situation. I tried too fast to use all power what is available. My throttle usage was completely wrong for 500cc, because with 500, there is already so much power that you just can't open it fully always when you want. So from scared to death situation I'm now feeling full love towards my 500 Silver Streak :cheers: Also this 4-speed doesn't feel anymore uncomfortable, actually it is also great, so much torque that it doesn't need constant up and down shifting :D

So target was achieved and now we are getting along with my Silver Streak :cheers: We just needed some quality time together. But I still know, that this megalodon wins me every time if I forget to respect it's capabilities.
 

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Today I changed spark plug, my target is to go for a ride on upcoming weekend :cheers: Old didn't look bad, only black colored but nothing special on it. I bought similar spark plug, it was NGK B9ES. New spark plug gap was around 0.70mm (0.028 inch). I measured old spark plug, gap was 0.80mm (0.032 inch). Is that new spark plug gap good, so 0.70mm (0.028 inch)..? :rolleyes: It's slightly smaller than old one had. It did work well even with this wider gap. I just decided to leave new one as it was, because on my Silver Streak is still Motoplat ignition, and smaller gap should help it start better. But I just read, that some people are using very small spark plug gap with these, like 0.50-0.60mm (0.020-0.024), is it preferred or even needed? Easy to adjust, but always what smaller gap you are using, you will loose some spark efficiency, even it sparks easier with smaller gap, spark is weaker. So what is best compromise? :popcorn:

Same time when I had spark plug off, I took my cable camera and looked how piston looks. It looked almost flawless, not even dirty. You could even see those circles on top of the piston. And there was also number 86.92, I guess those are piston size numbers. Shouldn't stock size be 86.00mm? This one has piston size 86.92, so is it then first over size? Was it so, that last size will be 87.50mm?
 
On Saturday we spent whole day with Silver Streak, riding in all kinds of terrains and it was so fun once again :cheers: Really loving this bike. Original frame and rear swing is also now on powder painting, when riding season is over I'll start to swap all parts to original restored frame. I have also another original Silver Streak frame that is already fixed and painted at the same time with this other original frame, this other one I can sell if someone is interested.

SS started very well during Saturday. It was 3rd real kick with cold engine and always first kick when engine was warm. I'm starting to learn how to start it and no kick backs happened, of course new spark plug could help situation also. This one has that Motoplat ignition and 44mm Mikuni still, so I think it starts pretty well based on that.

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Here is also short start up video and little warm up. Sorry, I didn't think and I spoke Finnish that is my native language, you won't understand any word but don't worry, I didn't say anything important :lol:

 
Yes.. that looks like normal big bore Husky starting procedure, bike sounds like it's running good :thumbsup:
 
Yes.. that looks like normal big bore Husky starting procedure, bike sounds like it's running good :thumbsup:


It runs extremely good :cheers: Here in Finland is winter coming soon, will be long time to wait next summer. I also got Honda CR480R 1983, that is great bike also :thumbsup: But not as brutal as my SS is :D
 
Original restored frame swapped to my Silver Streak :cheers: Here it is teared down to parts in first picture, on second picture new frame waits to be assembled.

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Looks great :thumbsup:

what year Charger is that? Can't be to many of those in Finland


It is 1969 R/T Charger with 440cid Magnum engine, now when this Silver Streak was finished, Charger will get GMC 6-71 blower in next few months :D I think we have Mopar B-bodies pretty much here in Finland considering how small country this is. I believe, here is -68-70 Chargers something like 100-150 total. Many times people from USA, buys these Mopar B-bodies here, because here is price level lower than in USA.
 
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