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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

CAN'T START RESTORED '74 250 MAG!!!

Sounds like it's way too far retarded.
Try setting the timing as per the manual and see how that goes.
 
Go to the website huskyjunk.com . Browse his array of billet and performance parts and this will become your dream list for your Mag as that is what he specializes in . A bit pricey but worth it . He has a complete Mikuni conversion kit with eveything you need , carb , manifold , airbell , etc. to just bolt it on and go . That is where I bought my triple clamps , billet extended clutch arm , and billet case saver , all of which I recommend . Great to deal with and quick to get your parts to you . I did my carb swap on my own and it was a lot of fitting and machining so the kit might be worth the $390 , GULP! .

Now the kicker issue . Yep you only get about one pop per kick . This holds true for even later models . If anyone ever devises a different set of gears to get more revolution per kick they will sell a trainload of them and become rich . If your clutch lever is adjusted really tight it CAN allow for slippage for the kicker . I always leave a little play in my lever , especially with my extended clutch arm . The extended arm makes the pull so easy that everybody who rides my bike immediately asks if the clutch is broken . It's about par with a modern KTM hydraulic clutch .

I have an Mzb ignition and it likes a lot of advance . Personally , I wouldn't be afraid to try advancing your ignition a bit from stock and see if it improves starting and performance . Just be careful of signs of detonation and overheating . You should be able to rotate the stator plate to do this but make sure you have good marks to go by to get it back to your original setting if needed .

I went through pretty much the same dilemma you are having and it was no fun , especially kicking my brains out , in 98 degree heat , on the starting line at Mid-Ohio , in front of a couple thousand people . There are solutions . Keep the faith until you find them .
 
halffast said:
Go to the website huskyjunk.com . Browse his array of billet and performance parts and this will become your dream list for your Mag as that is what he specializes in . A bit pricey but worth it . He has a complete Mikuni conversion kit with eveything you need , carb , manifold , airbell , etc. to just bolt it on and go . That is where I bought my triple clamps , billet extended clutch arm , and billet case saver , all of which I recommend . Great to deal with and quick to get your parts to you . I did my carb swap on my own and it was a lot of fitting and machining so the kit might be worth the $390 , GULP! .

Now the kicker issue . Yep you only get about one pop per kick . This holds true for even later models . If anyone ever devises a different set of gears to get more revolution per kick they will sell a trainload of them and become rich . If your clutch lever is adjusted really tight it CAN allow for slippage for the kicker . I always leave a little play in my lever , especially with my extended clutch arm . The extended arm makes the pull so easy that everybody who rides my bike immediately asks if the clutch is broken . It's about par with a modern KTM hydraulic clutch .

I have an Mzb ignition and it likes a lot of advance . Personally , I wouldn't be afraid to try advancing your ignition a bit from stock and see if it improves starting and performance . Just be careful of signs of detonation and overheating . You should be able to rotate the stator plate to do this but make sure you have good marks to go by to get it back to your original setting if needed .

I went through pretty much the same dilemma you are having and it was no fun , especially kicking my brains out , in 98 degree heat , on the starting line at Mid-Ohio , in front of a couple thousand people . There are solutions . Keep the faith until you find them .
Click to expand...

Thanks for all of the advise! I'm seriously thinking about the Mikuni conversion. To me, and correctly sized mikuni should work if jetted correctly. I run a machine shop, so fabrication is never an issue! Ive backed my clutch adjustment off so that it releases far enough to get into the "freeplay" of the clutch arm, but just wondered if even at full release, the clutch discs are slipping. Havent really tried to run it hard enough to see if it's slipping while riding it.

In looking at the intake manifold, to me it would simply require removing the back piece of the whole intake assy, and making the correct piece to adapt the mikuni to the existing reed cage. DO they make a seal/boot that will fit on the back of a mikuni and seal into the stock airbell? Seems like if not, that could be pretty easy to turn something out of a piece of high durometer rubber? One more question, does anybody use anything to seal the Bing to the intake? Seems like metal to metal slip fit is next to an impossible seal and would never be air tight?
motor 3.jpg
 
I machined off the carb mounting piece of the intake manifold as you mentioned and mounted an adapter that can be found from various vendors . Since the adapter is wider than that surface , I had to fabricate some aluminum pillars for the mounting bolts to pull down against and drill and tap holes in the manifold . The airbox end of the carb had to be shortened , internally radiused , and I also cut an o-ring groove in the carb for an o-ring to seal the airbox joint . The airbox had to be machined slightly larger to fit the carb but it is fairly thin and fragile looking already . I hope I explained this so it is understandable . This was a lot of work so that is why I think the kit might be a good option .

If the clutch springs are adjusted tight enough I don't think you would get much or any slippage when kick-starting .

The countershaft cover on your engine looks great but I can tell you from experience that on a soggy grass track or mud race it will pack full . Back in the day , many racers took a hacksaw and cut away much of the cover to alleviate this problem . Go with a case saver for racing and keep that original cover for show .
 
What you explained makes perfect sense. That kind of fabrication work is "fun" to me. Ill probably start hunting ebay for a suitable Mikuni. My dad was at Forest's shop yesterday and talking to him about my kick starting issue. He said that the first place he goes with this kind of issue is a weak ignition. He said that they start to get weak, and require more RPM to generate sufficient spark than can be typically generated by kicking it. Rolling it and popping the clutch cranks it over at sufficient RPM to generate enough spark to fire. He was nice enough to give my dad a couple different stators and coils for me to throw on and try to see if this is indeed the issue!

Im glad you told me about the sprocket cover. I never thought about that...but I did notice that alot of them are chopped up into a small diagonal strip, and wondered why they did this! Seems obvious now!
 
metalhof said:
What you explained makes perfect sense. That kind of fabrication work is "fun" to me. Ill probably start hunting ebay for a suitable Mikuni. My dad was at Forest's shop yesterday and talking to him about my kick starting issue. He said that the first place he goes with this kind of issue is a weak ignition. He said that they start to get weak, and require more RPM to generate sufficient spark than can be typically generated by kicking it. Rolling it and popping the clutch cranks it over at sufficient RPM to generate enough spark to fire. He was nice enough to give my dad a couple different stators and coils for me to throw on and try to see if this is indeed the issue!

Im glad you told me about the sprocket cover. I never thought about that...but I did notice that alot of them are chopped up into a small diagonal strip, and wondered why they did this! Seems obvious now!
Click to expand...
Hi - I've been experiencing very similar problems with a 250 Cross (1967) that I've just re-assembled...
I read these posts with interest and just wondered - Did she ever start on the kickstart???
Thanks
Roger (U.K.)
 
She runs fantastic. It will start with the kickstart, but I admit, I still have trouble kicking it to start, so I still take the easy route and roll down the hill and bump the clutch! My driveway is on a 40 degree incline. These things are like nothing else Ive ever had. Its amazing to me that they designed this thing to only kick over about one pop with the stroke of the kick starter! Culprit was a weak stator that actually completely went out on me while riding. I still have some things I need to do that I think will make it easier to start, like sourcing a new slide for the bing (its sloppy) and try a larger pilot jet (does anyone know where to get one??). If i actually restored this bike to ride like it was made for :), I would definately invest in adapting a mikuni and a different ignition system, but as it is, I like the originality with the Bing and the motoplat.
 
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