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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Husky 360 questions

ruwfo

ruwfo

Administrator
Staff member
Been kicking around make a works style 75-76 360, like my older brother races back in the day, but have some question before i make the plunge & buy a bike to modify.

I've been collecting parts for one for a few years, have a complete frame with stock swingarm , air box assy, stock CR pipe + a trick banana style :banana: swingarm too.

Any body know

1) Are the 75 - 76 cylinders the same?
2) Can you put a later complete front end (79?) on the 75 or 76 frame. Been looking at Howerton's
bike pictures & sure looks like Husky used something close to his works style forks on the 79.

Husky John
 
Dont know about the cylinder, but I think they are the same. In '78 they went to Timken bearings in the steering head, which are not hard to change the races, but the '78 125 and Auto still had the loose bearing clamps so any '77 plus those '78s clamps will swap right onto a '75-'76 frame. Of course, you can put any year 35mm forks into those clamps.
 
Hi husky john I put a 83" triple tree and 40mm forks on my 76"360cr frame I took the bearings off the 83" and had steel bushings made top and bottom to fit the 76" races and they fit the shaft on the 83"tree it all fit perfectly I love the way that front end feels compared to the stock ones.I had to cut the stops shorter so it would turn shorter it doesn't turn as short as a stock setup but so far it hasn't been a problem.I also had to put a don vesco tank on it and moved it back about one inch and i had to move the seat back to. If i didn't go with a plastic tank i would have dented the crap out of the steel one.
 
When I put the Timken races on my 78 390 Auto frame I ended up with a stem neck height equal to the 82 and up frames I have. The neck height between the 76 frame and the 78 frame I have are equal. Just knock out the ball cones and get caps from a 78 Timken frame, turn down the sleeve portion, and you will be all set. If you can not find a bad 78 frame to salvage from, I happened to model the conversion numbers and the caps so I can reproduce them at some point. I can make you a blueprint if you need it. Actually if you can find a 78 frame with the 29° rake, buy it and build on it

Just remember the 75 & 76 frames have 32° rake. You might not like the way it corners.
 
Jim,
Yeah i kind of thought the later 70's frame steered better, but i'd be building a 75-76 class racer so where all in the same boat LOL. I think i'm going to get what looks like
a 76 360CR this weekend, I'll post pics once it's a done deal.. Also looks like i'll be get a 80 390WR too, more projects , here we go again .

Husky John
 
I am sure Lackey was riding a prototype 390CR in 1976 in GPs and Howerton's 1976 360 shown below appears to have the 1977 CR frame as the rear shock mounts point up instead of down like on the 1976 and older frames. So if you want a true works replica you can use the 77 CR frame and use the side pipe to replicate Howerton's bike or build a 390CR if you want to replicate Lackey's 1976 works bike. Husqvarna works bikes back then were really pre production prototypes
DSC00899-904x684.jpg
 
jimspac said:
I am sure Lackey was riding a prototype 390CR in 1976 in GPs and Howerton's 1976 360 shown below appears to have the 1977 CR frame as the rear shock mounts point up instead of down like on the 1976 and older frames. So if you want a true works replica you can use the 77 CR frame and use the side pipe to replicate Howerton's bike or build a 390CR if you want to replicate Lackey's 1976 works bike. Husqvarna works bikes back then were really pre production prototypes
DSC00899-904x684.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Jim may have a great point on the 360GP. Maybe look at 390 frame after reading the article. I owned one and I remember it had a nice rush in the power band.

One think happened - and it just hit me after I read the following article on the 360. I complete broke the rear
shock mount on the 75 frame. It was at the Pontiac Silverdome amateur supercross. No I did not qualify and the next rider
next to me made a nice cushion when I landed on him.

Please read - http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/290/1734/Motorcycle-Article/Memorable-MC-360-Mikkola-Husqvarna.aspx

So Husky copied the Mikkola's works bike very closely and had real thin wall tubing on production bike ?

Please read the comments section below the article on the 360 GP development. It was good reading but very long worded.


I replaced the 360 with a 77 390 and went all the way with 17.5 Fox air shocks. Always was reseting the air on these , but was fun bike also.

You will have fun with the 360 engine. Why did I not keep all these old bikes !!
 
All good point boys, but the problem i have is the Vintage MX race organizations only consider bikes 1974 & below vintage. Ahrma says a 75 is the same as a 82 , meaning it's Post Vintage.. I already own a 1980 390cr, 82 430CR , 83 250CR , 84 500CR & a 84 430 hybrid & all are considered Ultima or post Vintage class bikes. So i have 5 bikes & only 1 like bike class to race in, unless i race in the age class which allows bikes into the late 80's, not a even playing field in my book.

Now im NOT a Expert rider, but i still like to mix it up mid pack..So i try to mix up the bikes i race..

I did find ACR has a 75-76 class along with the Ultima class so that's why i'm leaning to this 76. I've already got a banana swingarm so i'm thinking i can fit 16" shocks & with a 77 125 triple tree , i'll be able to slide 79 forks & wheel assembly right on.

I plan on racing what i've got , so any other ideas... i'm all ears..:D

Husky John
 
GaryM said:
Jim may have a great point on the 360GP. Maybe look at 390 frame after reading the article. I owned one and I remember it had a nice rush in the power band.

One think happened - and it just hit me after I read the following article on the 360. I complete broke the rear
shock mount on the 75 frame. It was at the Pontiac Silverdome amateur supercross. No I did not qualify and the next rider
next to me made a nice cushion when I landed on him.

Please read - http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/290/1734/Motorcycle-Article/Memorable-MC-360-Mikkola-Husqvarna.aspx

So Husky copied the Mikkola's works bike very closely and had real thin wall tubing on production bike ?

Please read the comments section below the article on the 360 GP development. It was good reading but very long worded.


I replaced the 360 with a 77 390 and went all the way with 17.5 Fox air shocks. Always was reseting the air on these , but was fun bike also.

You will have fun with the 360 engine. Why did I not keep all these old bikes !!
Click to expand...

Gary,
In fact, i looked at a frame i got last year that i was told was a 75 360GP & low & behold it has NO serial # so it was probably one of the replacement frame Husky did under warranty mentioned in the article.. Pretty cool huh :D.

Husky John
 
AHRMA has three Post Vintage classes, Historic which is '75-'77, GP which is '78-'8? with air cooling and no linkage rear suspension, and Ultima which is really for water cooled and linkage rear suspension. Those newer bikes you have unless they are water cooled, are really GP class bikes not Ultima class, but you can race them in Ultima if you want.
 
Kartwheel68 said:
AHRMA has three Post Vintage classes, Historic which is '75-'77, GP which is '78-'8? with air cooling and no linkage rear suspension, and Ultima which is really for water cooled and linkage rear suspension. Those newer bikes you have unless they are water cooled, are really GP class bikes not Ultima class, but you can race them in Ultima if you want.
Click to expand...
Good info :thumbsup: , I was partly mis informed a few years back, when i brought my 82 430 to a AHRMA race & i was told i had to run Altima, so the last 2 Unadilla 's that's what i sign up for.. So i'll run Historic & GP classes from now on.
 
No problem, AHRMA classes can be confusing, especially with the last twin shock Huskys because they were the last to go to single shock. As long as its air cooled and non-linkage its GP legal, but you can bump up an "Era" so if you wanted to run GP 500 and Ultima 500 with that '82 430, you could, you just cant bump down an era.
 
Also, none of the mods you are talking about doing to the 360 are a problem in Historic, but you would have to make sure the travel at both ends was limited to 9", so the later forks would have to be shortened and maybe spacers in the shocks.
 
Just looked at the NO serial number replacement GP frame, today & i noticed it was repaired once & has rust hole + a dent in the one lower tube too..So to me it's a wall hanger now..
 

Attachments

  • 100_0804.JPG
    100_0804.JPG
    98.6 KB · Views: 16
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top