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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Post up pictures of your vintage Husqvarna bikes!

Great story on the lightnings in Germany in the latest flypast mag, you would probably know the author as he was the line chief... Dave Branchett.. he writes well.
 
I thought it was time I posted some pics of my project '84 500AE
The first 3 pics are what I saw in the Craigslist ad about 18 months ago. As you can see it wasn't in completely bad shape though living in the UK and buying a bike from the US, that I haven't actually seen in real life, was a gamble.
right front.jpgleft side.jpg Right side.jpg

Luckily after months of waiting, working out how to import bikes into the UK, it arrived and thankfully, what I received was exactly as it looked inthe pics - complete but not running.
Being new to Husky's of this era, I had to research quite a bit to basically find out that it is a late '84 model, with the frame number showing as an '85 but the motor serial number was an '84. Now it could be something that someone has put together, but I read that there were a few in the last production run of '84 which came out with the '85 frame so it might well have come that way from the factory.
But someone put the seat from an '85 on it (the front of the seat had the fitting wanting the lug on the tank, which isn't there)
 
I took the left casing off today for the first time and it looks like the previous owner had started to work on it - there was no fluid at all (and judging by the surface rust it has been like that for a while), no gaskets, and 2 of the 3 springs are missing (with some wear on the top clutch shoe that looks like one of the springs got caught there)
SAM_1519 small.jpg


And the casing shows signs of where the broken springs got caught, gouging out the inside of the casing.....
SAM_1520 small.jpgA

Apart from that though, the insides look quite good and relatively clean.

Does anyone know where these springs can be sourced from?
 
Old Mate had a new one of those in 84 and had nothing but drama with the shoes and springs.

He barely finished any events and wasnt a good advert for the auto. It was an amazing bike to ride though.

i would look back through the posts here on the auto and how to sort the clutches as the 500 was brutal on them.

heat seemed to be the biggest issue but also getting the right springs and getting the mount points sorted appears to be critical.

enjoy!
 
Burnout tyre on the back!!:D

Paul Rooney in Sydney, in OZ is a real auto expert, worth contacting to sort those issues above
 
Burnout tyre on the back!!:D

Paul Rooney in Sydney, in OZ is a real auto expert, worth contacting to sort those issues above

Cool - thx for the tip - how do you recommend I contact him, you got any contact details ?

I know that loads of people have had recurring issues with Husky autos, especially with the 500AE but I know that some people have had loads of success with them. So with the right knowledge and advice I'm hoping to have a blast when I get the beast together and sorted.....
Just can't wait to get it going again
 
Don't stress, the bikes are an absolute blast but require that methodical approach to sorting the issues. have you looked at speedyauto's threads? he had Paul do a heap on his auto (he dropped a 430 auto into a late model 05 I think) have a look back through the vintage restorations or PM him he knows the guff
 
I took the left casing off today for the first time and it looks like the previous owner had started to work on it - there was no fluid at all (and judging by the surface rust it has been like that for a while), no gaskets, and 2 of the 3 springs are missing (with some wear on the top clutch shoe that looks like one of the springs got caught there)
View attachment 27274


And the casing shows signs of where the broken springs got caught, gouging out the inside of the casing.....
View attachment 27275A

Apart from that though, the insides look quite good and relatively clean.

Does anyone know where these springs can be sourced from?


Several things you MUST do is make a spring cover, so when they break and they will break they stay where they belong and don trash the covers and bearings, use the right oil and change it every time you ride, then you have half a chance
 
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