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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

restoring a Up-Tite 87 250 XC...

oldbikedude said:
Thanks...I was just telling my son that I still can't believe my 430 started 1st kick after all I did to it. He reminded me we had it on video (albeit a poor video). Only fitting you got to see it today. The paint is not as durable but it still looks great.
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Ha, Ha, yeah, starting a 430 on the first kick is good especially right after a rebuild! Great work.
My 430's trained me how not to start them... the hard way!
 
I pulled apart the 87 250 forks... the oil wasn't that bad considering.

Just for comparison, here's my 87 fork leg w/ damping spindle (top) and 88 fork leg w/ damping spindle (lower).
Notice the differences in damping components.

The yellow spring and spacer are from the 87 250 I'm restoring. Does the yellow mean a certain spring rate?
That's 70mm of spacer with a stock length spring! What does that tell you about who owned the bike and how he rode?

IMG_1619.JPG
 
I'm not sure what the yellow means. Does the yellow spring look like it was cut down or does the end look "worked on"?
 
oldbikedude said:
I'm not sure what the yellow means. Does the yellow spring look like it was cut down or does the end look "worked on"?
Click to expand...
Didn't appear to be worked on. The yellow 250 springs are the same length as my stock 87 430 springs. When you drop them into the fork tubes they come to the top, so the haven't been cut.
 
everfree said:
I counted the coils on my fork springs:
yellow springs: 48 coils
green springs: 51 coils
Both are the same length.

Question: Fewer coils = higher spring rate?
Click to expand...


Jig up a test instead with a bathroom scale, you/we have no idea from here if the material is the same dimension and spec.Stock metal from a metal supplier is usually color coded so I am suspect that they used color coding on springs perhaps to indicate different composition/temper? when the size and coil count is readily seen.
hmmmm.

But if everything except coil count were the same fewer coils would give less deflection for the same size riderbutt.
YMWV.
Now my head hurts trying to think about it.......:thinking:
 
Everfree, start on the plastics with a pocket knife. Pull the knife towards you with blade edge straight down , then dry sand with 150 then 180 grit, and then go to wet sand start with 220 then 400 then hit it with some 1000 and then polish it out with Maguiars cleaner wax. Its a real time consuming p.i.t.a. but it works if you are willing to put in the elbow grease.
I think your gonna love the 250 stroker motor it has long winded power in a perfectly spaced transmission.
 
84scrambler said:
Everfree, start on the plastics with a pocket knife. Pull the knife towards you with blade edge straight down , then dry sand with 150 then 180 grit, and then go to wet sand start with 220 then 400 then hit it with some 1000 and then polish it out with Maguiars cleaner wax. Its a real time consuming p.i.t.a. but it works if you are willing to put in the elbow grease.
I think your gonna love the 250 stroker motor it has long winded power in a perfectly spaced transmission.
Click to expand...

84scrambler, thanks for the procedure. This is what I was thinking. I'll give it a shot and record the progress.
With all the white plastic on these LC Swedes, all my Huskys could use this!
I wonder if someone makes a plastic protector spray? To keep the plastic nice... at least for awhile.

Yep, can't wait to get the 250 running. Long-winded and perfectly spaced tranny sounds great for high speed riding.
With the porting / polishing that George did and all the other racing bits it has, I think I'll keep it setup for desert riding.
I don't want to waste its potential by setting it up for the woods.

I'm starting to clean the engine cases and frame for powder coating.
 
once you have it worked to a decent sheen again, it will stay ok for a good while. i use "dolphinite" uv protector which is kind of like a mild armor all, but just leaves things looking new instead of "armor-alled"
 
justintendo said:
looks good!
hopefully that kicker bump stop hasnt been like that too long..
Click to expand...
Thanks.
Yeah, the case is bent and cracked at the kicker bump stop. I'm going to have the machine shop pound it out and weld it.
Hopefully we can get it looking nice.
 
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