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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Rode the '82 430WR for the first time Sunday...

Kartwheel68

Kartwheel68

Husqvarna
Pro Class
I rode the '82 430WR for the first time on Sunday. I have not ridden a big bore Husky since about '84-'85 so it had been a long time, and never a WR. The place I went is Highland Park Resort in Cedartown Georgia west of Atlanta. It is an incredible place with cabins, 4 tracks and 40+ trails and 100+ miles of trails. With all the rain the tracks were closed but the trails are always open and they would be muddy, rutted and slick, the perfect torture test for the first ride on the 430, if I could get along with it in these conditions, I could ride it in any conditions.

I really cant describe how good that bike is, especially the engine. The trails were super slick, some places almost like riding on ice, but that engine is so smooth I could perfectly control wheel spin. Its still got the SEM with that huge flywheel so that probably has something to do with it, and the jetting is dead on perfect. Over and over I would hit some slick roots or something half way up a hill and instead of bog, I would roll off the gas and it would just keep chugging up the hill with no wheel spin like a trials bike. I was shocked at how ridiculously low RPM it would pull cleanly, really amazing. I had thoughts of putting the 430 engine in my XC chassis for open fast courses and the 250 in this WR chassis for tight stuff, but the 430 is unquestionably better in nasty slick tight stuff, I see why Husky won so many National Enduro championships with this thing.

Of course, those of you with 430s already know all of this, but I am pretty jaded having had so many bikes over the years, it is VERY rare that I am completely and totally blown away by one.


Brian
 
I'm working on some helmet camera clips, you can hear the thing pull down to almost idle and not even blubber.
 
I'll tell ya man...there's nothing like the first ride! That's an awesome riding area...looks like a person could easily get lost. The only problem is that I didn't hear full throttle but maybe once. Me, I hook 'em up as soon as I can, even if it means violently shutting her down for the next turn. Can't resist, it's just the fix I need and can't resist.

Last weekend, I fired up my bro's 1985 500CR for the first time since he bought it. Been fixing all the 'wrongs' first, before even worrying if the dang thing would run! It lit right up and sounds great in the garage (well, until the muffler flew off 'cause it wasn't bolted in place....about deafened me). Perhaps this weekend it needs to make it's maiden voyage. If I get a wild hair, I'll strap on the helmet cam and take some video of me crashing 'cause I am not yet familiar with the bike (BTDT with my first Husky, when impatient getting to know the bike).
 
LOL...trust me, you wouldnt have been grabbing lots of throttle that day, that road is polished Georgia clay and it was wet, it was like riding on ice in some spots. The video camera makes it look dry and not as steep as it really is, but it had rained for three days straight before then and it was sloppy. Here is another one of a short trail section.

View: https://vimeo.com/60675340
 
Gotcha! Looks slicker 'n snot on a doorknob. Great videos - the bike sounds great - but those narrow tree lined and deeply rutted trails in Georgia mud would make me nervous. One false move and it's collision time. Definitely not full throttle stuff, unless you're trying to 'slime' the guy following you!
For me, if/when it rains here, it soaks in to the soil so quickly and makes excellent traction material. We have more dust and sand than clay and slime.
 
Yep, I lived in SoCal in the 80s, did a lot of desert racing and I remember looking at the weather on TV and trying to go FIND places that it rained because the traction was good. The place I stalled the bike is because it was down hill and off camber, I was heading straight for that tree to the right and locked up the brake. :)
 
I must be getting soft (old). That trail didn't look like my idea of fun, you kept a pretty good pace though.
Bike sounded great too, fired right up after stalling.
 
Ron, I'm 45 so I'm "old" in the modern bike world, but even though I lived in SoCal for 10+ years in my teens/early 20s, I learned to ride in the South East on nasty slick tight trails like that. I love both kinds of riding, I prefer faster more open stuff, but I am kind of sadistic, when it gets rutted and nasty like that I love it too. I guess I'm insane or something, but the worse it gets the better I like it and I have always have. :)

Another helmet cam clip from Sunday on the 430WR. This is on a much dryer faster trail, I actually get higher than 3rd gear, and get the throttle open in a couple of spots. This clip I did not use any stabilization in the editing software, this is completely raw footage so its a little jerky in spots, but you get a better sensation of speed.

View: https://vimeo.com/60742913


Brian
 
I'm 53 and last road like that a couple years ago. Reminds me of Hatfield McCoy trails in West Virginia without the rocks and quads coming the other way.
 
Brian, I'll turn 60 in June this year and I'm SoCal born and raised in the Dez.
I did get to ride the ISDTRR in 2008 at Zink Ranch in Tulsa, rode a 100cc Hodaka.
Had igniton troubles on day 1 and managed to limp into check 4, barely running in 1st gear.
I did have fun in the tree's though.
I used to like the rough and rocky trails, but now I just seem to be in the way and slowing everyone down.
I've been back in the gym this year and my son and I have been riding MX locally.
I never thought I would be anxious to turn 60. Trouble is all those fast guys from the 70's are my age now too. LOL

This is my son and I ready for the Elsinore Gran Prix last Nov. 2012

photo_4.JPG
 
Ron said:
I never thought I would be anxious to turn 60. Trouble is all those fast guys from the 70's are my age now too.
Another one bites the dust. Vintage old farts (or Geezers) retain our young minds and still think we can ride like we used to (well...we can...until we get tired that is). I'll be joining the 6 decades club in December.
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Ron said:
I never thought I would be anxious to turn 60. Trouble is all those fast guys from the 70's are my age now too. LOL
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Yep, I used to think the older classes would be EZer but in reality the guys left in those classes are the hard core fast guys that don't know when to quite and it gets harder!!!
 
Motosportz said:
Yep, I used to think the older classes would be EZer but in reality the guys left in those classes are the hard core fast guys that don't know when to quite and it gets harder!!!
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Yea, that's what I'm worried about. But it's all about just having a good time.
 
I was at Tulsa in '08, I won the 100 Expert class on my Penton. Tulsa is by far the most open fast race we have in AHRMA Cross Country, nothing else is even close. Both times I've been to Tulsa ('08 and '12) I was on my 100, I cant wait to go back there with something bigger, like this 430.
 
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