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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Starting problem - '87 430 auto

Rowan said:
I have just taken the carb off and checked the wad of tissues that I stuffed into it yesterday afternoon. After sitting for 16 hours with the fuel turned on the tissues were bone dry. This tells me that there are no problems in the float bowl with the needle and seat or the floats.

The only thing that I can think of is that I have stuffed up an adjustment during my attempts to get it going. Yesterday I did find that I had not screwed the idle speed in far enough - it seems that the tip pushes against the slide and causes it to rise up. If the slide was all the way down could this cause the choke circuit to be working extra hard and sucking too much fuel into the engine.

I have the air screw 1 turn out from bottom - as per the manual. Can anybody suggest a setting for the idle speed knob on the left hand side? At least a starting point as I can't find anything my owners manual?

In the meantime I am going to check over all the electrics yet again.
Click to expand...

Idle speed can be set to any where you like but on the autos my friends who ran them always set them low as to not ruin the engagement gear, but they were the earlier autos. Air screw settings can depend on what Jetting you have in the carb I always start at 1-1/4 1-1/2 out.
Bill
 
Looks like your stator is damaged bad enough from the rotor making contact. Time to look for another magneto. Hope the tapered mounting surface on the crank stub shaft is good.

Marty
 
Jim - I have checked the coil to engine earth and it is all good. No it won't start with a spray of ether/engine start. I was also thinking that octane rating wouldn't be that critical - I just want it to run.

Replacing the whole system gives me 3 choices - another MZB unit, PVL or Electrex World. Did I miss any? Can anybody make any experience based suggestions? Some people swear by them - some people swear at them. Something with a good strong starting spark would obviously be preferable but I am under the impression that all open-class bikes have poor cranking spark. Is this correct? or do some aftermarket unit give a good belt through the plug?

As I see it PVL only seems to be internal rotor for ALL their 430 kits - is this a drawback for a Sunday rider on a trailride?
Electrex World is unknown to me and some parts are made to order - not off the shelf. Does anybody have experience with these units?
 
In addition to possible magneto and carb problems I think you also have a bad crankshaft seal on the left side, the one next to the gearbox. In two of your posts you mention grunge dripping on the floor. I take it you're referring to a black sometimes slightly thicker than gas, type of fluid. This is a result of the gas washing gearbox oil and old carbon, left over from gearbox oil now burned, out of the crankcase and combustion areas. I've run into this many times when rebuilding Husky motors. I believe that a weak crank seal can also affect starting due to the creation of an air leak. The loss of vacuum interferes with carb function when starting, especially when gearbox oil is allowed to run low. Once the carb and magneto are in working order and the gearbox oil level has been checked the bike will run with a partially leaking crank seal but it'll smoke more than usual especially when the motor is cold.

Since the bike has sat so long the entire carb should have all jets removed and the whole bunch should spend the night in a gallon of carb cleaner. Next day rinse all the circuits with aerosol brake cleaner and/or air pressure. Double check that the pilot jet is open by using a fine wire from a wire brush. Also looks like the ignition needs repairing or replaced. Spark should be blue.

One nice thing about some of the aftermarket ignitions is their ability to retard timing when starting. Plug fires with the piston closer to top dead center. Once started it advances to the preset timing. Makes stating big bores a whole lot simpler.
 
When i suggested checking your grounds i did mean all grounds , from the stator to the coil . When i check i will use an ohm meter to verify they are good . It doesn’t take much corrosion to affect the grounds . Others have made good points but 1 thing you posted is that the flywheel has “scrapes opposite each other “ . Looking at the taper on your flywheel it does appear to have moved at some point and hopefully the taper on the crank doesn’t look like the flywheel . Had a problem with a damaged taper like that on a 71 400 .Even with the bad taper it was not easy removing that sprocket. No matter how much it was lapped it would still spin the countershaft sprocket . Replaced the sprocket and main shaft to fix that . As for the scraping inside the flywheel , it sounds like the flywheel was tight , right ? And the stator was also tight ? How are your main bearings , any unwanted movement ? Up , down , side to side ? As for ignitions i did recently install an electrex on a friends maico that was notorious for kicking back . Kick back resolved , it does seem to spark at a slower kink speed than the origional motoplat but have no way of proving that .
 
Rowan said:
Jim - I have checked the coil to engine earth and it is all good. No it won't start with a spray of ether/engine start. I was also thinking that octane rating wouldn't be that critical - I just want it to run.

Replacing the whole system gives me 3 choices - another MZB unit, PVL or Electrex World. Did I miss any? Can anybody make any experience based suggestions? Some people swear by them - some people swear at them. Something with a good strong starting spark would obviously be preferable but I am under the impression that all open-class bikes have poor cranking spark. Is this correct? or do some aftermarket unit give a good belt through the plug?

As I see it PVL only seems to be internal rotor for ALL their 430 kits - is this a drawback for a Sunday rider on a trailride?
Electrex World is unknown to me and some parts are made to order - not off the shelf. Does anybody have experience with these units?
Click to expand...


If you're thinking new ignition, stay with external flywheel, gives more low end, easier to start and has lighting coil . I would go with a VAPE. It has an external flywheel, good spark at kicking speeds, and retards the timing at start to prevent kick back. It also has 80-100watt 12volt lighting coil. You can order directly from Vape.

https://www.vape.eu/vyhledavani/?search=70 08 799 DC
 
Thanks Jim. Are the other units of inferior quality? Or is MZB just more suitable? I don't need lights - my bike is only used during daylight and can't be road registered over here anyway. The twisted coil in one of my photos might suggest the MZB might have had quality control problems at some time. That is how my existing came from them when new.
I can understand that the PVL unit might be unsuitable - internal rotor. What about Electrex? External rotor and an ignition only kit.

All comments welcome - I am just throwing possibilities abround
 
Don't have any experience with Electrex products. Looked at their website, looks Ok.
made In the UK so can't be all bad. I'm sure someone will chime in?
 
I have used Electrex ...... once ! Both my Husky's now run Vape. As mine are WR models I have the lighting.
They are great, and have so far (7+ years) been trouble free.
Mine don't have the key way as they are the earlier Power Dynamo (now called Vape). The lack of a key is no problem to me. The lighting output is light years better than the glow worm provided by Electrex. The wiring instructions are good too.
All the Motoplats are now 40+ years old. They don't like the heat and will start to break down (ask me how I know :-( )
Some have had good results with Electrex, I didn't. Their aftersales and tech help is useless.
 
Thanks grouty. What problems did you have with the Electrex unit? As I wrote above I don't need lights so I just need an ignition unit. My vape unit doesn't have a key either - have they changed to a keyed rotor now? To be honest one of the appeals of the Electrex unit is that it is half the price of other units. I just had an email to say that it would be 2-3 weeks away and will come with a 130mm backing plate and do I want to confirm an order.
I haven't bothered to get in touch with Power Dynamo as my unit is out of warranty and also I can't recall who I bought it off anyway. My photos seem to show that somehow the stator was touching the rotor and eventually wore it down enough so that it just stopped working.
 
The issue I had with the Electrex was that it went to full advance all the time. It ended up pretty much melting the engine. The Powerdynamo(Vape) was fitted and timed exactly the same and has run faultlessly since.
Yes the Vape is more expensive, but at the end of the day you get what you pay for.
The keyway is really only useful if you need to pull the flywheel at a meeting. I have never found the need for one really. They are only for location and do not stop it from turning in use.
Ian
 
My Power Dynamo/Vape unit has failed after only about 10 hours running time - you have seen the photos. To be honest I am not really all that impressed. It took over 20 years for 2 SEM units to die.
I wonder if there is anybody out there who can test an SEM unit as my magnets are all still tight and solid - that is their usual failing.
 
Running VAPE (formerly MzB Dynamo) in a 78 & 79 Maico 400GS since 2006 - no failures. Running HPI in a 69 360 MC & 71 Maico 400 GS and a 73 DKW 125 Enduro since 2015, no failures. Remarkably my OEM ignitions in my 82 & 83 HVA WR430 are still functioning well!
 
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