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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Stronger Plastics!?!

Bench Racer 117

Husqvarna
A Class
Why are the upper shrouds soooo weak? They break so easily. I've never seen plastics this thin. Does an after market company make them thicker? Has anyone used carbon products to strengthen the front where they attach to the tank? Maybe line that part with fiber and connect it to the lower section for rigidity.

I understand the plastics are in two pieces for quick removal of the tank, but for strength, a company should make them a one piece shround. It would eliminate the split between the two sections which would stop the collection of branches, hence breaking the end off. Also, it would help the radiators stay put.

Any input?
 
Any input?


Keep the rubber side down :excuseme:

In all seriousness, I have problems with the lower sections breaking too. I ended up just removing them completely, and haven't broken the uppers yet. I think my bike looks fine with the lower missing. I also have rad guards / braces, so that helps the looks of it also.
 
The uppers rip off when bush wacking it. All other bikes I've had never did that with such ease. The ends break, tabs to the tank shear off. Nothing but flimbsy, weak plastics. The Honda I had would take a beating. We have Manzanita bushes and Juniper trees that are gnarly. Even being careful the shrouds just give up too easy.
 
The newer style bikes are simply put. TOOOOOO WIDE!!! and to tall and have to small of gas tanks! I have a PYLE of uppers and a small collection of lowers! The old bikes the plastic seemed better and not as rigid, plus the bike was lower to the ground, and held more fuel. IIt is the mix of the plasic that I believe contributes to this. I one time bought a pair of HEBO handguards and as I installed them I thought, god this plastic is rigid. I tipped the bike over(GAS GAS) in the garage before even riding it and broke the stinking Hebo handguard!! Mayby Husky has stock in the plastic or the plastic is a recycled KTM part but your right it is kind of junk, but mostly I think the shroud width is just to wide in general. Yes the collection of things in between the two sections is also a BIG problem!! Unless your in and open field!!! About due for a tank shroud update anyways...................
 
So I looked up welding plastics last night. Turns out all you have to do is melt the stuff back together. My left shroud was in three pieces. So I bought a Harbor Freight Plastics Welder. Then I did surgery.
I can't believe how easy it is to mend this stuff. Sure it looks a tad messed up, but it's one piece again not three. The kit came with wire mesh and filler. It works pretty good and solid. I then cut an old Honda shround and made a support from the front tip straight back for strength. If it's gonna be too solid of plastic, I'm gonna make it really solid.

So until these are totally destroyed, I'll just weld them back together.
 
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