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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Trefle Lozerien AMV French Enduro (HVA Factory Andy Elliot)

k1llerapp

k1llerapp

Husqvarna
AA Class
Hi folks

I just heard from Andy from www.hva-factory.com - it was a cracking event in France for the past couple of days that he and a team from the attended - the event had full TV coverage and the website can be viewed here http://www.trefle-lozerien-amv.com

I will not steal Andy's thunder as he will be posting a full report after the weekend - here is a picture to keep you going.....

Stay tuned!!!

964828_555071737878550_1672564280_o.jpg
 
I am back****************************************

Wow that was amazing! We even got snowed on - in late MAY! I must get up to date with the web orders now, but I will report back over the weekend.
Thanks.

Andy Elliott
 
The event is based in the town square in Mende, where we were the ONLY Husqvarna team! This was good news for us as we bagged a great spot for the support van as near to the bar where everyone drinks at the end of each day as possible. Scrutineering was easy for Julian (WR430 / 83) and me, as the French love the old bikes and I get the feeling that even if a wheel had been missing - we would have got through!

We were riding on the same start minute - toward the back of the entry. This was no advantage, as with 600 riders the course in places only gets trikier. (should get seeded for next year...). The bikes fired up ok and we were off for a 9 and a half hour first day! This included a massive down-hill from the very top to the bottom of a big gorge that is used by the world enduro rounds. I thought that the drum brakes would be a problem here, but - no all was good as it was fairly dry at this point. I did have a quiet chuckle - witnessing a modern bike rider go over the edge - but he was ok and the check times were slack so you could wait for other riders to get out of the way. The first speed test was a tarmac hill climb504 L.JPG
 
Unfortunately, shortly after this test, Julian suffered a terminal gearbox failure on his bike. He had to hide the bike in the woods and get a lift back - recovering the bike much later that night by van. This was a shame, as a lot of time and effort had gone into getting to the start line. Never mind, unfortunately - this is sometimes to be expected when riding 30 year old bikes in a modern event....

Anyway, that only made me more determined to show that a finish should be possible, so I carried on regardless. The other tests that day were tricky stone litterd hillsides that did not suit me or to be fair - the bike. My test times were at best - poor, but at least I was still going and the crowd on the test were getting very enthusiastic!

The expected 26 degrees Celcius was now more like 5 degrees and the pit crew were suffering bringing summer clothing with them!!! Luckily, I had packed my usual array of riding gear and found that with a thermal layer, T shirt, Body armour, riding shirt and water proof jacket - that I could stay warm enough, but only just, as it was now trying to SNOW!!!504 N.jpg

The day ended with the usual 6 days style drama of a spot of tyre changing, oil and air filter change and the dropping of the carb needle by a notch, as we were at altitude and bike and rider were gasping at times! The French TV latched on to us, and I had to give an impromptu interview before putting the bike into the parc ferme overnight.
 
Day Two.

Only 2 from the 4 riders on the start podium this morning. Bike starts first kick whilst telling the comentator that 'I am enjoying the English weather that they have kindly laid on for me'... The going is muddier this morning after some overnight rain. Perfect! The special tests too are a little better for me - being more open and flowing 'Enduro' style tests. Beautiful countryside with spectacular views. But I remember to stop before enjoying them, as I have made that mistake in the past! Finish the day just outside the top 300 from 600 and looking forward to trying to get a little higher up as I get used to the conditions.504 H.jpg
 
Day 3.

Started well, but ran into some major drama after time check 3. A massive climb over loose rocks caused a big traffic jam. I fried the clutch getting out of this, but luckily at the next service, my spare bike was in the support van. We had the clutch out of that and all was well again!

The special tests were much more to my liking today and I pulled my finger out to finish 277th from 600 against bikes much newer than mine!504 HB.JPG
 
Fantastic effort!
And some nice photographs. (love the hill climb shot)
Modern bikes really chew out the tracks (IMHO), so its really a super human effort!
 
A big 'Thankyou' to the many who made our trip possible and so much fun. Hope to return next year with a team of 3 at the very least!

Andy Elliott
 
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