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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

What oil? (dare I ask? mostly concerned with trans shifting)

V8Astro

Husqvarna
AA Class
Oh no I asked the dreaded question! Coke vs Pepsi! Chevy vs Ford! Dogs and cats living together!

I changed my oil at 300 miles and used 20w-50 Amsoil. I have another bike, Husky SMR510, that the previous used the same Amsoil in. He put 7800 flawless miles on that bike before I got it. So I figured Amsoil was decent stuff (never really liked the hype tho).

I now have just under 900 miles on the Strada and I've noticed the trans has become very notchy with LOUD clacking during shifts.

I'm not worried about which oil lasts longer. I change it often enough, and I trade bikes enough that it will never matter for me. I'm asking because I had a 2007 Yamaha FZ6 with a terribly notchy trans. The local Yamaha dealer sold me some Spectro Golden and that was the magic bullet for that bike....super slick shifting after that.
 
Beside the fact that the TR650 has a noisy gearbox, probably the nosiest I've ever experienced, I have to point out that 20w-50 is out of specs according to the service manual, as you need to put a 10w-50 oil, preferably Castrol. The cold viscosity (the first number) is particularly important for motorcycles, especially the ones with a single heating source like the tr650.
 
I've read that quite a few members are running 10w-40. I do have 3 jugs of Motul 7100 10W-40 on the shelf. I could try it....Seems crazy to me going thinner tho
 
I've got Castrol Power 1 Racing 4T in ours (Husky TR and BMW X-Country) and they are both very good on shifting when hot or cold.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. That's why I asked...my Honda NC700X loved Motul 7100. My Aprilia RXV had separate engine oil and trans oil. I used Maxima MTL-R fluid in the gearbox. That stuff is GREAT. Too bad it's not motor oil...
 
Thanks for the suggestions. That's why I asked...my Honda NC700X loved Motul 7100. My Aprilia RXV had separate engine oil and trans oil. I used Maxima MTL-R fluid in the gearbox. That stuff is GREAT. Too bad it's not motor oil...


The dealer where I get my Terra serviced uses Motul 7100, so that is what I use when I do oil changes at home. Can't say I've got any complaints about the gearbox or the way it shifts. Having said that, this particular 650cc engine has had clunky gearboxes in all of it's different guises, with BMW or Aprilia badges.
 
You see, my Aprilia used to routinely spew oil into the airbox. I do miss that delightful soapy smell of Motul 7100... haha
 
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