83 430 Rider Project

I hope I don't bore anybody with this project. I notice a couple of weeks ago that 86 400 XC has done what I am trying to do with this bike. I want the non Milk Truck look. This first post may be a little long but it is how this project started.

I have been on this site for a while, and decided I would do a little project documentation. I started a 78 390CR a few years ago and lost interest. I ended up restoring two 1976 Yamaha's instead. One which is extremely rare. I know it is sacriligious but hey what can you do.

Here is where it started in July of this year. I saw this ad on the local Craigs List.

1983 HUSQUVARNA430XTENDURO - $600 (YUCCAVALLEYCA)

NEEDS MINER WORK 6 GEARS VERY FAST 120 MPH FAST TUNE PIPE METZLER TIRES RUNS STRONG KNEE BREAKING COMPRESSION 13.5 INCHES TRAVEL FRONT AND BACK TWIN GAS OLINS REAR SHOCKS 40 FOOT HIGH JUMPING NO WHEEL HOPPIN LANDING LIKE NEW MONOS NO WIMP RIDERS OLD SCHOOL RIDEING BIKE IT WILL BREAK YOU FIRST HEADLIGHT TAILLIGHT BAJA CAPABLE WATCH OUT HONDA CALL ALASKA RCHARD THE CDL KNIFE GUY ALSO HUNTING NEW BOWIE KNIFES AND FOLDERS HALF PRICE LETS GO FISHIN AND RIDEN DUDES CALLNOW YES NOW


I couldn't resist calling on this one. I live for these type of ads as they are hilarious. The guy talked non stop just like the above on the phone. NON STOP. I may have gotten something like two sentences in in about 20 minutes. He says the bike used to run and it is in great shape........(where have you heard that one before?)..... he thinks the points are rusted and it ran 5 years ago. He talked himself down from $600 to $450 quite quickly. I tell him I will be over in the morning to look at it.

I run over and forgot to grab a plug wrench to check it for spark. He doesn't have one. I show up at his place and it is leaning against the fence. Horror comes over me. I am looking this thing over and decided I would offer him $250 since the shocks are worth that.......as soon as I can get a word in. Next thing I know he turns the gas on, it is dumping out all over the place and tells me it has great compression and watch how hard he has to kick it.

THE DANG BIKE FIRES ON THE FIRST KICK AND RUNS PERFECT. He about has a heart attack, jumps on the bike and jams it into gear since the clutch lever is broken off. He was going to run it up the street to show me it shifts. I had enough of this guy and purchased the bike for a decent amount and left. He wore me out in the 20 minutes I was there, and he wasn't even a tweaker.

Here is the gem in the back of my truck. It has potential since I have some Husky parts stashed here and there. Oh........and it's white.

I started pulling this mess apart the week after I picked it up. Looks like the tank is red underneath.




I was talking with my brother on the phone and sat down with a dull razor blade and some steel wool and got the paint off the fork tubes just to see how tough this may be.



At least he only painted some of the cyclinder but got pretty much everything else.

Someone told me to take paint off of plastic to use EZ-Off oven cleaner. I have heard crazier stuff as most of the paint removers I looked at can't be used on plastic. So why not try it. I only left it on for about 1 hour and then pressuer washed it with my handy dandy home pressure blaster. Came out pretty good. I will try more later on.

Continuing right along, I took the bike apart to this.



I cut off the rear hoop and engine guards on the frame and had to some minor welding on the front down tube at the intersection of the lower frame rails. I accomplished this the second week of September. My plan was to sand blast the frame after I installed a new bedroom window in my house. This is what happened after the window.



It flat out dumped on us a couple of times over the next 2 hours. The first photo is looking up towards Joshua Tree National Park here in California. It messed up a road real bad up in the National Park. Luckily I wasn't called in to take care of things. That was the next morning. I am a Facility Management Branch Chief for the National Park Service.

I had to go into work on that Sunday to checkout some power issues at the Park, go back and commenced to blastin.



It only took a little while so I was able to get some paint on it late Sunday and let it dry over night.



In the last couple of weeks I worked on some other doo dads of the bike and surprisingly when I took the bike apart all the bearings were greased big time and tight. The previous owner prior to the ding a ling I bought it from must have taken care of the bike. It was mostly a cosmetic disaster. Here's with the triple clamps installed.



More to come.

Here's the swing arm mounted with one of the shocks on. I took this Ohlins ITC shock apart as I had not done one before. This shock had a bent rod so I straightened it out to within .002 and made a new seal head for it on my lathe. This came off a CR and they rode it for awhile and it was a chore to get it apart. Got it back together and got the colors I want for the finished product. I have a set of CR forks in my shed that will go on the bike as well.

Yesterday after work I decided to get the forks out of the shed to put on the bike. I re-did these forks about three years ago and the plastic/nylon inserts were junk. I called George at Uptite and he told me to do the following.


Take out the plastic and make some flat aluminum caps, weld them on and thread for the schraeder valves. Seemed easy enough. The only problem was I didn't have a TIG to do it. I went to my son's buddies house and he said I could do it myself. At this point I had only tried TIG once about 30 years ago. He let me do a couple of passes on some practice material. This is my first weld with TIG. Maybe not the prettiest, but they don't leak. It will give the fork's the "works" look.

I cleaned the dust off the forks and stuffed them in the triple clamps.



I already had a dual leading shoe backing plate rebuilt and readyto go. Cleaned up with new brake shoes and paint.

Continuing on..............the PO painted the pipe pretty much white...go figure. I don't know what paint he used but the stuff is tough. After 4 hours of EZoff, blasting, wire wheeling, and paint it looks like this.


I media blasted the bar clamps and sprayed them with clear and set them in place. They came out looking like they are painted...........but they still look OK.

The week before last I did get a couple of things accomplished. I cleaned up the airbox and gave it a couple of coats of plastic paint and some clear and got it in mock up.


That Wednesday I had Ron's (from this site) brother stop by for a visit. It's a small world but his brother and I have some mutual acquaintance's. You just never know what is in store. He brought me some Husky stuff and I traded him some Yamaha stuff for the parts. He does extremely nice work. Here's the treasures he brought me.

Dang nice I might add. These will be great for the bike.



I worked on cleaning up the motor, in the last couple of weeks. It wasn't in too bad of shape cosmetically, it just needed to be cleaned and some blasting done. Here is the motor almost done. The bonus is that it runs good and didn't need disassembly.



More to come. I'm working on some off road car shocks this weekend.

I got bored with the car shocks. A couple of weeks ago I put an ad on Mark's vintage swapmeet site looking for a tank for this bike. I had a couple of leads and then Ron put me in touch with dartyppyt who is selling me a tank. Darin sent me some pics last night. I can't wait to get this.

Looks good! Keep er going!

Looks good..what did you paint the shock bodies with?

I used some VHT Hi Temp engine metallic paint, SP402 Burnt Copper. I found it at Vatozone. I put on about 4 coats and about 4 coats of clear. Has a nice look to it.

This is the last bike I did. I"m shooting for the Husky to look in the neighborhood of this one. It took me 8 months to do this. BTW I am a member of the Hilltoppers MC and rebuild Curnutts for the vintage guys. I worked for Chuck Curnutt back in the day.

Nice bike and great talent. My neighbor in ohio ruled the 125 class on a monoshock. He had those. reservoirs on his. But I think they were 250 forks on his 125.

The 125 X model had the canisters. They were the half year bike.

Hey Darin, here's the one I did before the 400. This is a 76 MX125C. Very rare bike. Probably less than 40 left in the world. I looked for one of these for 35 years and found one locally. Sorry for the non Husky side track but this is a cool bike.



More to come on the 430

Diggin the are Curnutt's on the back, very cool!

can some one tell me whats so special about the mxc? was it a limited run? interim model or what?

how do you identify these? a mate has an old mx Yamaha in his shed and he thinks its "one of these" can you tell me the frame no's so I can let him down gently? apologies to the husky hijack!!