Cantilever Suspended Husky

Additional pics of frames with long-travel suspensions from the mid 70's:

Profab bolt-together frame:



and what looks like a C&J frame?:

Weren't all these early bolt together frames titanium? BTW this setup needs a banana swingarm, although that may create too much of an angle for the shocks.

The number and type of the GP bolt-together frames have a bit of a mystery surrounding them. According to VMX issue #1 featuring Bengt Aberg’s bike, there were both Ti and “high tensile steel” (possibly CrMo) versions. The Ti version had a limited use span, supposedly 10 races, while the “high tensile steel” could last the season. The weight difference, it seems, was minor. The bike featured in the magazine as Bengt Aberg’s bike #72X3605 has a “high tensile steel” frame which some say are rarer than the Ti as less were made.

The ‘lay-down’ shock frame pictured above was being sold as a ‘roller’ – hence the temporary shocks that are much too long, resulting in an exaggerated swingarm angle. The shocks the frame was originally designed for were more probably closer to the OEM Husky shock length at the time of about 11.9”. The Kramer Maicos, with a suspension similar to the very first bike pictured in this thread, used 11.9” Bilsteins.

I would say that the ProFab frame was the likely prototype for the GP frame on the Mikkola original. I saw in a Torsten hallman interview that Husqvarna routinely used ProFab for ideas back in the day.