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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

1984 WR400

darren7878

darren7878

Husqvarna
AA Class
Bought this WR a year ago. Frame is hand painted and it was not running.

Good spark , fresh fuel , replaced cracked reeds still would not run.

Eventually I removed tank and spark plug and turned the bike upside down. Cranked it over and 'hey presto' lots of old fuel came pooring out.

After a tow up the road behind my van it fired into life. Ran ok but a little rattly.

I'm going to rebuild it for mx racing image.jpg
 
Very cool bike, and an awesome motor. Check the water pump for the corrosion, most got replaced by the dealer under warranty.
Nice to see that you are bringing it back to life, one of the best Enduros ever built.
 
Like Steve said pull the water pump off 1st, as I've seen a bunch with water pump corrosion, so bad the engine cases were shot :banghead:. Before you pore good money into something bad.

Good luck you'll love the engine power :thumbsup:
 
What is the power like on these? All I have heard is it 'good' ? Any more feedback? When the engine is built will probably 'match' the cases and 'clean' up the barrel.

I have been looking at the WR gearbox ratios and thinking they will be ok for MX? Anyone have any actual experience using the WR gearbox for MX?
 
the 400 is very versatile, altho i really cant say how well it would work on a track. engine or trans. the 400 puts out pretty broad power, with decent rev for its size. there are no dips or peaks with the 400, just broad torque everywhere with a moderate rush at the top..
 
darren7878 said:
What is the power like on these? All I have heard is it 'good' ? Any more feedback? When the engine is built will probably 'match' the cases and 'clean' up the barrel.

I have been looking at the WR gearbox ratios and thinking they will be ok for MX? Anyone have any actual experience using the WR gearbox for MX?
Click to expand...


Still too much power for you
 
You can adjust your sprocket ratio a tad for MX. But it might be ok the way it is. The 400 engine is very smooth power wise if your easy on the twistie. If you wick it hang on.

Is your bike an '85? Did you run the numbers?

Frame number? WO.........

Engine number the four number 208....?
 
Anyone have any actual experience using the WR gearbox for MX?

What I've found is the XC & WR gear boxes 1st gear is too low & 2nd too tall for MX. So if you use 1st and scream it, it wants to wheelie over, use 2nd & it bogs.
You can play with the countershaft gearing, but I liked the rest of the gearing so I never want to ruin that. My trick was to line myself up on the starting gate
not worrying about getting the holeshot & banging bars with those who do. I let them go & just hold the throttle on longer & pass most of the pack either on the inside
or on the outside of the 1st couple of turns.
 
I have an 86 WR400, the motor like mentioned above is excellent for off road. Chugs along nicely, does not feel like a big bore in that it is not unruly. Good bottom and mid, dont like to rev mine as it gets viby and does not really move forward faster. Likes to be short shifted and grunted around. nice even spread of power.

I put a 99 WR250 front end on mine as I had it and wanted a disk brake. Really made me a lot faster on it with real brakes.

IMG_5577-XL.jpg


IMG_5587-XL.jpg
 
Bigbill said:
You can adjust your sprocket ratio a tad for MX. But it might be ok the way it is. The 400 engine is very smooth power wise if your easy on the twistie. If you wick it hang on.

Is your bike an '85? Did you run the numbers?

Frame number? WO.........

Engine number the four number 208....?
Click to expand...

Will check that tomorrow. It is a US bike thats found its way to the Uk so i guess iy could be an 85...
 
ruwfo said:
Anyone have any actual experience using the WR gearbox for MX?

What I've found is the XC & WR gear boxes 1st gear is too low & 2nd too tall for MX. So if you use 1st and scream it, it wants to wheelie over, use 2nd & it bogs.
You can play with the countershaft gearing, but I liked the rest of the gearing so I never want to ruin that. My trick was to line myself up on the starting gate
not worrying about getting the holeshot & banging bars with those who do. I let them go & just hold the throttle on longer & pass most of the pack either on the inside
or on the outside of the 1st couple of turns.
Click to expand...

Thanks thats really interesting info and something to ponder on. I wont be wanting to use 1st at all to be honest just 2nd upwards. Is 2nd to 3rd ok? 3rd to 4th?

I probably will be running the Electrex ignition and rota kit, so that might wake things up a bit too as I think the WR motoplat flywheels would of been heavier.
 
Twin shock , old style air box , looks to be an 84.
They were a 84 1/2 as the earlier 84's were air cooled.
I wouldn't muck around with it as they are pretty rare being the first of the watercooled motors and the last of the twin shocks.
Here in Australia they are collectable.
The motor is a big lazy thing with tractor like power and will pull up hills one or two gears higher than you expect.
Fun to ride but fit a decompression release first up as they can kick back and break the left side cover and your foot.
 
dukkman said:
Twin shock , old style air box , looks to be an 84.
They were a 84 1/2 as the earlier 84's were air cooled.
I wouldn't muck around with it as they are pretty rare being the first of the watercooled motors and the last of the twin shocks.
Here in Australia they are collectable.
The motor is a big lazy thing with tractor like power and will pull up hills one or two gears higher than you expect.
Fun to ride but fit a decompression release first up as they can kick back and break the left side cover and your foot.
Click to expand...

I think the US guys got an 85 twinshock LC 400 but in europe they went singleshock in 85? Think thats what Bigbill was refering too.

Muck around with it? mmm the angle grinder is coming out tomorrow!! :eek:
 
Thanks thats really interesting info and something to ponder on. I wont be wanting to use 1st at all to be honest just 2nd upwards. Is 2nd to 3rd ok? 3rd to 4th?

I probably will be running the Electrex ignition and rota kit, so that might wake things up a bit too as I think the WR motoplat flywheels would of been heavier.

Don't know what I was thinking, (thought you had a 250 duh?) , so your much better off then Husky's little bro. The Trick on the 400
water cooled is like Motosportz mentioned "dont like to rev mine as it gets viby ", so learn how to short shift. The 400 can run
at a walking pace in 2nd, so don't use 1st at all. If you got to rev her, check (a lot) that the head bolts are tight.

I ran my 86 in MX in 2007 & got plenty of hole shot against 250F's

Husky John
 
i have 2 400 motors, one has vibes and the other doesnt. the vibration was traced to the crank, and when the crank was swapped between engines the vibration swapped as well. we took both cranks to our local machine shop and found one was out of balance and slightly out of true. might be worth checking this as the one 400 that didnt vibrate is the nicest husky engine i have, so smooth and very willing to rev if needed. i also find the vibes are a tad better with phils ss engine mount plates, they certainly hold up better and the bolts stay tight.
 
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