• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Italy - About 1989 to 2014
     TE = 4st Enduro & TC = 4st Cross

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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

449 511 Product review: force clutch cover and hyde skid plate

N4544D

N4544D

Husqvarna
AA Class
Both look to be great products.

Force clutch cover:
The Force clutch cover for the clutch cover (clutch cover squared?) is very well made and fit perfectly. Replaces the black plastic clutch slave cover using that bolt as well as another bolt to the clutch cover housing. Shipping to the states from Australia was a couple weeks. Haven't "tried" it out yet, still waiting for my replacement brake pedal. The only negative is the price (twice as expensive as the actual OEM clutch cover itself, think about that!), but I will pay extra not to get stranded. This may also illustrate an opportunity for another aftermarket company to step in and offer their own version as I'd imagine it would cost no more than $15 to make (Force sells them for $175).

Hyde skid plate:
Great coverage, well up and around the clutch cover, generator/alternator/stator? on the other side, and full protection for the frame rails underneath and behind the footpegs. The stocker was lacking in this regard. It's also about twice as thick as the stock plastic plate. The price is right at ~$100. The only negative is the bolt holes are 10mm narrower than the stock plate; I emailed Jay with pictures and never heard a response. I was able to still mount it, but not sure if it is as secure as it should be.
 

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I've had one of the force clutch covers on my SMR since I bought it new, no idea how it holds up in a crash as I seem to only crash on the left side lol
 
N4544D said:
This may also illustrate an opportunity for another aftermarket company to step in and offer their own version as I'd imagine it would cost no more than $15 to make (Force sells them for $175).
Click to expand...

People have no idea what it costs to make stuff. The aluminum in that alone is $15 after you receive it and cut it to size. Then there is a lot of 3D machining going on there which is slow ($$$) and several setups ($$$). Then there is anodizing and then laser engraving. On top of that is time and shipping. In the US that would cost about $45+ to make. Add in overhead and sales and is you get $125 or so out of it you would be doing OK.
 
Well if you could sell the product for $125 here in the states, you may have some takers. I ended up paying a total of $195 (with shipping from Australia), which is too much for what it is.
 
Well if you could sell the product for $125 here in the states, you may have some takers.
Click to expand...

We looked into making clutch covers for the 449/511 and had a pretty neat idea for it. In the end the cost benefit wasn't there for us to continue with the project. We went forward with other projects instead and I"m glad we did. Like Kelly said, the cost to produce a cnc part like that is far greater than one would think until they try to make one. The time and resources needed to produce just the first prototype is staggering. We would need to move a lot of those covers at $125 to make the project profitable.
 
N4544D said:
Got it....incidentally I received the radiator braces from you and they look stout, thanks!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your business! Now the radiator braces on the other hand.... that is one project I am very glad we went forward with. I'm glad you like them. Hopefully you never have to field test them. :cheers:
 
Not to belabor the point, but a clarification.

My comments in my review about the cover costing too much was the fact that I had to buy a replacement OEM clutch cover AND a cover for the clutch cover (the force product). If an aftermarket company could just make a burly clutch cover that replaces the OEM unit (and eliminate the need to have to purchase a cover for the cover), you could easily sell it for $200, given I had to just spend $300 for a new OEM cover AND a cover for the cover. That was my intent with the product opportunity discussion. Just wanted to clear that point up as that might have gotten lost somewhere in translation...
 
I didn't realize you had to replace both the stock cover and buy a clutch cover cover. That was a pricy spill.
 
Yes! That's why the Force product, while very well made and executed (and still recommended by me given lack of alternatives), is really just a pretty thin aluminum cap that covers the actual OEM clutch cover and costs a lot. Give me a stout clutch cover inlieu of the OEM one and I won't have to buy the OEM product AND the Force product. Bad riders like myself would be customers....lol
 
I agree I would buy a billet case in a heard beat just to have the piece of mind that if the bike does go down in a race I can pick it up and ride on, and not end my day because of a cheap cast cover. The sport bike guys even make billet covers with sliders on them so they can slide for a while and the bike is still rideable. Great thing for supermoto since most crashes are low sides and not to violent.
 
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