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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

88 XC430 de-comp mod

With my 400 '86 liquid I drilled and reamed a hole in the head between the rear side of the spark plug hole. I drilled a piece of aluminum round stock. I chambered the hole in the head both sides so I could pour in more TIG rod so it's well over 100% welded. I used a piece of drill rod on an angle plate to align the drill press to the whole in the plug I just welded. I drilled and tapped it for the screw in compression release from the older bikes with the handle bar lever. It worked great it was life before the chainsaws had them.

I'm going to try one on my 250 the push button one.

After two knee operations I found my husqvarna 390 impossible to start. I would pop start it down a hill were we rode and never stalled it. I stalled it once and pushed it up a dirt hill trail
I turned the bike around and tried a 1st gear pop start. Dumb move it works on pavement. So up the hill I pushed and second gear she popped and off I went.
 
In the late 80s I was a mechanic in a lawn mower outlet only ever saw 1 Victa, it had a handle which folded out and you spun it to start "no string starters there". A quick Evil bay search showed 2 and a repair kit and they were all Down under, I could get my brother in Auckland to source one, but he has as much mech knowledge as my little finger!!!
 
"Update"
Not to happy with the welding neat enough on top. but below was something else!! On the original insert it kept going porous apparently? hence the large area going to the spark plug thread. And then the welder told me that the tungsten shattered (the two other spots of weld) it had only happened to him twice in 20yrs. I am no welder so I don't know. but with a lot of dremel work it appeared clean up OK. and with a bead blast and some etch primer followed by a couple of coats of satin black,I am ready to fit.001.JPG002.JPG
 

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A milk crate on the dead start line would look good, got milk?
Sorry I wonder how many do it? I did with the 250's. Not on the starting line I never raced.
Or I climbed up the unloading plank to start the left kicker.

I sold my new 98 husqvarna wr250 street legal bike because I couldn't kick it. If I missed starting it she would flood then I need to change the sparkplug.
Luckily were we rode had a hill to pop start the 390/430's.

I stalled in the woods once alone and pushed the 390 up a dirt hill and stupid me I put it in first gear to pop it. I found out you can't start the big bores in first gear. Heed my warning. I got to push it up the dirt hill again and use second gear. She popped right away. Lessons learned.

I'm just an old husky guy passing my experiences and mistakes.
 
To weld the head being liquid cooled the anti freeze coolant if not cleaned out of the pores of the metal can be drawn to the heat of the weld. I did wash it good and use a torch to make sure any impurities are gone. Then I welded my LC head. But a lot of my experiences have been welding cracked cast iron blocks in the past were I deal with grease, oil and coolant.
 
Bigbill said:
A milk crate on the dead start line would look good, got milk?
Sorry I wonder how many do it? I did with the 250's. Not on the starting line I never raced.
Or I climbed up the unloading plank to start the left kicker.

I sold my new 98 husqvarna wr250 street legal bike because I couldn't kick it. If I missed starting it she would flood then I need to change the sparkplug.
Luckily were we rode had a hill to pop start the 390/430's.

I stalled in the woods once alone and pushed the 390 up a dirt hill and stupid me I put it in first gear to pop it. I found out you can't start the big bores in first gear. Heed my warning. I got to push it up the dirt hill again and use second gear. She popped right away. Lessons learned.

I'm just an old husky guy passing my experiences and mistakes.
Click to expand...

are you short bill? surprised you had a hard time starting the 98 250, my 95 360 lights easily with a swift kick. my 88 250 is tall but is very easy to start sitting down. the 430 and 500 i can start sitting down in a pinch, but are much easier standing to the side. then again im 6 foot 2 inches. i can understand fitting a compression release to a 430 or 500 but a 250?
 
dont get me wrong, timing and jetting has to be close or you will be in for a rough time. my 360 is probably the hardest to kick i have had, but 2 kicks cold and 1 kick hot and its always running. thanks lectron! to be fair the mikuni was almost as good in that aspect
 
I'm 5'10" and shrinking as I get older. After two knee operations I can't kick anymore. My 84 wr has the longer kick start lever I need to put on the "S" bent lower one.
 
It was a sciatic problem that made me do it and it is a whole lot easier now, both on me and the kick start lever
 
Useless.... my 81 yr old dad thats been racing since the 60s just started my 86 500xc Baja bike....

treat it like a 4 stroke.... go just past TDC bring the k/s back to top top and give it 1 good hard kick....

doing all this to a 30 yr old machine is plain silly.... and just asking for something to break or malfunction
 
Well I'm a little wobbly yet I still need to get my balance back. This 250wr has the long kick start lever. Since my knee operations I lost some degrees in bending. I ordered a short kicker today plus I have the "s" kicker to try too. I'm not giving up.
 
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