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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!
Finally got to take the 17 FE450 out to the dirt for its maiden ride. The heavy snow around here pretty much screwed us for any riding. My mods at this point are Sedona knobbies, 13/47 gearing, 3.2 Acerbis tank, Rekluse, hand guards etc. I'm coming off a 2011 Husaberg FX450 for reference. I had some concerns before the ride about the OEM mapping and general power output--the exhaust and intake seem pretty restrictive and I was hoping I could keep the OEM canister to avoid the obnoxious snarl that I had on the Berg. The ride was at 4-corners OHV in Central Oregon--not my preference for off-road...but the best I could do in February around here. It's basically high-desert with roller coaster, sandy/rocky and higher speed (wide) single track.
Back to the bike: the suspension is soft but in the ballpark (for me at 175 LBS w/o gear) and the new forks seem superior to the 4CS forks on the Berg. Fueling was spot-on at 4000FT and power, while not overwhelming seems comparable to the Berg. Steering is light and the bike feels a bit lighter than the actual 12 LBS lighter weight than the Berg would suggest. All in all, I'm really pleased with the 17...I have also been investing in equipment to make it a lightweight adventure bike. 2nd set of wheels with taller gearing and 50/50 tires, Mosko rackless luggage, Seat Concepts seat GPS etc.
Unfortunately, the ride ended in a trip to the ER for meStupid crash... but body is just battered-not broken. I feel lucky, it was maybe the most violent crash I've had in 50 years of dirt riding....I can think of a half-dozen lesser falls that resulted in various broken bones. And the REAL shame of it? My f**king GoPro ran out of battery just prior to it
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Great details NS. Sorry to hear about the crash. Maybe you could add steering stabilizer to your long list of modz. Not being a jerk, just saying. Not even sure it would of helped obviously not knowing the scenario of the crash. I'm at the same weight and just upgraded the suspension to firm. I also will be adventure riding so the weight will climb and I'd prefer to utilize the full benefit of a proper set up. I'm headed down to Washington next week to have the EU map installed and then I finally get to ride her. Looking forward to trying out my new Rekluse, sure hope I don't regret it. I'm a bit of a traditionalist which is a problem because I love to try new modz and inventions that can help me in anyway. LOL
Sicass rear and Zeta front mods with some other little bits.