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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Apologies if you have already seen this!!!

Cool video, good to see they haven't forgot where they came from, The Legend lives on :cheers:
 
Thanks.. No I'd never seen that vid.. Man, you can see the trials background in him...
 
It does seem consistent with what the new Husqvarna ownership is promoting. The Swedish roots/success seem to be the focus and IMO a lack of recognition/respect for the Cagiva era. Not sure if there's animosity or something deeper? This is just my opinion and should not be taken out of context.
 
Very nice marketing, Success !
I have always wanted to see a pro of today's standards working a vintage husky . Just to let me know that it is capable and keep believing in my riding skills. "more please" lol
 
rancher1 said:
You would be correct about American success, but the majority of the world championships were actually won under the Italians. KTMs marketing is very good though.
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They won 12 world MX Championships during the Swedish era, how many did they win during the Italian era? 3? I'm not sure you can even count Martens 1993 championship on the 610 for the Italians since its completely a Swedish design, so really its just Chiodi's two 125 championships. Husqvarna did win a lot or World Enduro championships during the Italian era, I will give them that, but half of them were also on the Swedish designed four strokes of various sizes.
 
Wow awesome tribute to the legendary husqvarna motorcycles.

Husqvarna dirtbikes, buy it, ride it, breathe it, live it, feel it, there history is unmatched.

It's the late 60's to the late 80's that cemented the rock solid history of husqvarna. Like every company lately who is a world leader needs to stay on top of there game but also look to the future at the same time. The technology changes so fast. Your either a leader in the forefront or boxed in at the back of the pack. I hope husqvarna works out in its new home.

In desert racing the whole front row is mainly husqvarna.

I have no clue why the husqvarna dirtbike isn't successful in supercross. In the woods the bike is the quickest.
 
Bigbill said:
I have no clue why the husqvarna dirtbike isn't successful in supercross. In the woods the bike is the quickest.
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Because the new bike has never competed in SX yet. The old Italian bike tried in 2001 with the DKNY Fast By Ferrcci team and it was a complete and total failure in SX and outdoors, the riders on that team all said it was by far the worst bike they ever raced.
 
It's a different feel and frame/fork design from the japanese bikes. We never rode nothing but husqvarna so to me the jap bikes feel different. Even the kantoons feel like the husqvarna handling wise. It's a European thing. Your standing up most of the time anyway. It's the degrees on the front fork that's different. In time thrill get use to it. Could it be the bikes a tad too fast? Like I said only the time spent riding it will improve the rider if he is interested in riding it. It is a slight different ride. But that's me.
 
It wasnt a matter of feel, the bikes were terrible. They broke swing arms, they broke frames, cranks locked up, shocks blew up, clutches exploded, I think in the 2001 SX and outdoors seasons they DNFed something like 30% of the bikes they entered. I have no idea if that was a result of the Fast by Ferracci team who were a road racing team that knew nothing about motocross, or if it was the bikes themselves. Here is a link to a story from Jason Thomas who rode on that team.

http://www.pulpmx.com/stories/tell-us-story/tell-us-story-jason-thomas

At one point, I ran out of gas in 5 straight motos due to a malfunctioning check valve in the gas tank hose. At about the 15 minute mark, the bike would start boiling the fuel (due to vapor lock) and the carburetor would dump excess fuel out the overflow. I actually had a great weekend going at Budds Creek and would have finished both motos inside the top ten had I not run out of fuel in the waning minutes. The team finally solved the issue after 5 consecutive DNF’s only to DNF the 6thmoto when the crankshaft said no mas.

Another of the many issues were swingarms. The main weld tying the swingarm together apparently was faulty on all of the swingarms made that year. I ended up going through 17 swingarms in that outdoor season and there were a few weekends where it had to be replaced after practice and then again in between motos. This was just how the season went. If I was actually riding well, the bike would break. If the bike actually did stay together, I usually was riding poorly. It was a long year to say the least and one of those decisions that you look back on and wish for the chance to change. Signing that Husky contract is honestly one of my only regrets in my career. I made a poor decision and paid a heavy price.

Here is a video of JT and one of the other riders, Travis Preston, who actually won a SX on the Husky, almost by accident, talking about the bike and the team.

http://www.pulpmx.com/video/pulpmx-showpro-183

They can laugh about it now, but its pretty clear the bike was a pile of junk.
 
What the hell are you talking about Travis Prestons 125 was so freaking fast he did not even know he had won the SX is 2001 :D

Gram Gravis is a stud.

The vid is corny but the riding is amazing as usual.

I also find it odd they comply ignore the italian bikes. They were as much husky as their bikes are now. All good, its their company to do whatever they like with it and seem to be making the best of it for them.
 
The swing arms broke as far back as '98. They the guy who purchased the sister bike to mine when his swing arm broke they couldn't get him a new one. Getting replacement parts has always been a problem with the newer husqvarna. I hope it's better today? I couldn't jet my 250wr. If you were wide open all the time it was ok. I lost $1,500 when I sold the 98 250wr.

With my new '99 TE 610e dual sport the arc'd plate that guided the shifter pawls was the wrong diameter. Mine all of a sudden jammed up on my first off road ride. Then on the new designed 610 the dowel pin holes that held the outer star ring on the oil pump housing were drilled too deep. The pins moved in and the oil pump housing turned and it lost oil pressure to the head. It wiped out the cam and followers/rockers. I had no miles on it, well maybe 200 if that. The power was awesome. I lost $1,000 on this bike the dealer bought it back. I had serious words with Ferraci himself. He wasn't nice too.

I just have a curse with new bikes.

I purchased a left over 510 husaberg. I rode it in my yard maybe one mile. The ignition cover was dripping oil. I found out the dealer who originally had it took the better lighting coil ignition out of it and left the screws loose and the case cracked. Then the dealer who first had it went out of business and my dealer ended up with the stripped New bikes. I argued with KTM for a new motor but no way they wanted to replace the case half. I got my money back in full and was asked not to purchase another KTM product. Nice? That was it with me and KTM. They weren't nice to me the customer at all.

I went back to my husqvarna left kickers. I'm cursed. I purchased an '86 400 wrx non runner for $150.

I originally sold my 72 Suzuki TS 250 to purchase the first 98 husqvarna bike. I sold a 72 bike that was a better ride than the new 98.
 
I've been hiding under a rock........ that is a cool tribute to "the pioneers of motocross"! On another note, I've done just about everything he did in that vid, just not on purpose and with a bit more pain!
LOL!!
w
 
Good vid. Just a shame the book Husqvarna Success was so biased towards the American market and doesn't give any recognition to us in the UK. Edison Dye did a great job in getting Huskies established in the US, but here in the UK a lot of the development work in the late 60's and early 70's that was fed back to the factory by British riders riding for the UK importer Brian Leask isn't even mentioned. Shame. My old man helped the factory develop the 360....

Anyway going off topic. I'm pleased Husky has recognised its roots.
 
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