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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

BETTER MX RESULTS FOR HUSQVARNA TC250

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STRONG MX RESULTS FOR HUSQVARNA TC250


After a difficult and demanding season for the Husqvarna Motocross World Championship riders, there were some encouraging signs for the future at last weekend's MXGP in Gaildorf, Germany, where all the great work done in publically developing the Husqvarna TC250 is beginning to bear fruit.
With a machine that is becoming more competitive with every race meeting, there is finally a feeling that the Husqvarna riders are getting to the point where they can compete on equal terms with their rivals, and this was very much in evidence at last weekend's GP, where right from the very first practice on Saturday, there was a feeling that things were starting to gel for the team.

Alessandro Lupino finished the MX2 qualifying race in an encouraging sixth place. Team-mate Michael Leib – responsible for the race debut of the Husqvarna engine that will power the 2012 production bike – finished this same qualifier in a respectable ninth place, showing the potential of this forthcoming model.

Saturday's promising performances continued during Sunday's races. Lupino was the most successful rider, finishing in ninth place overall after an 11th in race one and eighth in race two. The talented Italian got away well at the gate in race 1 but a slide on the first lap put him all the way back in last place, forcing him to battle his way though the pack, eventually climbing up to 11th, which he managed to hold until the chequered flag.

During the second heat, 'Lupo' was circulating as high as seventh but all the energy he had used up battling back from dead last to 11th in the first leg left him with little in reserve for the race two battle. However, he still managed to finish in eighth place, clocking up his best result of season so far.

Team-mate Michael Leib had a day of mixed fortunes. Scoring a fantastic seventh place in the first leg, he was forced to retire from the second race after a few laps due to a recurrence of the physical condition that has blighted his 2011 championship campaign and often left him depleted and unable to train properly. However, despite his withdrawal from race two, his strong result in the first leg meant that he still finished in 13th place overall – still a positive showing for the whole team.

Next weekend will see the MXGP circus travel to Fermo for the start of the Grand Prix of Italy, which is the final round in this year's world championship season. With renewed optimism and increasing confidence, the Husqvarna team is hoping to further improve the good results achieved in Gaildorf.

..............................................................................................................
Apparently, the new engine is paying dividends ... :banana:

Its shows a lot of character that ML did not cop some school boy attitude and stop racing hard ... The best thing he can do is win a race or moto and change some minds on his employment ... I wish him and AL good luck and good racing ....
 
My sense is that, over the last 4 or 5 years, Husky has been making 2 steps forward for every step the other (Jap) Mfgs make...they may get caught asleep at the wheel in the very near future. F-1 piston in a dirt-bike? what??? I can hear it now...
 
You gotta have the right people with the right attitude driving the boat ... Why you think that they will back off now? This is the most positive news out from Husky and MX racing since bmw took over ...
 
I miss read what you posted ...

I don't think the other players are the issue ... Husky\bmw controls its own future ...
 
Nice press release but it is not accurate regarding Michael. I'll set the record straight. Michael last rode a practice Husky the week before Lommel when he and Lupino broke their practice bikes. Michael did not ride the week leading up to Lommel or the week the team stayed in Belgium before Loket. Michael broke a transmission in Lommel and was having problems again with a transmission in practice at Loket. He told the team about this but there was no spare and or they were unwilling to change the engine before the qualifying race. Michael crashed in that race and did not race on Sunday. Lupino broke his bike in Moto 1 and chose not to race moto 2 in Loket. The team chose not to go to Great Britain. Ricci finally convinced Husky that they needed to change the electronics over to GET. Michael flew home to the US the Monday after Loket, saw his doctor on Tuesday and was released to ride. He tried to get a practice bike and went round and round with Husky Italy and Husky North America...... no practice bike for over two weeks more. The Monday before Michael flew back to Italy Martino, who would not answer his phone or respond to emails finally responded and after some heated discussions allowed Michael to ride his Honda CRF250 to practice..... he rode Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday then flew to Italy and spent another week off the bike in Italy before going to Gaildorf for the GP. I say this because in Husqvarna's press release they were not honest accusing Michael of not being in physical condition when in fact the bike developed fuel injection problems on lap 1 one of moto 2. Michael DNF'd moto 2 because of a mechanical problem! The rest of the facts are that Michael raced a production 2012 head and cylinder while Lupino had the factory race engine which a Husqvarna employee told me made at least 2 more hp than Michael's. Lupino also had the GET technicians crawling all over Lupino's bike which had data acquisition and gps. In addition Lupino received a new rear tire for the second moto Michael ran the same tire from moto 1. In the end Michael finished the higher moto score, 7th, and was the first Husky rider to place in the top ten since 1999 when Chiodi won the championship. Michael is proud of this and just wants to finish out his contract but wants the record straight. The engine Michael finished 7th on produces 37 hp..... 8-10 less than the other factory bikes and while I'm setting the record straight Michael did four hours, a half a day, of suspension testing all year with Technical Touch KYB. Hardly enough time to for Michael to develop any confidence with the bike. There have been many issues to overcome for Michael and Husqvarna and honesty and integrity are priority number one in Michael's camp. In fairness to Husqvarna Michael knew full well that 2011 would be a development year and has been positive through the year with all the problems without complaining, in return he expects that they would also be fair and validate his accomplishments with the same honesty and integrity by not making excuses.
 
Quite a story and thanks for typing all this out ... Sounds like Husky is about ~75% committed here ...

I've been around many people who came to work with a bad attitude and slacked off greatly at work due to some crybaby reason about 'I'm not being treated right by so&so' and were really just very bad for the work environment ... ML does not sound like this person and has continued to excel as much as possible ... This shows character if nothing else ...

Nice press release but it is not accurate regarding Michael. I'll set the record straight. Michael last rode a practice Husky the week before Lommel when he and Lupino broke their practice bikes. Michael did not ride the week leading up to Lommel or the week the team stayed in Belgium before Loket. Michael broke a transmission in Lommel and was having problems again with a transmission in practice at Loket. He told the team about this but there was no spare and or they were unwilling to change the engine before the qualifying race. Michael crashed in that race and did not race on Sunday. Lupino broke his bike in Moto 1 and chose not to race moto 2 in Loket. The team chose not to go to Great Britain. Ricci finally convinced Husky that they needed to change the electronics over to GET. Michael flew home to the US the Monday after Loket, saw his doctor on Tuesday and was released to ride. He tried to get a practice bike and went round and round with Husky Italy and Husky North America...... no practice bike for over two weeks more. The Monday before Michael flew back to Italy Martino, who would not answer his phone or respond to emails finally responded and after some heated discussions allowed Michael to ride his Honda CRF250 to practice..... he rode Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday then flew to Italy and spent another week off the bike in Italy before going to Gaildorf for the GP. I say this because in Husqvarna's press release they were not honest accusing Michael of not being in physical condition when in fact the bike developed fuel injection problems on lap 1 one of moto 2. Michael DNF'd moto 2 because of a mechanical problem! The rest of the facts are that Michael raced a production 2012 head and cylinder while Lupino had the factory race engine which a Husqvarna employee told me made at least 2 more hp than Michael's. Lupino also had the GET technicians crawling all over Lupino's bike which had data acquisition and gps. In addition Lupino received a new rear tire for the second moto Michael ran the same tire from moto 1. In the end Michael finished the higher moto score, 7th, and was the first Husky rider to place in the top ten since 1999 when Chiodi won the championship. Michael is proud of this and just wants to finish out his contract but wants the record straight. The engine Michael finished 7th on produces 37 hp..... 8-10 less than the other factory bikes and while I'm setting the record straight Michael did four hours, a half a day, of suspension testing all year with Technical Touch KYB. Hardly enough time to for Michael to develop any confidence with the bike. There have been many issues to overcome for Michael and Husqvarna and honesty and integrity are priority number one in Michael's camp. In fairness to Husqvarna Michael knew full well that 2011 would be a development year and has been positive through the year with all the problems without complaining, in return he expects that they would also be fair and validate his accomplishments with the same honesty and integrity by not making excuses.
 
I am sorry that the Husqvarna thing did not work for Michael` he looks the goods on them.
I hope someone puts a hand in there pocket and give him a decent ride next year he deserves it.

Good luck to him for next season from your Aussie supporters.
 
crf,kxf,rmz or yzf, hope to see ML170 all up to speed in 2012 and having some opportunity to roost the "little wolf" when and if the GP circus comes to town. Get this last GP done and continue to move forward !! Great job and keep up the even greater attitude you have ML!! All the future best,RN
 
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