• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Austria - About 2014 & Newer
     FE = 4st Enduro & FC = 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

FE/FC Finally Going To Fix The Front Forks On My 501

Dirtdame

Dirtdame

Administrator
Staff member
I have been riding my 2018 FE 501 for about two years now, and I have never been too excited over the front suspension on it, so I finally decided to have the front forks reworked. I did some research on different fixes and also did some research on the nearest suspension gurus in my area. I finally went with an old and trusted shop that I have always used in the past, partially because of the past good service I had from them on all my dirt bikes, and partially because they had a good value for the dollar, as Bob Bell came up with his own version of dampening mods for the Explorer forks that were a lot less expensive than other kits. So the forks are up at Precision Concepts in Riverside, while poor Mr.501 sits in the garage with nothing to do and nowhere to go. In a couple of days, i should be able to go back up there and pick up the much improved boingers to slap back on the bike and try out. Can't wait!
 
I just got them back this afternoon. The kit that Bob puts together was missing a part and he had to order some more parts from Zip Ty. Then that order got lost and delayed in the mail. Finally, everything came together, and I got my forks. Just got done putting them back on the bike. Will ride very soon.
 
Took the new boingers out for a little whirl on Sunday afternoon. Night and day difference, like new forks. All the harsh, uncontrolled rebound was gone. Compression over small high speed stuff was plush and sensitive, then progressively tightened up just like it should. The bike felt settled and balanced for a change. The stock rear shock matched pretty well, with a slight bit of tweaking to the clickers. It would probably be more plush if it was re-valved also, and I will probably have that done in due time.

 
Nice , is that the stock height I’m seeing in the pic ... that’s some nice open area to ride in !! Any rattle snakes out there.
 
Chisler said:
Nice , is that the stock height I’m seeing in the pic ... that’s some nice open area to ride in !! Any rattle snakes out there.
Click to expand...

I haven't shortened any of my bikes so far.
The area is crisscrossed with single track trails in the brush.
There are plenty of rattlesnakes out there, including Mojave, western diamondback, sidewinder, and speckled. I haven't seen any this year, yet. Although I have spotted my first horny toad of the season.

Here is a rattler from a few years back.
 
It's too bad that WP is sticking with the lousy fork designs. Why won't they just admit that having one side for rebound and the other for compression is just dumb? Calling the same basic design by a different name doesn't fix the problem. Converting to traditional is the only way to make them work right.
 
Huskynoobee said:
It's too bad that WP is sticking with the lousy fork designs. Why won't they just admit that having one side for rebound and the other for compression is just dumb? Calling the same basic design by a different name doesn't fix the problem. Converting to traditional is the only way to make them work right.
Click to expand...

It's what we refer to as "cheaping out".
 
Huskynoobee said:
It's too bad that WP is sticking with the lousy fork designs. Why won't they just admit that having one side for rebound and the other for compression is just dumb? Calling the same basic design by a different name doesn't fix the problem. Converting to traditional is the only way to make them work right.
Click to expand...

Economics, profit margins, bean counters, plus the technical side knows 90% of DS people truthfully have no clue anyway. In stock form these are better than anything most have ever used, plus most DS folks ride these things like H-D highway bikes.
 
So again where I was going its not dumb at all.....its all part of the business profit margin plan and what will work for 90% of the sales market with @ 1/2 the parts required and a lot less R&D costs....
 
Dirtdame said:
It's what we refer to as "cheaping out".
Click to expand...
It's not, though. New designs cost money. The 4CS is a complex, over-designed, under-performing unit. They did not save any money on that one. And with the Xplor they had to design that worthless compression unit that's in the left fork leg. I don't know 'why' they did it, but it didn't save them money. If they wanted to save money and "cheap out" they would have simply valved the good 'ol OC forks to work as separates. I've done that on several bikes and it works great. WP remains a mystery to me. I feel that the pieces are very good quality, but the final specs they select are just dumb.

But what matters in the end is that you now have a fork you like. Sad it has to cost us money above the purchase price, but it does fix the issues.
 
Picklito said:
It's not, though. New designs cost money. The 4CS is a complex, over-designed, under-performing unit. They did not save any money on that one. And with the Xplor they had to design that worthless compression unit that's in the left fork leg. I don't know 'why' they did it, but it didn't save them money. If they wanted to save money and "cheap out" they would have simply valved the good 'ol OC forks to work as separates. I've done that on several bikes and it works great. WP remains a mystery to me. I feel that the pieces are very good quality, but the final specs they select are just dumb.

But what matters in the end is that you now have a fork you like. Sad it has to cost us money above the purchase price, but it does fix the issues.
Click to expand...

The problem with the Explorer fork wasn't just that WP wasn't able to spec it out properly, but that NObody could spec the design out properly. It just was an inferior design, period. No tuners use any of the stock engineering for their modifications. Bob Bell said he spent months experimenting with trying to make the stock design work, but that it just wasn't feasible or practical. That's why he, and others went back to an older, more conventional design that is easy to tune properly.
 
Exactly my point. They spent money trying to come up with a new fork and did a bad job. That was not done as a method of "cheaping out." And, the fork is identical to the OC's except for that awful valve in the left leg (the new part they spent money on designing... poorly) and the shim and clicker arrangements. So, they basically spent money to make a worse version of the OC, a fork that would have cost no new money to supply to the buyer.
 
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