• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Italy - About 1989 to 2014
     TE = 4st Enduro & TC = 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Karoo Front Tire

Mike-AK

Mike-AK

Husqvarna
Pro Class
Been venturing out onto some primary roads with the warmer weather. At 45-50 the front end feels a bit squirrely like its hunting around. Is this the norm with this tire?
 
Mike-AK said:
They ought to rename it "Careen" the way the thing darts from side to side.
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It will be interesting to see if you get head shake after you replace the front tire.
I have never had a head shake problem with the three I have worn out. Don't get me wrong, I don't go out of the way to buy Karoos, but have had them as OEM three times. Over 100mph on the 610 many times.
 
My 449 has shaken at speed since new, didn't realize the karoos might be the problem. My rear is just about toast was going to keep the karoo front because I'm cheap, but now I'm not so sure.
 
Look at how the tread pattern wanders left to right. It's no surprise the tire wanders, too. Krappoos suck.
 
I'm lucky...and cheap. My stock Kapoo has 1200 miles on it. Its finally worn enough that its time to go.
However I do about 15-20 mi per ride on tarmac and its been fine so far, including a day in deep desert sand I might add.
 
It's not the tire. I'm not saying that the Karoo will replace a MX 51, but it's not a defective tire. On my Husky, that wandering was from a loose headset.
 
Tinken said:
It's not the tire. I'm not saying that the Karoo will replace a MX 51, but it's not a defective tire. On my Husky, that wandering was from a loose headset.
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Thanks. I'll check it out. I need to make sure it is greased anyway.
 
Tinken said:
It's not the tire. I'm not saying that the Karoo will replace a MX 51, but it's not a defective tire. On my Husky, that wandering was from a loose headset.
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I think Karoos get a worse rep than they deserve. They are a little weak off road but I've done triple digits many times on asphalt and never had problem with the Karoos getting squirly, as long as they are inflated properly.
 
I am not sure my Te449 would make it past 75 mph without exploding -- 2013 and I have had it to 65 mph and it vibrated and felt like it was going to explode Lord only knows what the RPMs where...its hard to believe this bike could do much past 75? Not trying to be negative; but mine seems like it couldn't take much more than 65 mph....not the tires mind you; then engine feels like it is at its peak ....
 
Husqmarkus said:
I am not sure my Te449 would make it past 75 mph without exploding -- 2013 and I have had it to 65 mph and it vibrated and felt like it was going to explode Lord only knows what the RPMs where...its hard to believe this bike could do much past 75? Not trying to be negative; but mine seems like it couldn't take much more than 65 mph....not the tires mind you; then engine feels like it is at its peak ....
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Have you balanced the tires? It's very important.
 
Its not the tires that are causing the vibration; it is the rpms and engine vibration i believe. My Wr250x did not vibrate this much at 85 mph; I will never go over 60 mph with this motorcycle lol....I can't believe a 450 is so stressed at 60+...
 
Ok...so I squeeze the front brake and try and shake the handlebars but I am feeling no play or wobble in the headset at all. Any other ideas what it might be? It's not a vibration or a wild excursion side to side, in fact, you cannot feel it in the bars at all.
 
Husqmarkus said:
Its not the tires that are causing the vibration; it is the rpms and engine vibration i believe. My Wr250x did not vibrate this much at 85 mph; I will never go over 60 mph with this motorcycle lol....I can't believe a 450 is so stressed at 60+...
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Though she does vibrate, stressed it isn't. My 449 is just fine with 65mph interstate aside from the shaking front end. Actually had it up to 87mph indicated the other day, kinda spooky, but it did it. I also had my old honda crf230L up to 75 before which is the definition of scary.
 
My TE449 will do 77MPH max even with a 14T counter shaft sprocket and it is very stable. It's at the rev limiter but it is OK with it. Before I balanced the tires it was scary at 50 MPH.
 
Mike-AK said:
Ok...so I squeeze the front brake and try and shake the handlebars but I am feeling no play or wobble in the headset at all. Any other ideas what it might be? It's not a vibration or a wild excursion side to side, in fact, you cannot feel it in the bars at all.
Click to expand...
We set the bike up on a stand and slam the bars to the right. Loose headset bearings will double click. Check true in front wheel.
 
I think the rear Karoo is a pretty good tire...for a dual sport.

The front is not that bad....keep it out of the mud and it is okay.

Better than an s-12 on the road for sure.
 
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