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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Lousy Gasoline woes

MChammer

MChammer

Husqvarna
AA Class
My last source for gasoline without ethanol now has 10% in all their grades of fuel. I've been running different hi-test grades to try to find one that runs as good as the "good stuff" I used to be able to get, but had no luck. I happened onto a local "mom & pop" air strip that actually sells aviation fuel to the average joe. Yesterday I pulled up with a 5 gallon can and explained my problem and they said to go over to the pump marked 100 LL (for 100 octane low lead) and swipe your credit card and pump what you want!!! It costs $4.45/gal but I figured I'd give it a try. They said they use it in chainsaws and all other high performance engines and it works great.
I didn't get to try it out yet, but what can I expect and can anyone think of any damage I may do to my bike? I don't have a catylitic converter in it any more, so the low lead-thing shouldn't be an issue:confused: Any help is appreciated because even if it does run great, if it's doing damage, I won't run it.
 
I have heard that av gas actually burns hotter than regular fuel because it is formulated to run at really high altitude where the oxygen level is quite low. But I have known people that have run av gas before and I don't remember anybody saying that they had any problems with it.:excuseme: Here in California, we have all kinds of yicky stuff including ethanol in our gasoline. My TE and other bikes don't have any problems with it. The only thing I can think of, is that it seems to go bad quicker than the "good old" stuff.
 
I've never had any issues with blends up to 10%. In fact, I'm using it now in our TC and TXC and I can't tell any difference.
 
^^^ That was one of the deciding factors when I was looking for a harescramble bike. I stuck with the 2 stroke because the crappy fuel seems more stable when premix oil is added, or maybe it's all in my head... :lol:
 
Nope oil in the fuel will allow it to stay fresh longer-dunno why.Maybe the av-gas with fully synthetic 2 stroke oil added at 100:1 will help. I do the oil bit in all my bikes (using BP 98 ron) and I swear it keeps the top end and top ring in good nick and protects valve seats-no smoking and the bikes run smoother-I swear.
 
yea i always wondered about the little bit of oil in the tank on 4 stroke this has all ways kept me wondering?? if it works because the fuel in australia is good eg.. 98ron
 
avgas isnt a very good option for you, typically it makes less power and costs more than pump gas. my 2 cents would be to either run pump gas, or spend the money on proper race fuel. I run VP U4.4 in both my 450 and 250F, and they both run far better than 10% ethanol pump gas.
 
High octanes allow for high compression ratio engines to run without pre-detonating and destroying themselves. No more energy is present in them than the lower octane stuff. The lead in the 100LL is part of the anti-pre-detonation ingredient and it also provides a slight bit of lubrication in the combustion chamber for valve seats. High octane gas was a vital asset in the development of high performance aircraft engines in the WW2 era when they were using turbo/superchargers to compress the intake air at high altitudes to make better power and efficiency. That's what I recall from explanations from a couple of older guys from the greatest generation.
 
I will say it again, avgas is a waste of money in a motorcycle engine. run either pump gas, or a race fuel designed specifically to work in your application.
Also, you typically want to run the lowest octane possible that will not cause detonation.
 
MXRider;119025 said:
I will say it again, avgas is a waste of money in a motorcycle engine. run either pump gas, or a race fuel designed specifically to work in your application.
Also, you typically want to run the lowest octane possible that will not cause detonation.
Click to expand...

What he said.
 
Well the general concensus was right....tried the AV fuel yesterday and it doesn't run as good as pump gas. Idles poorly, coughed and died abruptly at low RPM-tight maneuver in the woods where my pump gas would have lugged right through, and has a peculiar "lean feeling" at about 5,500 - 7,000 rpm at about 20% throttle. I could go into my fuel map and richen it at that area to get it running better, but figure why bother when I have other problems also. It does seem that when it's in the "sweet spot" it really cranks, and I guess I could rework my whole fuel map with my PCIII, but why go through all the bother.
Incidentally, on the way back from that airstrip where I bought the AV fuel, I passed a gas station that has a big sign out "our gas contains no ethanol" so maybe I'll try their hi-test.

On a positive note...a friend who has a 1984 KTM 490 motocrosser will buy my remaining 4 gal of AV fuel:applause:
 
What kind of jetting changes would you have to make in order to run U4.4 or equivalent race fuel?
 
Mixing leaded race gas to achieve around 98 RON and using a little top oil lubrication are two things that were recommended to me.

It seemed they were running oxygenated fuel in Mammoth to make the engines run at their max. 7000 feet.
 
running 10% ethanol is not a big deal to the motor as it is to the plastic tanks. The ethanol mix will wreak havoc on some of the nylon/propylene tanks. Not short term, but long term. DOn't leave that crap in your tanks for more than a month or so and definitely drain them for the winter months if you store them.

Both my FI bikes and my carbed bikes run on pump gas (regular) just fine. But my 2 strokes is where I se the lower octane make a difference. Pings so much easier and on the higher compression motors like my KTM300 I had, would boil over much faster than my 4strokes.
 
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