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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Magnificent 7

My old 1978 SWM RS250 GS had the self tapping screws in the rims. Fine when you put them in there. Try removing them years later ... they usually just snap off !



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i'd ride that just for the kool factor
 
Very cool bike! That's some hard to find fenders & side panels I bet. Looks like the rear brake could be accidentally engaged in deep ruts or rocks or woods due to the brake arm aiming down & toward the front.
 
Yeah there is some neat bikes in there. I looked at the whole pick album.
Nice riding area as well.
Bet those Kangaroos are like? When you are around them!
 
Thought I would use my front rim to show you how I get them ready for anodizing.

Yep, heavy duty Easy Off Oven Cleaner.

Let the product bubble and do most of work.

Don't do it in freezing temps cause it freezes!

Aluminum after anodizing comes off starts turning black. You will start getting down to like a gray etching under the gold. Yep, that goes by by too!

Use steel wool to get down to Shiny aluminum. Stuff doesn't hurt aluminum.

Then I bead blast to get anodizing out of spoke holes plus tire/tube side. Also,do spoke side of rim but just dust and worry bout the anodizing in the spoke holes the most.

Prob, say why don't you just bead blast anodizing off? I don't want to dig deep into aluminum and mark or like warp it appearance. Just kinda dusting it to final clean and make sure old stuff is completely off.

Air sand with 120 grit to remove nicks and get to good aluminum. Then go to 220 grit, then 320.

Wet sand with 600 grit paper, then 1500 grit paper.

Polish and they are ready to go!

Looks like 4 sets will run me maybe $250 bux!
 

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Here is a rim that was cracked and from sitting came apart. But even if not. I jump on them and reweld the insides just in case.
Alway leave your wheels spoked till you are ready to do them.
You can see also those rusted in rim pins.
 

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Looks like alot of work....I don't know how you power through some of the more mundane tasks. It will be worth it in the end I'm sure. Thanks for sharing your processes.
 
Yeah, these are a lot of work. But I just can't go out and buy all new Sun Rims for 6 bikes.
I have gone the Ebay route and thought some were good till I got them. Sometimes you ask sellers questions and never hear back. A friend of mine has a brand new front wheel that is original, laced on new hub.
He says it was a spare that he never put tire on. So he has my name on it.
First thing I asked if he had a new Trelleborg on it!
I have two companies to do anodizing. One says he will do best he can to match the gold.
He is like half the price but they do perform nice work in Chicago.
The other says he will match it. He does stuff for Jesse James, some big drag racers, etc...
He said he anodized some big custom made aluminum intake and he said whole time he was sweating bullets.
On the other hand might be good to have a central USA guy that people can send there rims to to match original gold, 82 down. I think he told me to darken it they add blue? This guy is in Indy. That's okay cause I travel a lot .
I have a very nice one that was bent that I am taking and the gold is still perfect.
I made a jig and pressed the bend out but kinda cautious of using it?
 
One of the biggest issues that I ran into with anodizers. As soon as you mention they are motorcycle rims, they don't want the liability of doing them. Another factor was, we don't do small jobs like that.
I burned through a lot of calls and no call backs as well.
My plan is to get all the rims up to a fine polish over thanksgiving weekend.
I have a mag tank that is all prepped and in epoxy primer, that I have to shoot the color/clear on. So hoping to get that done this weekend. I don't want to create a lot of dust while spraying it and waiting for the paint to cure.
I use a lot of these pads on my DA sander with spraying on soapy water. They work great on rims and get in all the areas safely. I have a spongey back adapter on my DA that allows these to flex like a sponge.
I wet sand by hand to 1500 grit. Then use these pads to take finish to 3000 grit.
When you hit it with buffer afterwards. It really shines up quick.
They are 3M Trizact pads. They are green foam like.

Here is my old 08 WR 250 that I did. I polished all the Engine Covers/Head plus the Marzocchi forks and triples.

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Here is another pic of my 08 old WR 250 with swingarm that I polished, shock reservoir polished, spring painted red, etc......

wr2.jpg
 
Here are some old pics:

Rick Riggs back around 1978? On a Wetzel's Husky. Had Cherri forks and Fox Shocks. I have a pick on first lap in pro class later leading with no one around. Check out the V type cross bar.

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Here is one of me leading back in the day. You can't see behind me but had about 30 guys breathing down my neck!

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Yeah, these are a lot of work. But I just can't go out and buy all new Sun Rims for 6 bikes.

And with Winter fast approaching, I'd rather polish a turd then sit in front of the boob tube,
really sets your bike apart......awesome as always Darin....
 
Great Posts

Since I will doing a few rims soon. How much does one polish the base metal ? Meaning how far to go. Why ? Well friend had his just done
and turned out looking good but was just a bit disappointed they were more of a flat gold. Looks great but I want some gloss of the rim to show through the color.

May send rims out to just a motorcycle rim anodizer. Price was quoted at $60 each for 6 rims. Is that a good price

Color is an based on how long rims stay in solution. So that why we see so many different golds out there.

Oh - what do we have to do to get all the oils etc. of metal. Bake them in powder coat oven ? Just solvent ? I polish a lot with Autosol , is leaves a lot of residue on metal.

I am high maintenance with all these question's hey ?
 
Sad News: on a great person to deal with. I bought a few Husqvarna's back in the day from Bill Wetzel . He passed
away just this last summer while working in his yard.


You may have some of his work on your bike today! He was a sub contractor for Ric Horvat he bored the cylinders for him. I just had him bore two cylinders out this summer.

Did great work. I still have my Wetzel Jersey. Oh he was noted as selling the most Husqvarna volume on the east coast.
 
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