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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Malcolm Smith Motorsports, Riverside, CA

N

nocontrol

Husqvarna
B Class
I purchased my 2009 SM510R from Malcolm Smith. I would highly recommend purchasing a Husky from ANYONE but them. As soon as they had my money, they stopped caring one bit. Bolts were not torqued (including the triple clamp bolts), turn signals fell off nearly immediately, scrapes on the bottom of the frame from them dragging the bike around before prep etc (I saw a TE later on in the service area, sitting on its frame on the ground).

They also brought me in on a completely useless trip when they told me they had the software to flash my 2009, turns out they STILL do not have the updated software and they did nothing to fix the stalling issues with the bike. I had to speak with a manager just to get them to LOOK at the turn signal that fell off and melted because they did not tighten the bolt when they prepped the bike.

Most dealers tend to not care much after they have made the sale, but Malcolm Smith is a PRIME example of that. I will not even consider purchasing anything from them in the future. :thumbsdown:
 
This is the dealers Kudos forum. Like it or not the General (Main) forum is where the non-complimentary / general dealer discussions go.

The theory is, lack of kudos, especially the more well known dealers, should send a message to people.

Description from the top of the forum:
Kudos: "credit or praise for an achievement"

If you have Kudos/positive input about a Husqvarna bike dealer that you have personally had good luck with start up a thread in the proper subforum. If you disagree with the positive input, or have non-positive input about a dealer that currently has a thread, please be as articulate and polite as possible. Remember - what you type will reviewed by people around the world, including the dealer you are commenting on, be polite.

For general discussions about dealers please use the General (Main) forum.
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Dealers Kudos -> General
 
Well, the poor guys....they need a service writer in there. If I lived a little closer, I'd go to work for them and change customers service experiences to happy ones.:D
 
I had been in there when my friend had lost a needed nut on his 'berg, when we were on a ride close by there. The "service" people were not only not very helpful, but borderline rude. Granted we weren't there for "Husky" specific parts, but a sale is a sale.

But on another trip there for gear with the same friend, we saw Malcolm there and he was nice enough to us when we approached him. Too bad his employees don't follow his lead.

To the OP, at least you have one of the best "Husky guys" EVER with George and his shop Uptite not all that far from there. Check out him and his Husky/bike in general/riding/racing/Baja knowledge and you'll never look back.
 
Dirt dame...you ever go to Ron Bishop? thats my uncle...awesome shop all around....

I worked for Malcolm 20+ years ago and he was on it then and that was the shop to go to...
had to answer the phone before 2 rings and help everyone...if i lived there I would be working there...

sorry to hear about a bad experience...Malocolm is an awesome dude..fighting against the lead law...he was my dads riding partner WAY back...

you should be able to find another around...Uptite was always good, RB way down in Escondido too...

BTW..I always check my bikes over completely before riding...just dont trust anyone and that way only me too blame
 
IMO-sorry to say,
You get what you pay for. I could have gone to M.S. for 500.00 less. Nope, I went to the Up-tite stable and picked out the same bike (08/TE450) and paid the extra. The drive to M.S. is not that far from me but the friendship, knowledge, experience that you get from George at Up-tite is out standing. Then I wanted the SM610 and George could not get me one or give me the price I was getting from Hall's (IL). George still did all the repairs it needed in the first year. His shop may look like a teenagers room but he is the best GURU of the Husky brand I know.

Again, Sorry to hear about the MS store again. Any one can assemble a bike, some just don't care.
 
I too am anti Malcom Smith at the moment. I recently bought a left over 09 510 from them and feel the deal was ok but the sales guy lied right to my face. He told me the 510 I was looking at was the "last one." After I bought, I returned a few days later to puck up some oil ect. and what do I see?...Another 09 510 prepped and sitting on the sales floor. The tatic really didn't add any pressure to purchase because I knew of other dealers semi close with a few left in stock but WTF, if they lied about their stock what else are they lying about? Next time Im going to Uptite, at least he supports the Husky community and make some legit parts!
 
That unfortunately seems to be a fairly common tactic. Once upon a time when I wanted a KTM EXC300, I strolled into a shop where there was a 250 version on the floor. I asked the salesman if he would be so kind as to scrape up a 300 for me, and he went into a song and dance about nothing being left in allocation of either the 250s or the 300s, so I should probably buy this 250 right here. I felt like he was conning me, but I went for the 250 anyway. Two months later, I walked in and saw a brand new 300 right where my 250 had been sitting. I would never but another bike from these people because of that, and it may be one of the reasons that I wasn't as fond of my KTM as I might have been if the salesman had just been truthful and gotten me a 300. The dealer down the street from these people never argue with me or lie. If I ask them to get me something, they do and if they can't, it's for real.
 
unfortunately that happens way too often...I suggest to NEVER buy a bike cause its the only or last one left...walk on...surely someone somewhere has one...it can put a sour taste in your mouth and make you hate your bike...i have worked to a few BIG dealers and it is common tactic....
some of the bigger "chain" type dealers have a sales tactic that kills me...sell it no matter what...they want that finance job...you dont work on a MSRP but on what they will pay monthly...it is a Roberry you just dont know it.. you tell them 500 down and 100 a month...they go back run your credit...could have got you the bike with zero down and 75 a month..but you said 100 so they raise the interest rate to make it 100 and make you pay 500 down too...they just raped you and you didnt even know it...
they also would say its the LAST ONE...when we had them piled 30 deep in back...heck we even had them on the floor the same day.....
I was working in parts and they wanted me as a salesman at motorcycle city in Vegas...I said more money sure...went 1 day and said no way...cant lie like that to make a buck...
find a dealer that is cool to deal with and will work with you...spend every dollar you can with them and in the end it will pay off...cause when they have a bike you want they will call you first....you will get a fair deal and great service...and know YOUR bike

and those dealers are not gonna be the big places...places like RBMC, Erics, Uptite, and such are gonna be where you should be....
 
LRPct;88990 said:
I had been in there when my friend had lost a needed nut on his 'berg, when we were on a ride close by there. The "service" people were not only not very helpful, but borderline rude. Granted we weren't there for "Husky" specific parts, but a sale is a sale.

But on another trip there for gear with the same friend, we saw Malcolm there and he was nice enough to us when we approached him. Too bad his employees don't follow his lead.

To the OP, at least you have one of the best "Husky guys" EVER with George and his shop Uptite not all that far from there. Check out him and his Husky/bike in general/riding/racing/Baja knowledge and you'll never look back.
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I am wondering if any of you who have had bad experiences at Malcom Smiths have ever went to the big man himself and complained.

I understand the "legend" status that he has from back in the day but if he allows this type of behavior to go on in his business. Doesnt this reflect of him.
 
To be honest even back in the 80's he really didnt have too much to do with the shop..he came by every now and then and called...but i am sure if you could find a way to inform him he would not be happy and he would fix it...
 
Well, he's on facebook. Drop him a message if you are part of the FB community. He was just complaining last week that he couldn't seem to find a decent service writer for his service department.
 
Jeez,

A service writer for Malcolm Smiths' Husky shop?.... I was service manager for a small Suzuki/Husky/KTM/ Ossa shop many decades ago and things were different back then I'm sure. But if today I were a young man and not on the wrong coastline, I'd jump at that job.

A S/W doesn't need to be a mechanical genius, though customers prefer it, just an honest understanding person who recognizes that bikers are special .... they take interest in their rides.

A low pay scale is detrimental to an employees attitude and is most likely to reveal itself just when the pressures on ..... dealing with a tensed up, "edgy fella" with a problem. Understanding by both parties goes a long way.

Just speaking out generally....Dave
 
bower100;89410 said:
Jeez,

A service writer for Malcolm Smiths' Husky shop?.... I was service manager for a small Suzuki/Husky/KTM/ Ossa shop many decades ago and things were different back then I'm sure. But if today I were a young man and not on the wrong coastline, I'd jump at that job.
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I know I would if I weren't 70 miles away from the shop. It would have to pay pretty good for me to consider making a commute like that.
 
I've got a very good friend that has been a very good service writer for years for Saturn and Pontiac... obviously with the down sizing in the Auto side, he found himself without a job. He was just hired at Chaparral after not working for almost a year... MS would be much closer to where he lives...

Maybe I'll send him that way..

T
 
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