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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

My first Husky. 79 250 OR engine and 78 125(?) frame.

vfrf2

Husqvarna
C Class
I'm new here and thought this seemed like a good place to get information on a bike I just picked up from a friend yesterday. I've checked the frame and engine numbers and it appears that I have a 1978 125 CR (# ML-29542) frame with a 1979 OR engine (# 2065-3661).

First off, where can I can a service manual? It's the first thing I'll need before I tear into this thing.

It's been sitting in his shed for 10 years. It was running when parked, but had low compression. It's mostly intact. I plan to tear the engine down and rebuild it from the bottom up.
The owner prior to my friend had welded the kick starter to the kick starter shaft. I have to figure out a way to remove it. Currently, it looks like it will have to be cut off somehow so that I can get the engine case off. I will post pics at some point soon.

I have a few questions on parts sources. I'm looking for the following:
-Complete gasket kit for a bottom up rebuild.
-Crank bearings and seals.
-Piston and rings
-Rear wheel or hub
-Exhaust
-Kick starter
-Kick stater shaft.

I'm not planning to do this in a week, or a month. Definitely by Spring.

Any input/tips on tearing down an engine would be much appreciated at this point. I've rebuilt a few of the big 4 Japanese top ends and 1 or 2 bottom ends, so...I do have skills to take this on.
any special tools I'd need to tear down or reassemble the engine with?

Thanks.
 
I think you may find as with the later model husky's that the kick start assy is built into the case along with the change lever so it should all come off OK leaving the gear & kick start attached to the clutch case?
 
If your frame has ball and cone stem bearings, then the frame is from a 1978 125CR or 390 AMX. If the frame has taper roller bearings the frame could be from 250CR and up or with a center cradle rail from a WR
 
Jim is right, there really is not a way to tell what size engine a particular year Husky frame came with other than some details like when a model changed to ball vs tapered head bearings.
 
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. I got side tracked with other things going on and haven't been out here in awhile. I'm going to start tearing into the project in a couple of weeks. Right now I'm just trying to get a plan together as far as what I want to do first.
 
Let's see some pictures of what you've got. Are you going to race it ? Will it be in motocross or enduro trim ? Be nice to see it and have an idea of what you expect to see when it's done. All the manuals are on this site, and free. Have a look at Claude's (Visiteur1948) pictures of the 78 125WR elsewhere for inspiration.
There isn't anything you can't source or find out about on this site :)

My 78 390WR is in the background, the 79 390 Auto in the foreground.
Husky2small.jpg
 
I have a frame with a rear wheel missing, engine pulled out. I don't think there is an exciting picture to take of it right now. :)
 
I have a frame with a rear wheel missing, engine pulled out. I don't think there is an exciting picture to take of it right now. :)

You are wrong on that, we like pictures of everything**************************************** More the better. We like to see what you started with how it progressed and final results, so post up!!!
 
It's been awhile since I've posted here. I intended to start this project last year, but got busy with life. So, here I am at the same place I was when I left off. Right now I'm looking into doing a 390 conversion. It looks like I need to pick up a frame as well.
 
I'm finally getting serious about it. There is a 1990 KTM 125 MX sitting around with WP inverted suspension on the front. A crazy idea popped into my head. Now they have replaced the standard forks.

Rough_zps0d141e36.jpg
 
NYCMX...nice bike!

Oh, I know someone might ask why. Why not? Make that old puppy handle a little better. Maybe? The surfaces on the stock forks are toast. A lot of rust and pitting. I have to replace them anyway. So, another problem solved. Actually, I will probably pick up a set of the standard forks at some point just to keep around.
 
I've been giving myself one hell of an education on the Husky's from this era! All part of the process when diving into something new. New swingarm bearings installed. Cleaned up the Curnutt's. I know the Curnutt's came with a gray body, but I went with black. This is going to be a rider, not a "correct" show bike, so...not much concern with the little details. Waiting on new fork seals for the WP forks to come in. Slow, but...steady progress.
I am missing the back portion of the exhaust system where it meets the expansion chamber. Anyone know where I can find one?

 
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