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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Need to change suspension????

J

Jamnsam

Husqvarna
A Class
Hi, I am new to dirtbike riding and have purchased a 2008 TE450 which is awesome. Due to my size, 6ft 100kg's I am unsure as to how to set up the suspension properly. At the moment I am only riding trails etc but I have read that you should get fork springs that match your weight. Would I really notice the difference??

The other problem is understanding pre load, rebound etc etc. At the moment I am just hanging on to the thing and crashing through the bush. I dont know how it should "feel". Any suggestions..
 
Jamnsam;103244 said:
Hi, I am new to dirtbike riding and have purchased a 2008 TE450 which is awesome. Due to my size, 6ft 100kg's I am unsure as to how to set up the suspension properly. At the moment I am only riding trails etc but I have read that you should get fork springs that match your weight. Would I really notice the difference??

The other problem is understanding pre load, rebound etc etc. At the moment I am just hanging on to the thing and crashing through the bush. I dont know how it should "feel". Any suggestions..
Click to expand...

With you on the motorcycle the rear of the bike should sag 100 mm. Measure from the center of the axle to a point directly above that on the seat and take this measurement with the bike on a stand. Then have someone measure for you while you are on the bike with little to no weight on your feet. Increase or decrease preload as appropriate to get to this 100 mm level. Once you do this, then measure what is called the static sag. This is the sag the bike has under it's own weight and it should be around 15-25mm. If this sag is say 40mm, that means you had to decrease spring preload for your weight and you need a lighter spring. If you have say 5mm, it means you had to crank down on the preload ring too much and your spring is too soft and you need a stiffer one.

Getting this one measurement right is the first step you need to take. After this setup is done, you can fool around with compression and rebound on the fork and shock.

NC
 
Good words on the sag stuff ... It is the starting point for the shock absorbers ... Springs mostly just hold the absorbers (on both ends) at a high point in their stroke ... having them start too high or too low n the stroke is a problem ... Springs do this work ... The absorbers inside the spring do the real work ... Too bad cycles companies have forever been allowed to dump any spring on a bike and sell it to us ... It is the first thing many have to start spending $ on because it is so important yet so far off many times ...

Depending on your speed, UR ride should feel somewhat smooth ... If you are comfortable with the speed, U might be aware of the bike hitting something, but nothing harsh or abuse or any jerking of the bars from side to side(deflection) should happen ... No banging feeling .... Again this depends on the speed you are going ... My bike might get abusive if going 60 mph on a trail but that is too fast for me any way so I'm, slowing down ...

Lots of the smaller stuff on a trail should be globbed up without much if any feed back .... As speed increases, UR suspension has got to come into play more and this is where it gets more complicated ... but not so bad ... Most of us can get out bikes set for our riding with help here ...

The rear is about the same ...it should float across most items without any side to side action OR kick-up action ... I hate the kick-up action ...
U have ~12" of travel on both ends to smooth the trail .... over half should be used on most any trail ride and maybe even 9-10" depending on how narly it is or the step-ups \ step downs ...


This article helps to understand some of what is happening ..
http://www.mx-tech.com/?id=articles_news&news_id=104
 
If you are going to push the bike hard at 100Kg's you are about 15kgs over the real design weight for the bike/ If you are just poking about then you could get by with a bit of tweaking.
 
101kg's....... Seems to creep up on you that weight. Maybe its too much beer......

I went for a ride today with a mate who can actually ride a little and after adjusting the rear suspension (Static sag etc) everything feels good.

By no means am I riding the bike hard, I am not that good. Every time I fall off it seems to slow me down a bit and concentrate on what I am doing.

I cant seem to get the hang of lifting the front wheel a bit when crossing small creeks etc. I seem to "drive" the front wheel into small potholes and trees across the track, rather than pop the front in the air like my mate does. More practice I guess.
 
Jamnsam;103902 said:
101kg's....... Seems to creep up on you that weight. Maybe its too much beer......

I went for a ride today with a mate who can actually ride a little and after adjusting the rear suspension (Static sag etc) everything feels good.

By no means am I riding the bike hard, I am not that good. Every time I fall off it seems to slow me down a bit and concentrate on what I am doing.

I cant seem to get the hang of lifting the front wheel a bit when crossing small creeks etc. I seem to "drive" the front wheel into small potholes and trees across the track, rather than pop the front in the air like my mate does. More practice I guess.
Click to expand...

I am not the best at lofting the front end either but dropping the bike down a gear might help out. If the engine is in the heart of the power it is easier to get the front end up as opposed to the engine being just above idle.

NC
 
I just hit my "3rd year or riding" anniversary and it gets easier and easier! Just load the front end and lean back, yank the bars and give a little a gas all at the same time and you can just about get the front wheel up in any gear.
 
i had the same problem lofting the front wheel in tight stuff so went to a 13-50 drive combo 09 te 450 it lofts over anything with ease it is never used on the road or you could just use a lower gear a little clutch lean back and the front will pop over what ever you want it to
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top