• 4 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Austria - About 2014 & Newer
     FE = 4st Enduro & FC = 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

FE/FC New 2016 450 4cs?

C

Cruiser

Husqvarna
AA Class
Looking at picking up a 16 FE450 (not s) this week. Keep hearing so much on these forks.. From bad to really bad to they are fine?? So according to dirt bike magazine review and husqvarna sales brochure the front end internals have been changed, rake and offset at the axle making the forks really good? I'm between this bike and a beta. This bike has more positives and main one being there is a dealer within driving distance that I can deal with. Nearest beta is over 2 hours each way.
Tell me good news... Forks good? Fixable? Run?
Oh, I'm a solid b rider level, getting older, later 40's and regular fighting weight is around 200-215. 5'7". Rocky north east pa trails.
Thanks!!
 
Pull the trigger! Buy it and ride it. The fork thing for me was only really an issue if riding hard (which obviously is most of the time) but they are fixable. As you mentioned there are tons of opinions on this matter. That's something you'll have to decide for yourself. I'm sure most will say they need work. Spring it for your weight and see how it goes. I put 43 hours on mine before I did anything to it besides protective type stuff. Then the forks went to Zipty racing. The one thing I will say is the stock at81 tires suck! Change them asap. Just my opinion. I'm sure you'd be happy with it
 
Im waiting for my AER fork listing to be approved in the classifieds. I have a FC 450 for MX. My impression, the typical mid stroke 4cs harshness I can ride around on the track. The harder I hit stuff the less of a prob it is. In an off road scenario, it will just hammer you all the time. At my age I seek out smooth track lines already.

They can be fixed, my susoension guy would convert to some 2015 4cs parts and add an adjuster to the bottom of one leg. Then they are very good.

The AER are for sale because Im not feeling a $1500 imorovement for my riding. When the 4cs need service I will have him smooth out the mid stroke.

Vet A if it matters.
 
Both bikes will need changes to the suspension if you are a "B" rider and for your weight. Beta will handle the tight trails much better but shifting out of first they will perform the same. In the end I think the suspension on the Husqvarna is overall better after some mods then the Beta. It falls down to the speed of your terrain you ride on most.
 
Well, I got a chance to ride a 16 beta 350rr and 16 FE350 back to back. Even more confused than ever. The beta had a better feel, more grunt, but the FE350 was out and out lighter and faster. It was not as stable, or should I say it was twitchy. Feels like it needs some going over. It is brand new, two short rides on it, so I think it would settle down with some set up adjustment, set sag, play with fork adjustments etc. The beta I don't think is significantly heavier felt heavier. It tracked well. This bike has a couple months of use by a older B rider that is slowing down a bit. He hasn't done really anything to it yet. I do have to say out of the box the beta seat is way better.. and I did not like the beta seat before. Also The beta I could one foot the bike, the husky, could barley even get a touch with one foot. I suggested a rekluse for both owners. I hated the rekluse when I got my bike but have grown to really like it over the years. So I really need to ride a FE450 and the beta 390 and 430. see what I want. I only buy a new bike every 5-8 years..
 
I had a 15 FE350S and the stock forks were junk. I had them reworked and they were good. Not awesome, but good. I rented a 2016 FE350 when I was in Romania this year and the bone stock forks were actually decent. They were as good as my 15s forks were. For trail riding, I would spring the 16 4CS forks and just leave them alone.
 
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