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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

New Project - 1986 WR400

MotoFo

MotoFo

Husqvarna
AA Class
Just picked this one up. $500 and the guy threw in a mint Hallman chest protector and a mid-80s Arai helmet. First thing to do is the cleaning and inspection. The bike – I'm now the third owner – came with the owners manual the two-stroke motor manual but I have not been able to find a parts list for the 1986 models. Anyone out there have one they could share? I've read a lot of great things about this bike. My goal is to get it plated and make it into a dual sport.

Cheers!

1986-WR400-1.jpg
 
Yup had one just like it, stupid me I parted with it. Nice even flow of power throughout the power band. Great find right price too.
 
Man that's a healthy looking ride! Awesome score for the price and the 400s are awesome machines. Those wheels even don't look to faded compared to most I've seen. Grease up that linkage! The needle bearings need frequent greasing on the 85s and 86s. Another thing to look out for is the pipe mount under the tank often is very close to the tank and also pipe usually very close to coolant hoses over water pump. Just thing I've noticed with both my 85s. Otherwise grease her up and have fun! Congrats on a great looking bike
 
I've had my '86 WR400 for most of my life (not joking)!
Yours looks pretty good!

I run Metzeler uni-cross tires. They're a DOT knobby that fit the bike well.

The swingarm bearings are mostly standard bearings that you can get from your local bearing shop. The I-link bearings are a little tricky though. The ones that came stock on the bike are 24mm long, which are hard to find, but you can replace them with a pair of 12mm long bearings stacked end-to-end (if you need me to go grab a list of bearing sizes, let me know). The seals in the swingarm are a "Q4123" - or at-least those fit fairly well- if you search Amazon for that, you can buy them by the 100. If you want to replace the universal bearings in the ohlins and tip of your Y-link, I suggest hitting up one of the vintage husky sites.

Two options (that I'm aware of) for reeds:
1) V-force reed sets. There is a set that replaces the intake boot while you're at it.
2) Boyesen sells a set of reeds (616) that fits the bike. There are also two-piece carb boots available to make future replacement (if necessary) a bit easier.

I don't see the petcock in your picture. Could just be hidden by dirt. If it is missing (or leaking), you can try searching for "Acerbis petcock" on Amazon or ebay. Just pay attention to what direction the fuel spout leaves the petcock.

Parts manuals - a good source for download is husqvarna-parts.com

Sprockets, JT Sprockets makes good ones. Their calculator doesn't give you the right number of teeth though. You can fairly easily find the correct # of teeth (at-least for the stock setup) in the parts manual.
 
Motofo, BINGO !
You have found the best model for me !
Am sure you will enjoy it after some jobs.
:cheers: !!!
RUF
 
Great motor, awesome woods bike, perfect gearing, BUT it vibrates a lot, so short shift it & check head bolts if you do twist the throttle a lot..
Steer it with the rear wheel, cause it's kind of tall..
 
I paid $150 for mine. The only thing wrong was the PO had the clutch cover off and didn't align the return spring for the shifter in the case during reassembly. I fixed that and cleaned the carb and she was perfect. I installed a threaded sleeve for a compression release in the head. I could start it easily. I believe it was a crosscountry WRX? She easily ate my buddy's kx250 down the straights. I get a kick out of that when it happens. They have no clue. Be careful things don't appear to be going fast like they really are. The '86 400 LC is one of the fastest husqvarnas I had in the 27 bike collection.
 
Thank you all for the positive responses.

RUF - Thanks for the link. That is exactly what I was looking for – its on my computer now. I see you're in Sac. I'm in Richmond.

87Husky500xc - Thanks for the info on the pipe mount. I'll check that out.

Eric the Leg - Great info! My intake manifold is toast. It sounds like I can replace with V-force reed set and also get a performance gain.

The guy I purchased the bike from said he rode enduros with it. He also said it has been sitting in his garage since 1997. I'd say the Jackhammer enduro at Stonyford must have been the last one for him. A closer look revealed that the subframe is missing a bolt, the front brake rotor is way loose and, more concerning, is the top mount for the right radiator is broken (as shown). I'll need to look closer and refer to the parts list to find out what needs to be replaced. There must be a bolt that runs through the frame and secures the mount. I'm sure I'll find more…

radiator-mount.jpg
 
They are rubber isolators and husqvarna-parts.com or I'm sure there are other sources as well. I know at one point I googled rubber isolators and came up with a bunch of options but ended up getting them from Phillip at the site above. They can be kind of a pain to get out of the frame but at least the radiator tab isn't broken
 
To remove the rubber isolator what I do is cut away as much of the rubber as possible, the go back and forth lightly with my angle grinder to make a groove in the middle of the metal plate on the frame side of the isolator. Then I use channel lock pliers to grip the metal plate opposite the grove and squeeze until the plate folds down. Then you have a tab to grab a hold of and back out what is left of the isolator. Most of the husky part suppliers can sell you one. When replacing the full set it can make more sense to Google or amazon search the isolators. They are double stud, m6, 20mm long, I don't remember the isolator diameter, I want to say 18mm.
 
Inspect the clutch pressure plate- it will need adjusting anyway.
if there is wear on the pressure plate, you can chuck it up in a lathe and re -leave the inside of the contact area[a very small step/taper can f0rm and the clutch will slip in the top gears at wot]
 
just did an 86 WR250 for fred hoess to race in this years six days in spain in the vintage class. alot to do on those. the vibrate alot even the 250. loctite and more loctite. crank was bareley in spec from production key is to get crank as balance as possible isolastic mounts are like 1 buck from mcmaster car
 
Joe Chod - Thanks for the info on the rotor–very helpful. I would not have known. I've read several posts about the unbalanced crank. Someone mentioned about swapping out with a later crank. I'll need to find the post. Isolastic mounts – I take it are for the motor.

I looked up the Vforce reed – around $300. I'm not ready for that. Anyone have a decent intake manifold they want to part with?
 
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