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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Steering head bearing adjustment ring nut

Chris Rowan

Chris Rowan

Husqvarna
AA Class
I replaced the steering head bearings on my 2006 TC 450.

My problem is that I cannot get the steering head bearing adjustment ring nut tight enough to prevent the steering from clunking when the front wheel hits a low obstacle. I have spanner wrenches (not the correct size, of course), and I have made a special tool from a two inch diameter piece of pipe with 4 protrusions to grab all four slots at once with the handlebars off, but with two people I cannot get the nut tight enough. I can understand a bit of retightening should be required as the new grease gets pushed through the bearings but this is ridiculous! I can feel the steering getting tighter, but it's just not enough. I am ordering a new adjustment nut (as mine has now taken a bit of a beating) and the correct size spanners to try this from scratch again. Anyone else had troubles like this? Anyone know why I'm having such difficulties?

Thanks
 
I jus use a hammer n punch. Shouldn't be too tite or you'll damage the bearings n steering be notchy
 
If you can adjust the nut up tight and there's still play in the bearings then the bearings are fooked and it's time for new ones
 
Didn't leave the retainer ring thingamajig(bit that the bearings sit in in the headstem) out did ya?
 
Steering nut should not be that tight. Maybe the thunk is in the initial stroke of the forks. As stated above check your steering stem bearings. Another thought , have you checked your wheel bearings for play.
 
Thanks for the comments...
The upper and lower bearings and cups on the steering stem were both replaced.
I recently replaced the front wheel bearings so they are good.
Bearing kit I ordered from the shop and they looked the same as the ones that came out, they should be fine.
I replaced the front fork seals at the same time as I replaced the steering bearings but I don't think it's from the fork. The clunk is only felt when hitting a low object, not at some particular compression of the forks.
Last time I tightened the nut the clunk went away momentary for a few bumps but then comes back.
Weird. Probably I will just keep trying to tighten it and ultimately ride it until something breaks, I guess. Pretty annoying though.
 
Chris Rowan said:
Thanks for the comments...
The upper and lower bearings and cups on the steering stem were both replaced.
I recently replaced the front wheel bearings so they are good.
Bearing kit I ordered from the shop and they looked the same as the ones that came out, they should be fine.
I replaced the front fork seals at the same time as I replaced the steering bearings but I don't think it's from the fork. The clunk is only felt when hitting a low object, not at some particular compression of the forks.
Last time I tightened the nut the clunk went away momentary for a few bumps but then comes back.
Weird. Probably I will just keep trying to tighten it and ultimately ride it until something breaks, I guess. Pretty annoying though.
Click to expand...

Hold it... you did wheel bearings and fork seals also?? why do you think it's your stem bearings?

put the bike on a stand. yard on the front end: to & fro, up & down, side-to-side, and then rotate it (there should be no play and a smooth rotation- if it passes this test, your triple clamps/stem/bearings/handlebar mounts are probably good. maybe). what you're describing is weird.

Probably I will just keep trying to tighten it and ultimately ride it until something breaks, I guess.
Click to expand...

wait- ....what?? no, dude- do not do that. something is wrong; figure it out.
 
Ok I think you may have got rid of the washer that sits under the bearing on the steering stem. I forgot to install it below the bearing on the stem one time and the headset would not tighten up no matter what I did. I wonder if it was stuck to the bottom of the old bearing ? This washer will make all the difference even though it does not seem like it would.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top