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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

stupid newbie questions..

montanaman

montanaman

Husqvarna
A Class
Got a new 2011 TE 250. Stoked to say the least. My first real dirt bike !

1) what oil are we using in the 4 strokes. Is it Castrol 10W 50 non-synthetic?

2) How many miles/hours should I do before the 1st change? Should I really baby the motor at first. ( Throttle stop is already off )

3) I am looking forward to working on this bike and learning .. If I was going to buy tools specifically to work on this bike what would be needed.

4) Struggling with seat height just a bit. (5'8" 30 inseam) How much will the suspension settle down in the next few months of riding ( I weight 170 pounds with gear) . I may take the seat to an upolstery guy and shave an inch or 2 before I mess with the suspension. Also the bike came with the Karoo 2's and I am told those are taller tires than some.? I have also heard they are not very good?

5) Steering lock does not engage.. in fact when I turn the key all the way to the left it fires up the electronics? Might be a malfunction.

6 )ordered the JD kit. I am told I can do that myself.

Thanks for any and all info

Thats it for now.
 
And you have a cool first dirt bike! A REAL, 6speed dirt bike! Don't let the lights fool ya ...

Here is a start to the answers you are looking for ... Many people look at the wheel and linkage bearing also and re-grease them as the factory just does not grease them enough...

montanaman said:
Got a new 2011 TE 250. Stoked to say the least. My first real dirt bike !

1) what oil are we using in the 4 strokes. Is it Castrol 10W 50 non-synthetic?

Most any 4t oil should be OK and everyone has their own brand that is the best ...Husky is recommending Castrol last I heard but that is really just marketing ... I use 1L Castrol 10W 50 synthetic and 1L Shell rimula 40WT ...

2) How many miles/hours should I do before the 1st change? Should I really baby the motor at first. ( Throttle stop is already off )

Not sure here but it needs to be pretty quick as the engine will be shedding some metal shaving most likely ... You might wanna go with some less expensive oil at first as it is just gonna get dumped quickly... Not any 10w-30 stuff ... Just maybe oil that is not 20$ per liter ....

3) I am looking forward to working on this bike and learning .. If I was going to buy tools specifically to work on this bike what would be needed.

I'd say just the basic metric tool set ...some box \ open wrenches and some sockets ... 3\8 drive should be OK ... You'll need allen wrenches also

4) Struggling with seat height just a bit. (5'8" 30 inseam) How much will the suspension settle down in the next few months of riding ( I weight 170 pounds with gear) . I may take the seat to an upolstery guy and shave an inch or 2 before I mess with the suspension. Also the bike came with the Karoo 2's and I am told those are taller tires than some.? I have also heard they are not very good?

Not 100% sure on the settling but you will get some relief but don't expect too much .. Many here have shaved the seats but don't go too much ... Depending on your riding, maybe set the sag down an extra inch on the rear to help the height of the seat .... Maybe try to anticipate when you are going to put a foot down and move to the lowest point on the seat ... Maybe do a little bump when you arrive at the low point to compress the suspension just a little ...It's all just part of riding the bike..

Most don't like those tires but you never know ...just let some air out of them maybe and see what you think ...

5) Steering lock does not engage.. in fact when I turn the key all the way to the left it fires up the electronics? Might be a malfunction.

Sounds like it needs to go back to the dealer ...

6 )ordered the JD kit. I am told I can do that myself.

Not sure on the efi stuff but the JD kits are normally easy to use and JD is accessible via email ...

Thanks for any and all info

Thats it for now.
Click to expand...
 
Any decent 10-50 synthetic oil should be fine for normal maintenance.

I run all my bikes in hard after their first warmup; 20 minutes of good hard 80% acceleration up thru the gears and lots of engine braking via downshifting. Gotta load those rings & then use engine braking to vacuum out the tiny filings created from the acceleration. Do that a bunch of times for about 20 minutes. Then change oil & filter. That concludes my break-in. It's the only proven way to ensure proper ring seating and that the engine will put out full power over its service life.

I'm the same height/inseam as you. The best way to get used to the height is to learn to ride standing up all the time except on the street. When your comfortable standing in any situation, the seat won't seem so high.
 
I to run my bikes in at 80% (after warmed-up) for 20-minutes and then change the oil/filter. Then I will go out for a few hours of riding, up & down the power band (no steady cruising) and change the oil/filter again. That’s break-in for me.
At 5’ 8” 30-inseam I do not think you will be able to put both feet flat, with-out professional suspension mods.
The suspension will settle a bit over time and as mentioned you could shave a bit off the seat. I installed the Kouba Link (very easy to install) and moved the forks up into the triple clamps to match. Set the sag at 100-mm.
1a63b4a3.jpg

fa2f7589.jpg

16104f0a.jpg
 
thanks for the tips. I did my first 50-60 miles off road today. ( total miles 75) I tried to keep if between 4000 and 6000 rpms. Did a lot of shifting and engine breaking. I could already feel the motor start to loosen up. Time for the first oil change tomorrow. Hope that goes well. I am going to run some petroleum based oil on this first change then probably go to a semi-synth. I did get the seat shaved ( only about 3/4ths of an inch). It helps a bit. I am getting used to it. I may go the rout of the new link and trying to lower the front forks and increase the SAG. If I could get about an inch out of all that it would be great. Dale, any idea what your seat height is now with the mods you did?

More to follow but so far I think I got the right bike and I think the stock exhaust sounds great! I also learned that the Metzler tires are not so good in deep soft sand !
 
Montanaman:

I did not measure the seat hight before/after and am out of the country right now....but I would say a 3/4 to 1 inch drop. Every little bit helps ;)

Getting to that oil drain plug on these bikes is a bit of a pain and I could not get a torque wrench on the bolt, but other than that the oil/filter change is pretty simple.

You might also want to invest in a bike stand as they are really handy for a number of jobs and make working on the bike much easier. I prefer this style that slides under the bike and simply lift & lower with the foot lever......much easier on the back. This one is a bit pricey....but adjustable. Search on Google and you may get it cheaper.

http://motorcycle.motorcycle-superstore.com/search#w=lift stand

IMG_0004-12.jpg

eec80191.jpg
 
I did buy a foot lift version from the dealer. Paid a bit more than 20 bucks. lol

Thanks.. doing my first oil change tomorrow. Altho when the bike is on the stand.. getting to the drain plug seems hard with that in the way.?
 
I'd leave it on the kickstand for the oil change, just warm the bike up first to get that oil runny then make sure to tilt it left and right to get as much oil as you can out of that PIA drain plug. There is a removable metal screen behind the drain plug as well. Just snag the edge of it with a dental pick or paper clip and coax it out. Might be some metal on it the first oil change, mine didn't really shed much compared to the older style motors. Go easy on the torque when reinstalling the drain plug and filter bolts. SOFT aluminum threads! Use a torque wrench if possible. The bike stands are handy for wheel and suspension maintenance, which you will end up doing eventually! Have fun!
 
My son and I did our first oil change on his TE 250 today after a quick 50 mile ride. The oil filter was pretty dirty, had a few specs of metal on the screen. The on line manual is a good reference. However when my son tightened the M-5 bolts one of them snapped. i will be chasing the threads and installing new bolts.
 
Are the M-5 bolts the 3 that hold the oil filter cap on? If so I stripped two of mine and had to have them re-tapped errrr. They apparently cannot be much more than finger tightened..
 
montanaman said:
Are the M-5 bolts the 3 that hold the oil filter cap on? If so I stripped two of mine and had to have them re-tapped errrr. They apparently cannot be much more than finger tightened..
Click to expand...
Yes it did not take much I have not found a torque value for it yet.
 
I replaced the bolts with black M5 allen head screws after cleaning up the threads. Seems to work well and were much easier to install.
I saw a stainless steel oil filter on ebay. Are these any good? I saw the paper oil filters at Motosportz that look like a good deal when you buy 5.2012-03-02_19-09-49_293.jpg
 
Not sure on the filter but I need to get some more. What was the size again? I threw out the last box..I think I am going to switch to synthetic next change.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top