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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

SWM is back

Love it! Even a couple of small improvements (IMO) - shroud design that won't catch as many trees. :) Wonder what kind of forks those are?
 
I hope SWM can make these available in the USA/NA sooner then later. I read " first in Europe, then Australia and South America before expanding into Asia and North America once proper homologation has been achieved." They have a rock solid set of bikes with the 300, 450, 500, and 650. I am happy to see they are being built in the same factory as before.

http://www.swm-motorcycles.it/index.html
 
How do these compare to the KTM, HUSABERG and Husqvarna line up?

All these different motorcycle manufacturers are flooding the market. If one was purchasing a new one it's confusing which one is better?
I'd also consider which manufacturer would support there bike with parts.
In this day and age we should be able to overnight any part?

I been there before with the Italian husqvarnas, no parts. I can buy a 70's & 80's husqvarna part and get it before and newer husky part. There should be a hotline overnight parts order system. The car manufacturers do this I done it as a parts manager in the 70's. My thoughts are the motorcycle industry needs wake up call.
This modern manufacturing just in time system isn't factoring in the parts supply nor the product support.

I'm on your side guys and gals. We must choose wisely what we purchase or buy two bikes to support one to keep it running. How do the non factory racers do it?

I restore and run old tractors. I have a complete tractor apart on shelves to keep my old iron running. I do the same thing in the past with my old huskys.
 
These are several generations back designs and rebuilt by another company for a price point. My guess is they will be good bikes but not quite full modern performance. Will be a little heavy and the suspension will be just OK. Thats my guess. I see them as more of a recycled (purchased castings and tooling) price point bike than a bike gunning for the top. We will see.
 
I am happy to see the Cagiva/Husqvarna dohc bikes live on. Our 4 dohc Husky's have been rock solid with only a couple of minor fixes (fuel pump dislodging, clutch slave). I like how the SWM's don't have the tank shrouds/brush catchers like before. I am not crazy about the dual exhaust on an offroad bike, but if they can get 2 cans on there that sounds as good as the '08 p/u kit Arrow's, I bet it would be like porn for the ears, lol. Maybe SWM will put the counter balancers back in the 450/500, and widen the upper gear ratios, wouldn't that be nice? The cb's have already been produced before, and I remember hearing talk of revised gearing in the pipeline from the factory. The upgrades SWM can do to this platform is exciting to say the least. The 650 is a different beast. They are bringing it back with 17"/19" wheels. Doesn't a Sumo usually have 17's front and rear?

If they can get these to the states street legal as before, I am sure they will sell like mad at their price point (6000 euros = approx. $7,500 US) . Especially in the States that require the bikes to be street legal from the factory. The Japanese still have boat anchor and small displacement DS bikes. They suck for DS. The European bikes are with the times. The $10k price point for the Austrian DS bikes and carbureted Beta DS is a tuff nut to crack for some. These old tech efi dohc motors put a big smile on my face every time I ride them.
 
[quote="XLEnduroMan, post: 463661, member: 976"These old tech efi dohc motors put a big smile on my face every time I ride them.[/quote]

Still flashback to riding my buddies 08 TXC510 rocketship. Awesome motor.
 
I think it says a lot that they addressed the two big issues with that motor.
I wonder if they bought it with the design fixes. Bmw supposedly had a 450 xlite in the works so they may have been ready to make some changes to the 250/310 considering it was put into production in 2010. We'll never know though lol
 
Back
Top