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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

TE 250 engine fix & longevity

Slowpoke

Slowpoke

Husqvarna
AA Class
Last June I severely watered out my 07 TE250 with some pretty nasty chocolate milky mudhole water on a 500 mile ride. The bike had about 336hrs and ~9000 km on it at the time, all original.
(It had been using some oil on long road sections for the last 10-20 hours before that.)
We couldn't get the bike going again & deduced it had no compression. On the tow rope it went back our support truck & that was the end of our ride.
Once home I cleaned out the engine with numerous flushes of oil, WD40, varsol and lots more oil. I also disassembled the carb and airbox & cleaned all the filth from them. I couldn't get it running and made the assumption that either the bore/piston was damaged or one of the valves had dirt stuck under it, or was damaged, as it still had no compression. I assumed it may need a rebuild given the oil usage it had been experiencing before it watered out.
I planned on possibly putting a 310 kit on it, if it needed a new piston or bore, when funds allowed, which at the time it thought would have been last summer.
I finally got around to taking it apart this past weekend(best laid plans...... :) ...);

Once I pulled the head off, there was a fair bit of black carbony fluff on the top of the piston and the combustion chamber. The exhaust ports were coated with thick sticky black oily residue and the exhaust valves had a good layer of carbon burned onto them.
I pulled the jug and piston out and they looked to be in very, very good condition: no scratches or scuffing and just a small dime sized polished wear mark in the center of each piston skirt.

Diagnosis:

All the rings were stuck in their grooves. The oil rings must have become stuck first and allowed the bike to use oil(not sure what would have caused that.......). Then when the bike watered out, the compression ring became stuck, causing the bike to lose compression.

Everything cleaned up nicely. I filled the exhaust ports and then the intake port with varsol and let sit for several minutes each time to see if anything leaked past the valves. Nothing leaked, so the valves are still sealing well.

I freed up the rings using WD40 and patience. I cleaned out the grooves once I was able to remove the rings, although there wasn't much junk in there. There isn't much clearance so it wouldn't take much to jam things up.
I checked end gap of the compression ring in the bore- The manual calls for .008" to .016" gap new, with replacement at .027". Mine with 336hours on measured .014". Not bad!

After everything was cleaned and checked, I reassembled everything along with a new set of gaskets.
I should be able to fire it up this week, once I get the cams back in(another story).

Conclusion:
This bike should get easily 500 hours or more out of the top end without too much trouble and what I thought was going to be an expensive fix turned out to be quite minor.
 
Excellent, everyone loves a happy ending.
tongue.gif
 
Thats longevity and a quality build for you. Please give us an update once she is back in one piece.

Good luck
 
Update

The other nite I finished putting the cams etc. in. I couldn't do it on the weekend as when I was removing them, some of the bolts were a bit too stubborn - surprising for little 6mm bolts that are only supposed to be torqued to about 8 or 9 ft lbs. I finally got all of them except the front left bolt on the intake cam cap. (Rant -all engineers etc. take note: small allen head bolts(under 8mm), philips screws and slot screws are three types of fasteners that should be made illegal. They are the most pathetic interface to use on fasteners, for anything! Always have been, always will be. Stop using them! But I digress............Rant off)
I had to drill the head off it. Once the bolt head was removed, the remaining stud turned out with just my fingers.......Go figure. I only used one swear word during this set back, but I said it quite a few times......
Glad it was only that particular bolt, as some of the others can't be reached with a drill while the engine is still in the frame. I had to wait til Monday to get some new fasteners.
After getting the top end and everything else all buttoned up, I kicked it over gently just to make sure nothing was out of time etc. All good! Check to make sure I have spark; yep.
I was now ready to start it up. Put the gas tank on, connect the hose turn on the gas, install the well charged battery.
Hit the starter button - nothing, just peace and quiet........Hmmmmm
Now I'm thinking I may have some sort of electrical gremlins on my 4 yr old well used bike - my favorite type of problem........ NOT!

I didn't have time on Monday to deal with that, so I went out this evening to try and solve the issue.
I planned to use a jumper to try and bypass everything and go straight from the batt to the starter.

While I was fiddling with the positive connection on the starter, there were a few small stray sparks coming from nearby underneath......Here I had somehow forgot to reconnect the negative lead for the starter & it had slipped down behind the Countershaft cover & got lost in the shadows from the poor lighting in my garage. I had to laugh at that one. Problem solved & I dodged what I thought was some bad wiring or electrical connections. I quickly re-attached the negative wire.

After all that, I gave it a tiny shot of ether, hit the starter and
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IT RUNS!
Like it's supposed to.:thumbsup:

Can't wait to get it out on the local streets for a full load test, maybe this weekend...

My total cost for this was under $40 (new gaskets and cam bolts) + my time.
 
Great News about the engine Slowpoke !!! I am happy to hear that since I also have the TE250, although it has the big bore kit now. And I couldn't agree more on the bolts, since I was installing a small wall-mount TV hanger last weekend which came with some lag bolts with allen heads. Of course, halfway into the stud they strip out !!! Not a big deal getting them out with vise-grips, but of course then had to run back to the store to find some hex-head lag screws which turned a 30-minute job into two hours :(
 
Ive owned many Huskys since 2003 and all I can say is that they are super-reliable. The rings could have sticked to the piston by either sitting too long, using a low grade pertroleum oil, or bad gas perhaps. Ive also seen these things happen when its super cold out as well. Anyway good news on the bike and I second the fact about those shitty cam cap bolts. Italians think they do everything the best ;)
 
joedirtbike418 said:
Ive owned many Huskys since 2003 and all I can say is that they are super-reliable. The rings could have sticked to the piston by either sitting too long, using a low grade pertroleum oil, or bad gas perhaps. Ive also seen these things happen when its super cold out as well. Anyway good news on the bike and I second the fact about those shitty cam cap bolts. Italians think they do everything the best ;)
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Only use full syn 10-50 oil & the bike only sits for a few months in the winter. Generally use brand name gas from high volume stations........
Maybe a solid soak of 100cc of WD40 down the sparkplug hole every late winter/ early spring with the piston at BDC might help..........? Followed by an immediate oil change.....
 
Anybody here ever use Seafoam gas or oil treatment? I've had good luck with it in my road bike and small engines over the winter keeping things clean and gum-free. I am wondering if an occasional treatment might help with the rings.....
 
Anybody here ever use Seafoam gas or oil treatment? I've had good luck with it in my road bike and small engines over the winter keeping things clean and gum-free. I am wondering if an occasional treatment might help with the rings.....​
Click to expand...
I personally don't like to use fuel treatments due to the fact that I've seen them eat up fuel pumps and other fuel hoses associated with the fuel pump. I just drain the carbuerator and fuel tank when I store my bike and every copule of weeks I kick the bike over just to prevent the ring sticking issue. I've honsetly have not had it happen to me once by doing these steps. Also, you could use wd-40 but and upper cylinder lube or some light oil would also work well in the top. Basiclly the problem is when oil is stuck in the piston rings and it sits for a while, it accumulates moisture and traps it between the piston and cylinder. It doesnt cause it to rust, but it builds up a slight blackish residue.
 
I use Seafoam from time to time in the fuel for storage etc. It's petroleum based so it shouldn't harm any fuel system components.
 
Took it out for a short spin today to do a full load test - she runs as good as ever
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This one has always put out good power & has surprised a few people by how well it goes(doing the 'ride it like you stole it' break-in method when new prolly didn't hurt
smile.gif
). Should be good to go for another couple hundred or more hours.
 
Finally got out for a decent sized DS run yesterday- did about 180km. The motor spent lots of time between 5000 and 9000+ rpm. I kept an eye on the oil level in the sight glass & if it used any oil yesterday it couldn't have been more than a few cc's - the oil level was at the same spot on the glass at the end of the ride as it was at the beginning. It certainly appears that the oil ring must have been stuck for a while before I watered it out last summer, given the oil usage at road speeds.
500-600 hours should be well within reach on this top end.
 
Great news !! Glad your work was successful. Now I'm hoping for some good weather and days-off to come together so I can put some hours on my 250 (well, 300 with the big-bore kit).
 
Congrats Brian. It's great when you expect the worse and it turns out the best. Now you have to constantly decide which to ride.

Cheers
 
I generally use seafoam in the spring as a good cleaner for the fueling system. Don't think it acts as a fuel stabilizer. For winter storage I buy a separate fuel stabilizer, fill tank with High test and add stabilizer, Start the engine so stabilized fuel is also in the float bowl on carbed bikes. Remove seat & breather, they spray engine fog into the carb , doesn't take long for the engine to sputter out die. That's pretty well it. It's ready for at least a year of storage, Ohh plus battery maintaner. The Engine fogger coats everything in the combustion chamber with oil. I'm still on the original battery and plug. Buying a new plug this week :D

P.S. Spring startup will also mosquito proof your yard. Interesting smelling smoke from exhaust due to combination of Engine fogger & Stabilized gas. Not unpleasant or anything, just different.
 
Glad to hear you have had such good luck with bike. My bike has less than 15 hours and is using 175ml oil hour.
 
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