• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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 511 Chain Slack?

Cosmokenney

Husqvarna
Pro Class
My workshop manual says max 5 mm gap. Plus this picture is confusing, the arrow points to the top run of the chain, but the drawing shows the measurement at the bottom run of the chain. In the picture, it looks like the bike is on the ground, but the manual doesn't say if it should be on the ground or on a stand.

Anyway I just changed the gearing to 14/52. The chain seem tight at 5 mm to me. Plus does anyone know if there is an adjustment (fore/aft) in the chain guide? That seems to be too close to the sprocket now.

Chain Adjustment.png
 
Since these bikes have CTS the chain is much tighter than on regular bikes. It needs to be tight or you will get a lot of chain noise.
 
Since these bikes have CTS the chain is much tighter than on regular bikes. It needs to be tight or you will get a lot of chain noise.
Thanks man. Do you set the slack with the bike on the ground? Or does it matter? I guess CTS changes that too.
 
Thats what the CTS is all about! There is no change or fluctuation of chain slack throughout its travel up and down like all other bikes. The fulcrum point is only 2 points. Sprocket to sprocket... I have the 2009 BMW G450X and the Husky 449 engine also, (See my Avatar) and they "BMW" did this first on a production bike successfully. In most recent years anyway. Husqvarna then did it also starting in late 2010 on 2011 models and the engines were supplied by BMW as they at the time owned Husqvarna. Husqvarna lays claim to it being there discovery or renamed this setup when BMW stopped production of the BMW G450X in 2010. Letting Husqvarna concentrate on the full on competition market. (Lets not get all bent out of shape now Husqvarna folks and everybody) but what matters is it works well and it doesn't make any difference where you adjust the chain through out its travel. Up on a stand or sitting on the ground.

On my BMW 19lb. stainless steel frame the swing arm pivot shaft goes all the way through the frame, bearings and out the hollow output countershaft and sprocket and through the frame and bearings again.

The Husky has a separate bolt going into both sides of the frame to hold on the swing arm. ( Hence the beefy shape and bulge in the frame in that area on both sides). its the same concept. Coaxial pivot point drive . This also allows for a longer swingarm to be fitted without adding any length in the wheelbase.

All other Bikes have 3 points, front sprocket, swingarm pivot point, rear wheel axle. The tightest point of the chain would be when all three center lines are in line with one another (somewhat compressed). On these bikes Its always loose when topped out and becomes loose again when passing this alighned point previously mentioned and becomes loose again as the suspension bottoms out.

The closer the swingarm pivot is to the front sprocket the better. If the front Sprocket is actually the centerline of the pivot itself even better yet. Front Sprocket changes are a bit harder to do but still can be done in about 20 minutes if needed. Even on my BMW..
 
Good info. Its funny, my buddy was just here checking out my bike for the first time. This is a guy who rode left kick Huskys back in the day. Now he's a Honda and KTM guy. He started tapping on the part of the frame where the swing arm bolts in and asking what the heck it is. Then he noticed that there was no kick start. Man did he go off. He basically said, estart or not, he'd never buy a bike without a kick start! Got me to thinking.
 
Well look at the right side of the countershaft exposed on the brake side. It has a black plug in it. simply tap it out all the way through from the sprocket side and do the same to knock out the bushing in the right side of the lower rear motor mount that Husky puts in there and the engine bolts directly into the BMW Chassis except for 2 small one way lip seals that tap into the ends of the Countershaft to keep crud out when used in the BMW.

In the BMW application the swingarm pivot shaft is hollow and has weep holes drilled in it and each end of the swingarm pivot shaft has a small 6mm cap screw in the ends of the actual shaft itself which can be removed either end and I screw in a Metric zerk fitting of the same size and you can grease the shaft and push out any build up or debree with grease. The shaft is fixed and pinch bolts on the swingarm hold it from rotation when installed so the output shaft is spinning around it any time the bike is rolling. Pretty damn smart setup if you ask me. A simple spanner wrench for a "Dewalt" 4-1/2 inch grinder fits the nut in the frame on the left side perfectly and you loosen up the left swingarm pinch bolt to loosen this nut, next release the right swing arm pinch bolts and push out the shaft a few inches to swap sprockets if needed. There you go. I have no idea what keeps crap and crud out of the shaft on the Husky's left side? When I bought my Husky 449 spare engine it had 10 hours on it and when I pushed the plug out through the sprocket side it had crap in there (not much) and it was like new? The bike had been wrecked and had front end damage so was parted out. I bought the engine.
 
Good info. Its funny, my buddy was just here checking out my bike for the first time. This is a guy who rode left kick Huskys back in the day. Now he's a Honda and KTM guy. He started tapping on the part of the frame where the swing arm bolts in and asking what the heck it is. Then he noticed that there was no kick start. Man did he go off. He basically said, estart or not, he'd never buy a bike without a kick start! Got me to thinking.
Well he had better either keep his old bikes or switch to some other hobby. Eventually all bikes with be efi and they won't start at all without 12v anyway.
 
Good info. Its funny, my buddy was just here checking out my bike for the first time. This is a guy who rode left kick Huskys back in the day. Now he's a Honda and KTM guy. He started tapping on the part of the frame where the swing arm bolts in and asking what the heck it is. Then he noticed that there was no kick start. Man did he go off. He basically said, estart or not, he'd never buy a bike without a kick start! Got me to thinking.


I used to think the lack of a kicker was a deal breaker too, however the charging and starting systems have been dead-reliable. To give myself a warm and fuzzy, I made a set of really minimalist jumper cables and zip tied them to the bike. I bet they will be used in 2014...but not by me. Even the two strokes I ride with have batteries now and I never ride more than a mile solo.
 
I added a little insurance. The stock battery is 6Ah and weights 6lbs. I added an Earthx battery which is 12Ah and weights 1.3lbs. It has it's own battery management system built into the battery, so no fancy charging systems needed. The 449/511 has a great 196watt charging system and now it has twice the battery. I can get you a discount on an Earthx and free shipping. :)
 
Yea, a lithium battery is at the top of my list. Just that my bank account is slim at the moment. Today I'm installing aluminum hand guards and replacing the rear turn signals that broke off last week.
 
The earth X is an improvement. It is 20 degrees here today, last year I had to put it on the charger to get Gertrude
going. Today with the earth X she started easier and quicker than the DRZ, and that's saying something.
With the weather and snow here now I have been on some other forums and it seems a lot of complaints about
The other lithium batteries, but not earth X.
 
I added a little insurance. The stock battery is 6Ah and weights 6lbs. I added an Earthx battery which is 12Ah and weights 1.3lbs. It has it's own battery management system built into the battery, so no fancy charging systems needed. The 449/511 has a great 196watt charging system and now it has twice the battery. I can get you a discount on an Earthx and free shipping. :)

Never heard of the EarthX, My Shorai battery in my dirt bike weighs about 13 ounces is 1/3rd smaller than the original that still was OK for a year old but the Shorai has 215 Cold cranking amps. Its a Lithium Ion type..cost about 145 on ebay..The EarthX battery you speak of and its self management system built in sounds like a cool set up. How does it work. Tell me more. Do they make batteries for Harleys?

Sounds like something I could use. Just found out this morning the 7.5 amp spade fuse was fried in my Battery Tender Plus pig tail for my Roadglide. It was click-click- dead and so I had to go down and get some fuses and replace the fuse in the chargers pigtail because one false move plugging the darned thing in and you'll touch the chargers hot post to the ground post and it pops the fuse. Off comes the seat and out comes the bigger alligator clip charger. its 25 to 35 degrees each morning right now and I'm tired of buying batteries for my Hog every year...
 
I just checked my tension after 200klms. It has stretched a fair way. Brought it back into 5mm spec. Big issues with the chain alignment thou. Make sure you do a visual down the sprocket mine was out a fair way compared to the alignment marks on the axle..
 
Good info. Its funny, my buddy was just here checking out my bike for the first time. This is a guy who rode left kick Huskys back in the day. Now he's a Honda and KTM guy. He started tapping on the part of the frame where the swing arm bolts in and asking what the heck it is. Then he noticed that there was no kick start. Man did he go off. He basically said, estart or not, he'd never buy a bike without a kick start! Got me to thinking.
Did he ask how often you check your points and condenser?
 
Yea, a lithium battery is at the top of my list. Just that my bank account is slim at the moment. Today I'm installing aluminum hand guards and replacing the rear turn signals that broke off last week.


Returned the Track Side hand guards. Couldn't get them to fit. Once again all the hydraulics got in the way. Even thought they are the Cycle Gear specials, they are pretty stout. I was actually pretty stoked looking at them.
 
Never heard of the EarthX, My Shorai battery in my dirt bike weighs about 13 ounces is 1/3rd smaller than the original that still was OK for a year old but the Shorai has 215 Cold cranking amps. Its a Lithium Ion type..cost about 145 on ebay..The EarthX battery you speak of and its self management system built in sounds like a cool set up. How does it work. Tell me more. Do they make batteries for Harleys?
Definitely a generation ahead of Shorai from a company with better support and better warranties.

http://earthxmotorsports.com/our-batteries/
http://www.ziptyracing.com/earthx-etx12a-battery/
 
Returned the Track Side hand guards. Couldn't get them to fit. Once again all the hydraulics got in the way. Even thought they are the Cycle Gear specials, they are pretty stout. I was actually pretty stoked looking at them.

I've got those too. I ended up spending some time with the bench grinder and dremel making mods to fit them correctly. Those are nice guards and great price, but not plug and play for sure. Took about two hours of trial and error tinkering, but they have stayed put for hundreds of miles now. The hydraulics combined with the taper in the bar make for a interesting problem.
 
Back
Top