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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

TE510's suspension, can't keep bike straight

268fords

268fords

Husqvarna
Pro Class
So I went riding yesterday at stonyford. 8 bikes in the group including two other husky's. Everyone had a steering stabilizer of different makes except me. Every trail we hit, my bike would not stay planted and the suspension seemed to be very busy. Before the ride, prepped everything. Set sag, 33mm of free sag after setting so springs are fine, suspension clickers were all set to factory settings and forks bled before riding. Tires are Pirelli scorpion pros 14psi front, 12psi rear. Forks are set with second line just above triple clamp. This is my first ride with a knobby on the back. Normally run a trials tire. Front was brand new. Everybody else would fly up these steep,steep hills and stay planted down the middle of the rut. I would follow the same line and no matter what way I sat or leaned would keep the the back tire planted. 12 tooth front, 47 stock rear. Even other terrain my bike was everywhere. What was weird is that the some terrain, the bike was amazing. I love my husky, just trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. My fingers are about the only thing not sore right now from yesterday's 40-50 miles of torturous fun.
 
I have a steering stabilizer, but my 511 tends to act similar to how you described yours. I was under the impression that I was lacking rebound control, but it may be something else.
 
I'd experiment with the shock's rebound clicker. My 09 TE 450 was very sensitive to this. I don't think they have the best rebound valving in the shock (see the thread DIY Sachs tuning). Also, the compression damping in the fork is awful. Some very easy fixes needed here. Other than that, your setup/sag/fork position is just about what I ran and the bike was great.
 
You don't say what your weight is. I'm 185 plus gear. The stock TE fork springs were good for me, but the valving was way, way too soft. A set of Race Tech Gold Valves fixed that. In the rear, I went up two sizes stiffer on the shock spring and found the valving to be fine. The TE suspension needs to be addressed for anything other than casual riding, IMO.

Highly recommend the Race Tech Suspension Bible. It opened my eyes to what proper setup should be. Never knew a heavier spring would make a more compliant ride.
 
Well, you've been given the advice about getting the right spring, and setting your sag correctly (which needs the correct spring for your weight). If the rear end is kicking, it indicates you have too much high-speed compression damping to me. Try and go out (anticlockwise) 2 or 3 clicks at a time on the high-speed compression damping (the larger nut-type clicker at the top of your shock - the low-speed clicker is the screw adjuster in the middle of the high-speed adjuster).

As someone else said, the stock valving needs to be reworked for most people, so I would seriously consider getting yourself a Racetech Gold Valve in the rear. I also notice that when I compressed the rear suspension then let the bike go, there was a strange ratcheting noise that would come from the shock. Because of this I also got the suspension tuner to fit a Racetech Rebound Separation Valve (RSV - http://www.racetech.com/ItemInfo/69) which dealt with that and definitely improved the handling of the rear end.

Since I got the shock revalved, got the correct spring for my weight and set the sag correctly, fitted the RSV, and dialed out the high-speed compression damping by half a turn my rear end has become a lot more stable - far less kicking and the back end.
 
I would have started with first principles. Like swapping bikes with someone to see if it was a technique issue.

Aside: it is good to know Stony is open, and when it is dry a trials tire works great there.
 
So I'm 175 lbs and about 185 lbs with gear on. Suspension I believe is stock. I have yet to dive into the forks to change he fluid. I haven't been able to afford to have the suspension re built. Bike is an 08'. Race sag was set to 4" if I remember right. I didn't try swapping bikes just because the two four strokes of the group had suspension work and both of their body weights were way off of mine. The others were two strokes and I don't ride two strokes. I have had the forks up in the triple clamps that far for a while. I do miss my trials tire coffee. I really can't wait for this knobby to wear away so I can justify a new tire to the wife. When I had a trials tire, I never had any issues with the back end, but I hardly broke traction with the rear. Kind of weird not feeling like a billy goat.
 
268fords said:
So I'm 175 lbs and about 185 lbs with gear on. Suspension I believe is stock. I have yet to dive into the forks to change he fluid. I haven't been able to afford to have the suspension re built. Bike is an 08'. Race sag was set to 4" if I remember right. I didn't try swapping bikes just because the two four strokes of the group had suspension work and both of their body weights were way off of mine. The others were two strokes and I don't ride two strokes. I have had the forks up in the triple clamps that far for a while. I do miss my trials tire coffee. I really can't wait for this knobby to wear away so I can justify a new tire to the wife. When I had a trials tire, I never had any issues with the back end, but I hardly broke traction with the rear. Kind of weird not feeling like a billy goat.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the trials tire you were using may have masked the issues in your suspension - which is one of the reasons I used trials tires front and back for years.

For the record there are 3 Cafe Husky Sponsors who do suspensions.
My most vivid memory is when I rode a 2007 TE510 at Carnegie (Livermore CA) which had the suspension done by Les:
http://www.lt-racing.com

Pure velvet.

But since the cost of tires seems to be an issue, when you get a chance, ride that 2008 TE510 up to my place and we could probably glean more insight as to what might help.
 
I believe your right coffee. Between the mortgage, bills, and the kids, my play money has to be stretched. I will check my schedule with my wife.
 
what coffee said, this would be the first thing I would do.. if you have lost confidence in settings go back to std front and rear. 14.psi fron and rear. Static sag by the book. front and rear.. determine correct springs before dampening.. biggest rule of all... Weight and skill must be sorted first..
 
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