• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

THE AGONY OF MY near DEFEAT

Desmoducky said:
When I bought this 1972 450CR off of Craigslist, I had no idea the ordeal that I would have to endure to pull the cylinder head. The cylinder head came off with a little persuasion, but there was no way that the cylinder and sleeve was coming off... ever...ever...ever (did I say ever?) !



First, a little history. I saw this bike listed on Craigslist for two hundred dollars and I instantly snapped it up. I took a big chance and sent the Iowa farmer who owned it, cash in a FedEx envelope (don't do that - that was stupid!) and he gave me a call to tell me he received the money – what a relief.



The man I bought the bike from stated that it belonged to his stepson who abandoned it up against a fence post, which bordered a plowed field. That there it stood for thirteen years through rain, snow, hot weather, dust covered from summers of crop cultivation without the slightest bit of attention being paid to it.
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man, what kind of idiot leaves a bike sit that way? thats a great line about sending cash in fedex envelope!
 
One other thing... if you look at the engine before and after, you'll notice I zinc-plated a lot of the parts that due to the unending exposure to the elements, were extremely rusty. I'll be posting a tutorial on home zinc-plating real soon. Any moron can do it and I'm proof of that.




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Desmo
 
Bravo for your perseverance! You thought of a lot of excellent ideas.

That's awesome you found that VW engine studs work on the early 70's 450 Husky, who would of known.

The 1973 360RT I restored a few years back cost me $4300 not counting the cost of the bike and there wasn't any water damage and all the parts were there. Your project has got to be north of a whole lot of dough.

Your 450cr is an excellent example of a complete restoration. So tell us whats in store for it, a mantel piece, a play bike, or maybe weekend worrier ARHMA bike?
 
Desmoducky said:
One other thing... if you look at the engine before and after, you'll notice I zinc-plated a lot of the parts that due to the unending exposure to the elements, were extremely rusty. I'll be posting a tutorial on home zinc-plating real soon. Any moron can do it and I'm proof of that.




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Desmo
Click to expand...
that middle pic of the restored roller with the sidecase off....bike is looking really tits! like its rolling down the assembly line!
 
Crashaholic;

I'm afraid to total up the cost on this bike. But lucky for me, my wife completely understands that when I get home after a stressful day at work, I need to do something with my hands and she lets me spend what I need to spend to keep my sense of well-being on the positive side. Damned, I am a fortunate man.

By the way, I forgot to post some other photos of my failed attempts. The first one was one that I mentioned previously - the sledge hammer brut force technique, which only served to bend the cylinder studs = FAIL!

The second was the special cutter I had made to drill down around the studs in an effort to remove the rust and debris from around the studs... that cutting bit lasted about 20 seconds of well lubricated use before it threw shrapnel all across the garage = FAIL!

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I figure I came up with nine different methodologies to remove the cylinder, all of which were utter FAILURES except one.... and that's all it takes, just one.


Justintendo,

I took the rusty parts, sand blasted them, soaked them in hydrochloric acid , rinsed them off and put the parts right in the plating tank (five gallon Home Depot bucket) and viola!... great looking corrosion resistant parts.

As for the bike's future, I will never have the opportunity to race it because I have a carbon fiber spine du to an accident. I got rear-ended on my motorcycle by a chick who was on the cell phone - talking with her friend and was late for work. So she was slightly distracted and as a result, she literally blew my spine into popcorn.

I laid on my back for thirteen months and the spine doctor stated that if I crash again, I will be skewered b the titanium rods in wrapped around my spine and my wife would be extremely pissed off about that. Nowadays, I do this restoration work because it's interesting. If I don't know ho to do something, I either learn what to do or learn from great engine rebuilders like Puckerbush.

Thanks all!


Desmo
 
Desmo, thanks for sharing your fails. You've shown that multiple attempts are sometimes required to reach an end result. Also, I've enjoyed the pictures. As they say they're worth a thousand words.

Its awesome your wife supports you in this hobby. She must be quite a gal for doing so.

Sorry to hear that you can't risk falling down on a bike ever again but I guess on the bright side you'll never get hurt on a bike again and the guys who still ride can't say that.
 
Your Husky is looking great! I hope mine looks as nice.

I will be awaiting your plating tutorial! Trying to source those BUFO bolts is tough and expensive. Some I just have to replace because they are either striped or hammered on.

Eventually I'll get my parts list together to see what John has. I have been able to find parts here and there locally. The only MC breaker here has a number of Huskies but said he is not breaking them down.
 
Very good read with I know a lot of frustration. Another cool story about someone sticking with it saving another one of these giants of the day. I know all about the cost also. I just quit keeping tabs and mine is only a rider with upgrades. I wish you the best on the restore and too am sorry for your accident. I think it should be against the law to hold a cell phone while driving.
 
Yeah, I read the zinc plating tutorial. However, my chemicals are different. The electrolyte I use doesn't wear out like vinegar. I use zinc chloride, ammonium chloride and polyethylene glycol. I use a brightener and a blue passivate at the end of the process. The electricity is three volts at approximately 500 Milliamps... That's the equivalent of using two D cell batteries but I use a plug in phone transformer. If I were to use a twelve volt charger, I 'd affect the final surface finish by making it mottled.

Desmo

If anyone is interested, I'll post a tutorial... If not, no issues!
 
I say go for it. I was not trying to discourage you. If you know something different that works better I am all for it. I have not set up my plating system so I do like to take advantage of the delay in deployment. I certainly have enough parts to play with at this point!!
 
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