• 2 Stroke Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Italy - About 1989 to 2014
     WR = 2st Enduro & CR = 2st 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

All 2st Too Tall!

incorrigible

incorrigible

Husqvarna
B Class
I haven't taken a tape measure to it yet, but the WR 250 09 seems an inch or so taller than the Yammies and KTM's I have had. Does anyone have a good strategy to get this bike to a similar stance. I like the handloing but jumping from one of those to the :uskymakes me feel I'd like to make it the same height.

Lowering the rear more than the front a. Little also seems like the right thing. I a$m thinkon 10 mm front and 20 - 25 rear.

Anybody have a good tip on the best way to sort this out without messing up the handling?
 
5' 6" 30" inseam - I cut foam out of the seat and pushed the forks up in the triples to the second line (from the top). I mostly stand up when I ride, though. It definitely lessens the comfort (about on par with my old KTM seat now) of an already stiff seat. I still am not flat footed by any means, but it is low enough that I can catch it before the point of no return if I start to tip in a technical situation. Other than that, send it to a good suspension place to have the forks and shock professionally lowered. You could get a Kouba link, but that just lowers the rear, which I would imagine would make it handle oddly without additional work to the front.
 
The best thing is to get the correct springs on your bike for your weight. Set your sags correctly. Check out my setup recommendations in the Tech section. This will balance the bike and allow you to swing your leg over the bike. Static sags are critical and when you have both static and rider sag right, you know you have the correct springs too. I had to increase the rear spring big time and actually had to go down one on the fork springs. Until I got my sags right I had a hard time swinging my leg over the back.
 
I just contacted WER and I'm gonna send my suspension off to them to get it lowered 2". He (Drew Smith) said it's not a problem and does lots of them. BTW my Husky is a 144 and it's the tallest bike we own.
 
Lowered 2" ???? A bit much in my opinion. You are not starting with a lot of travel to start with. The Husky only has 11.6" of travel in rear and 11.8" front. You going to have only about 9.6" of travel with you are through. You set your static and rider sags correctly and the bike will be noticably lower. Yes, That does mean you will be changing springs. I had to go up 5 sizes (6.0kg) on my rear spring on my 2011 WR150 and down 1 size on my fork spring (.40kg).
 
Hi! I am 175cm and i felt my bike was on the high side too. I started with cutting my seat about1" and lowered the bar(took spacers off). The seat was too hard for woods so i put in 20mm of a softer foam that compresses more when i sit on it, and i also moved the forks up 10mm in the clamps. This gives me around 20mm total of lowered rideheight. I also released a little spring pressure at the rear spring(2 turns on the screw) as i don,t do any high jumps anyway.

Johnny
 
Kouba doesn't have a product for the 250/300.

I am not trying to LOWER the bike. In my experience, you have to tread softly in making chassis changes.

I suspect sliding the forks down in the front will be sufficient. 10 mm I think.

When you throw your leg over the back of the WR it is obvious this bike is taller than a KTM or Yammie and I can't see any good purpose to that height. I am thinking of taking it down 20-25 mm. Johnny's idea of lowering the sag is the obvious quick and dirty and free way and I'll try that. If anything to see if running front down 10mm and rear down 20-25mm messes up the handling geometry.
 
Yes I thought 2" was to much but Drew Smith (WER) knows suspension way more than me and he said it's ok. Maybe when I talk on the phone with him I'll back down to 1 1/2" or so. I had a Kouba link on my 07 Honda 450R but they don't make one for the 08 Husky CR125's.
 
john01 said:
Yes I thought 2" was to much but Drew Smith (WER) knows suspension way more than me and he said it's ok. Maybe when I talk on the phone with him I'll back down to 1 1/2" or so. I had a Kouba link on my 07 Honda 450R but they don't make one for the 08 Husky CR125's.
Click to expand...
Yea I looked for a link for my 2007WR 125 also the link is narrow on one end and wide on the other. The new 2009 and up will take a link, I had my bike lowered 1 1/2 inches and took an inch out of the seat, I have to find some softer foam the thing is killing my rear when I sit.
 
I`m only 5'6" tall with 30" inseem, my weigth is 160 pounds and i don't have any problems riding my wr 250. I have the suspension setup like it is from the factory and i really appreciate the heigth of this bike. It's only if i have to stop in terrain that is really uneven, like between two tussocks that i will have problems with the heigth of the bike. If you lower the bike you will get some real problems due to ground clearance and suspension travel. You just have to get used to the heigth of the bike and learn how to ride it, remember that you have to ride this bike standing most of the time when you are out on the trails. If not i would suggest that you get yourself a lower bike like a gasgas or a sherco. Or maybe go back to the pumpkin. You may wanna check this out, if you are short legged.

http://www.ossamotor.es/EN/models.php?idMoto=339
 
5' 7" myself and have been riding tall bikes all my life (52 years old). My 08 Husky CR 144 needs fork seals and I've never had a suspension re-valved so I figured I'd let WER do it all; re-valve, seals, lower. BTW I'm getting that OSSA! I'm just waiting to see when they will actually make it to the USA.
 
Vinduro said:
Lowered 2" ???? A bit much in my opinion. You are not starting with a lot of travel to start with. The Husky only has 11.6" of travel in rear and 11.8" front. You going to have only about 9.6" of travel with you are through. You set your static and rider sags correctly and the bike will be noticably lower. Yes, That does mean you will be changing springs. I had to go up 5 sizes (6.0kg) on my rear spring on my 2011 WR150 and down 1 size on my fork spring (.40kg).
Click to expand...
Did the suspension change on the newer bikes? My 2008 has 11.8" in front and 12.6" in the back.
 
I just checked and it shows 12.6 rear and 11.8 front on the 08 CR125's like PK stated. Maybe when they changed the frames in 09 up bikes it's less??? Either way I'm getting mine dropped a little. I just checked and the 09's up do have less travel front and rear 11.6 and 11.8. So my 08 has a little more to play with.
 
I have a 2012 WR125 and I couldn't even imagine lowering my seat height by loosening the shock spring (more sag). I have raced many bikes and after the first breakin ride the "first" thing I do is set rear sag. Most bikes handle like CRAP, don't turn very well and are a mess to handle (for me anyway) without the proper sag. I am 5'6" with 30" in-seam and it's rarely that I get into a situation that I can't hold the bike up with my toes or slid to one side using one leg. If I fall, I just get back up.
I don't mean to offend anyone but if you loosen your shock spring to lower your seat and you think the bike still handles good..........then you don't have any idea how GREAT your bike can handle with the proper settings.
 
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