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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Vibrations On Te 449

T

tomlurge

Husqvarna
B Class
I've been pondering the adventurization of a TE449/511 for a long time. They are street legal with 40hp in Germany which solves one of the biggest problems. CCM used them as 40hp engines with reasonably long service intervals. Also they look fantastic and IMS offers a very good looking tank/seat combination. But then I test-rode 3 of them (well, two were G450X, to be honest, but I don't consider that to make a big difference in the issue at hand) and they all were loud and rough/vibey as hell. Loud not only from the muffler but from the engine itself. And quite the opposite of smooth. That made my thoughts wander off towards a 2017+ 701 but I'm still addicted to the idea. Some modifications to the handlebars wouldn't solve that issue for me as I also found the engine itself annoingly loud.

Question: would it help to balance the engine (crankshaft, fly wheel, new bearings) or is that just a lot of effort with little chance of success?

And, on a more general note: are 449/511 worse than a Yamaha WR450F (great looking with JVO rally kit) or a Husaberg FE 570? Has anybody ridden those too and can compare? I'm just wondering if I should give up the idea alltogether or if I should try to get a road legal uncorked version of them.

I have to admit I'm not used to little thumpers so maybe I just have the wrong expectations. OTOH some of them like WR250 (which I find ugly and too weak) are said to run very smooth. I mostly ride italian V2s, so I'm not a total stranger to vibrations (but I'm getting older and less tolerant to them). I also am vertically challenged so the advice to just test ride them is easier said then done.
 
Okay, I hope didn't hurt anybodys feelings or seemed too arrogant/ignorant/both. I'm reading a lot about how KTMs vibrate and rattle, even the otherwise quiet and nice FreeRide. Seems like they just do. Same might be true for Husabergs although it is seldomly mentioned. What I experienced when riding the TE 449 and G450X fits with the description of the KTMs, maybe worse. That's what I'd like to know from people who have experiences with more than one bike from this class: are they comparable, is the Husky even worse, or actually better? And it seems from what I read that Yamaha's WR450F is a bit quieter - might that be true?
Bikes I know are Ducatis from the 90ies, a big twin Guzzi (that one I know quite well), an old Morini 3 1/2. They are all not the smoothes rides and ideally my next bike would be better adjusted to my aging bones. But even if that's not guaranteed I would really like to give the sub-130kg-adventure bike at least a try. It would however be nice to be able to start the project with one of the smoother candidates. That's why I'm asking.
 
I keep meaning to answer this... so I'll put this here as a place holder. I'll write more in a little while

In short, the 440/511 is not that "buzzy" or out of balance; but a WR450F may be a better adventure bike overall. I don't think cranks are easily available for the 449.
 
I'm sure there are others with much more experience/accurate information than me but......

I have ridden a couple of BMW G450 X bikes (similar/same engine as 449 Husky).....

Both 450X bikes were much smoother than my Older big block husky 450's 1x (with counterbalancer 2005) 1x (without CB 2008). KTM rfs seems about the same as my big block husky's.

Very tough to build a lightweight & powerful & SMOOTH(1 cylinder) adv bike.

In my experience DRZ suzuki is the smoothest in the 400 cc class but you give up a lot of performance due to less power and more weight.

Good luck with whichever bike you choose!
Bugs
 
Thanks for your answers! I'm located in Germany and here the problem with WR 450's is that from 2007 on they come street legal only with very limited horse power. If there had been strong comments/indications that the WR450 is much better with respect to vibrations/noise/etc I might have tried nonetheless, however there wasn't much. The Husky 449 has teh gerat advantage to have 40 road legal hp's. KTMs and Husabergs can get about 50 hp entered into the papers. I'm getting a Berg now (thursday to be exact) with a 50hp entry and I'm hoping to also get a Berglund rally tank set. I plan to experiment a little with sound dampening materials from cars that can be glued to the inside of the tanks. Maybe that will help with the noise. I'm quite excited to finally start this project for real...
 
btw, I'm pretty sure you can un-cork that 449 to around 50+hp without too much problem (except from DIN or the Post Office or whoever does your certification)

my 310 was about an (estimated) 22hp... a few simple mods and i was into the low 30s; reprogrammed my ecu and was hovering around 39-42hp I bet.

good luck with the berg.
 
The Old KTM 530 or 525 make a good dual purpose bike are cheap to buy and run with lots of spare parts around.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top