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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

Well I couldn't help myself - 1983 500 XC

because the stay arm is too short, the braking "moment" generated by the "pendulum" effect will be negated by the physical reduction in air turbulence... This will require a greater amount of "centripetal force" on the linkages to provide the required 650 joules to provide the "retard" effect on the steel liners.....better get a real stock one and braking will improve....Its nearly the 1st isn't it???:lol:
 
Kartwheel68 said:
Yes, many do sing their praises, but I know quite a few people now who will never buy another set of them.

I will tell you how I decided RT Emulators didnt really do anything. I had ridden several bikes with them and every one felt very harsh in the mid range of the fork stroke, and just overall too stiff on the damping. At the first Unadilla vintage race in 2012 I borrowed Craig Hayes' '82 250WR for the cross country race. I raced the bike to a 2nd overall. After the race, he asked me how I liked the suspension and I said "It was fine". I weigh 150lbs and Craig is at least 350lbs, so I thought he was asking if it was too stiff, then he said "Its got Emulators in the forks". After thinking about it, those forks, which were the only forks I had ever ridden with Emulators that I did NOT think were worse than stock forks, were absolutely nothing special and if fact felt just like stock Husky forks. I decided then the best Emulators would do is get you back to stock performance, and that was after Craig spend months dialing in the pop off spring rate a pre-load ending up FAR off the settings Race Tech recommends. If the best you can out of Emulators get is what Craig got, then most people end up with far worse than stock. This is the bike.

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Please must comment on race gold valves. Yes first time I went with them they felt harsh. was not pleased. Whats the deal! Then I worked with Matt. Great guy.

Well - they were not set up. First make sure you drill , drill , drill. Don't worry - Husqvarna did the same number of holes in later years in your rods. Matt Willey had me drill even a couple more holes. Oils got to move. Flow. Even drill out the extra hole options in the gold valves also. They have indented spots for you.

Second you must have the Race tech valves set on top of special emulators adapters - this Cradle allows the oil to pass back to the bottom forks - its a must - they did not have these at first. could be reason others have not had good luck like Kartwheel68 above.

On special KTM ride day - riding new KTMS 2013s all day these new forks were harsh , hands and arms cramped etc bad. Back the Rio for Vintage at end of day - the Race Techs were plush and smooth mounted on my 430 - felt better then the modern forks for sure. Its the best set up for your vintage Husky. Oh springs I have to go lighter than their charts.
 
Kelly,
Did the KX500 fat bar mounts bolt right on? I need to put a pair of Flexx Bars on my '82 250WR. My hands can't take a bike without them anymore.
 
GaryM said:
Please must comment on race gold valves. Yes first time I went with them they felt harsh. was not pleased. Whats the deal! Then I worked with Matt. Great guy.

Well - they were not set up. First make sure you drill , drill , drill. Don't worry - Husqvarna did the same number of holes in later years in your rods. Matt Willey had me drill even a couple more holes. Oils got to move. Flow. Even drill out the extra hole options in the gold valves also. They have indented spots for you.

Second you must have the Race tech valves set on top of special emulators adapters - this Cradle allows the oil to pass back to the bottom forks - its a must - they did not have these at first. could be reason others have not had good luck like Kartwheel68 above.

On special KTM ride day - riding new KTMS 2013s all day these new forks were harsh , hands and arms cramped etc bad. Back the Rio for Vintage at end of day - the Race Techs were plush and smooth mounted on my 430 - felt better then the modern forks for sure. Its the best set up for your vintage Husky. Oh springs I have to go lighter than their charts.
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Craig makes his own adapters that seal even better than the Race Tech adapters. All the bone stock forks on my Husky's are plush and smooth and feel better than modern forks on everything but a supercross track. Folks can make up their own minds, but I for one will not waste a dime on Race Tech emulators.
 
Kartwheel68 said:
Craig makes his own adapters that seal even better than the Race Tech adapters. All the bone stock forks on my Husky's are plush and smooth and feel better than modern forks on everything but a supercross track. Folks can make up their own minds, but I for one will not waste a dime on Race Tech emulators.
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Spoke to a long time friend and suspension guru the other day about them. He is very technical minded and a mad scientist. In his opinion they work great you just need to know how to set them up. He said lots of people just drop them in and they don't work well. Said lots of little tricks when installing them then they work great. Just his opinion, I don't know anything about them (which is why I asked him). when I asked I specifically did not mention them just said "any tricks to making these forks work better" He said emulators but you have to know what you are doing and setup was everything.
 
can someone post me a link to HVAs 300WR build i want to look deeper into his evo fork mod thinkin on the 300mod and i want one of there mag covers mines spliting out around the bolt holes.. any body herd from Andy pm'd him twice got no answer and nobodies given any input on my peg problem .. will the HVA pegs fit on 87s???
 
yep, he is keen on the evo forks as the way to go. better damping and its done at the bottom of the fork which he likes. he sets them up to look like old ones as wayne stated.
 
Motosportz your 500 is looking great , you are having one of the best returns on investment I have seen on cafe in a while. Hopfully we have not hijacked your link to debate forks to much.
You seem to have no issues starting your 500? And I am really curious the Lectron even has helped more ?

Fork followup

I have the great luck with 87 forks installed on my 430.

What is ironic is the Husqvarna 87 forks damping holes located in the lower rods are the recommended holes sizes that race tech recommends to drilling for prior years forks. Also I removed the spring check ball in bottom of damping rod. It a bit different down at the bottom.

Added the race tech on top Again the race tech is just a unit designed to meter the flow of oil and give you an adjustment that all.

You could set these forks up without the race tech. And you can drill out any 80s Husqvarna damping rod to match the 87s

The major nice thing added by Husqvarna is the top out spring - which is great on rebound to have. Will have second set installed on a 500CR rebuild I just picked up. I will report on later Oh I did not take disk mounting lugs off , someday may add disc back on.
 
Hey Kelly,
Like your project and your test posts. We're running parallel efforts...here's my Portland Craigslist 500 that I've just finished going through, at the mandatory Tillamook Burn test day. Hope we don't end up on the same trail some day with these iffy 500 brakes, could do some twin bike damage.
Keep up the posts and results. Mostly ironed out now, just done with rebuild and trial re-valving on the Ohlins, hoping it gets me in the ballpark.

Take care,
Jon

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I've set up two bikes with Race Tech emulators and although they do take quite a bit of effort to get them to work, I think it is worth it in the end.
The Race Tech suggested settings were pretty far off to begin with, but you do have to start somewhere.
The frustrating part for me was I don't like taking my forks apart in the desert. So each time out meant the forks weren't going to work very well that day.
Once I had a baseline though, the tuning possibilities are infinite.
The first thing you have to do is make sure you have the proper springs for your bike and rider weight, so you can set your sag properly.
Understanding that the oil weight (viscosity) is the only adjustment you have for tuning rebound damping, you have to get that set first.
When you have established the oil weight that works best for rebound, you can start adjusting the emulator to control compression damping.
Race Tech offers two (yellow and blue, that I know of) different spring rates for the emulator to control high speed damping.
The spring rate and preload on the spring allow for tuning high speed blow-off.
The holes in the foot plate control low speed mid stroke damping.
Additional holes can be added and holes can be drilled larger or soldered and drilled smaller as needed.
On my son's bike with 40mm forks (off an 84 250WR) were' using 15wt Bel Ray, 5" from the top with the blue emulator spring and 4 turns of preload. He loves the forks and won't let me mess with them.
I think he might be happier with the heavier yellow spring with less preload to give him smoother mid stroke, low speed damping. The foot plate is standard with two 1/16" holes.
My bike has 35mm forks and I run 20wt Bel-Ray 7" from the top with the blue spring and 1-1/2 turns of preload. I also drilled two additional 1/16" holes in my foot plate.
My son never rode his bike without emulators and the first couple times out, they were way to soft.
But after arriving at these final settings, like I say he won't let me mess with them.
My 35mm's are night and day better. Again it took several rides before I got them working, but I can't imagine going back to stock forks.
In my opinion, stock forks are subject to the oil weight and there is no way to separate the compression and rebound damping, with out affecting each other.
The emulator completely isolates the compression and rebound damping, allowing them to be adjusted individually.
Just my 2 cents.
 
GaryM said:
Motosportz your 500 is looking great , you are having one of the best returns on investment I have seen on cafe in a while. Hopfully we have not hijacked your link to debate forks to much.
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thanks and not at all. Post away.

GaryM said:
You seem to have no issues starting your 500? And I am really curious the Lectron even has helped more ?.
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Cant really say yet as I have not had a chance to ride it for a real ride since installing the Lectron. Started EZ before, still starts EZ.
 
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