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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

What to do with a vintage WR400?

To me the '86 400 LC WXE is one of the smoothest, trackable, predictable awesome riding husqvarna bikes these was. There was no lack of power throughout the twistie.
I regret selling mine.

I had blinders on and rode the late 70's 390cr the most.
 
Thanks for all the responses, guys. I'll see if I can get it to light up, clean it up and get some good photos. Here's one from "back in the day"...
Friend Doug on his first bike, at IT400, Ernie on a YZ 400, and me on my new Husky

DougErnieRobCabinJuly1988.jpg
 
There is something special when it comes to that 400cc nitch when it comes to the husqvarnas. It's a nice smooth trackable ride. It doesn't seem wild but a turn of the twistie and just hang on and point it to where you want to go.

My son raced his buddy on my 86/400 and his buddy had a newer 90's kx250. On the asphalt road at the dam one night. No one was there. The 400 blew the 250away. We clocked the 250 with a street bike at 85mph. My 400 had to be over 100mph. Most think they can beat these old huskies. Just bring your A game when you play up against any of these older brands. Put a decent rider on an older good running bike and someone is going home with a upset ego. I seen it many times now. There bikes being slammed in there trucks.
 
My 86 WR400 feels almost 4 stroke like int he power department. Lots of power but puts it to the ground well. Super flexible motor. I put a newer front end on mine because I wanted a disk brake. After that I was as fast through semi tigh woods on that bike as any modern bike. Is a lazy guy bike too. If you want to sit, click it in 3rd and ride all day you can do that at about the same speed as standing and riding all hair on fire on new bikes. This platform does seem to work and there is a reason they dominated in off road racing for the time.
 
Is a lazy guy bike too. If you want to sit, click it in 3rd and ride all day you can do that at about the same speed as standing and riding all hair on fire on new bikes.
Click to expand...
That's exactly why I like my LC430. (i'm getting older & lazyer all the time)
 
Motosportz said:
My 86 WR400 feels almost 4 stroke like int he power department. Lots of power but puts it to the ground well. Super flexible motor. I put a newer front end on mine because I wanted a disk brake. After that I was as fast through semi tigh woods on that bike as any modern bike. Is a lazy guy bike too. If you want to sit, click it in 3rd and ride all day you can do that at about the same speed as standing and riding all hair on fire on new bikes. This platform does seem to work and there is a reason they dominated in off road racing for the time.
Click to expand...
this is good to hear, sometimes i question myself and riding style. that im doing everything wrong. out riding i never see anyone sitting hardly at all. there are times to stand no doubt, its a useful tool. i prefer to sit when i can and stand when the immediate situation calls for it. seems to save my legs for long days in the heat..i often wonder if i see people stand so much because their butt just hurts? some seats are very painful..i grew up with 79-88 swedes so i guess i have a pretty twisted perspective!
 
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