• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

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    Thanks for your patience and support!

whats the diff??? cr @ wr?? tranny.

When you put the 250 primary gears in the 430 (if that is what bill is doing) you have to go to at least a 14t front sprocket. With the 250 primary gearing a 14t is about the same as an 11t with the stock 430 primary gearing. That is for tight woods, if it was going to go on a motocross bike I would go with a 15t.

However, none of this primary gearing makes ANY difference other than crank speed when kicking the engine over, the secondary (sprockets) gearing compensates for the difference in primary gearing so once under way a 430 with stock primary gearing and a 430 with 250 primary gearing feel EXACTLY the same, there is no performance advantage to changing primary ratios.
 
I have the 430 primary ratio, the 250 tranny gears, 14t or 15t final drive ratio.

I have two cases I'd like to build engines from. Plus I have a complete 430wr too.
 
14t is WAY too tall for the stock 430 primary ratio and 15t would only work at the Bonneville salt flats, stock is 12t and its too tall everyone went to an 11t.
 
Kartwheel68 said:
However, none of this primary gearing makes ANY difference other than crank speed when kicking the engine over, the secondary (sprockets) gearing compensates for the difference in primary gearing so once under way a 430 with stock primary gearing and a 430 with 250 primary gearing feel EXACTLY the same, there is no performance advantage to changing primary ratios.
Click to expand...

There has got to be some point that the clutch starts to slip due to more torque applied to it as the crank gear gets smaller and the clutch/input shaft gear gets larger. Think about that 449/511 cts bike with the small clutch on the crank.

If you turn the transmission slower the point loads on the engagement dogs and tooth faces increases doesn't it?

On the flip side the starting gearing doesn't go around as many times perhaps wearing out later.
 
Yes, when you use the 250 primary gears in the 430 you have to use the '84 style clutch plates with the extra plate in the stack, otherwise the clutch will slip. You can also use the 400LC primary gear which is in between the 250 and 430 ratio with the stock clutch. When I do this swap I always use the '84-up solid steel clutch basket/primary gear/kick gear.
 
Kartwheel68 said:
...none of this primary gearing makes ANY difference other than crank speed when kicking the engine over, the secondary (sprockets) gearing compensates for the difference in primary gearing so once under way a 430 with stock primary gearing and a 430 with 250 primary gearing feel EXACTLY the same, there is no performance advantage to changing primary ratios.
Click to expand...

I agree that if the overall ratio is the same, acceleration is not affected.

My primary (pun intended) benefit of swapping primary/clutch gears is greater cranking speed. For easier starting of my air-cooled 430 I swapped the stock primary and clutch (39/70) for a primary and steel clutch from a '84 400LC (33/76, I think). Difference is about a 22%. In theory, if I kick the same speed, the crank spins 22% faster and a Motoplat or SEM is more likely to light the fire. In practice, it works very well. Transmission gears and final drive have been adjusted to suit.

However, I wonder if the change of primary ratios is having unintended consequences.
Questions for Kartwheel:
1. Does the reduced primary ratio put greater strain (torque) on the clutch and subsequently on the gears? Or am I missing something?
2. Does clutch speed influence "feel"? I find this clutch to be the most difficult to modulate for mx starts. The engagement point seems narrower and I wonder if rotation speed is a factor in clutch action. I've meticulously worked though every clutch component so it is handling the power and is a silky smooth, easy pull. Plates and other components have been changed with no effect on engagement.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
 
Kartwheel68 said:
You can also use the 400LC primary gear which is in between the 250 and 430 ratio with the stock clutch. When I do this swap I always use the '84-up solid steel clutch basket/primary gear/kick gear.
Click to expand...
I think it is a bit more than 400 lc, 500 cr in 85 and 86, the 85 and 86 four strokes use that 33/76 and should have the clip on clutch. Perhaps the earlier four speed cr500

In 87/88 not only did they add a spring the plate diameter got more.
 
Bigbill said:
There primary ratios are different?
Click to expand...
Well yes of course overall the 250 would have a lower first gear. The other overall ratios also.

That has been the discussion your air cooled 430 has or origionally had the highest ratio at 39/70. My 1988 wr430 has 33/76 as does my te510. A lot of 250 have 30/79 maybe all. It is going to be that third gear on the input shaft that is hard to find in good condition at least for the six speeds. I never changed primary gearing.

Kind of a side note, I have (most of) one 125 engine I got in a box and it has a 70 tooth gear on the clutch, might have been cut on the same machine as the 500xc etc but a tiny gear on the crank.

You complicate matters by asking about a year with differences or wr vs cr with no year specified. I realize at post 1 and the title it was specific but further on not so.
 
SK Marls said:
I agree that if the overall ratio is the same, acceleration is not affected.

My primary (pun intended) benefit of swapping primary/clutch gears is greater cranking speed. For easier starting of my air-cooled 430 I swapped the stock primary and clutch (39/70) for a primary and steel clutch from a '84 400LC (33/76, I think). Difference is about a 22%. In theory, if I kick the same speed, the crank spins 22% faster and a Motoplat or SEM is more likely to light the fire. In practice, it works very well. Transmission gears and final drive have been adjusted to suit.

However, I wonder if the change of primary ratios is having unintended consequences.
Questions for Kartwheel:
1. Does the reduced primary ratio put greater strain (torque) on the clutch and subsequently on the gears? Or am I missing something?
2. Does clutch speed influence "feel"? I find this clutch to be the most difficult to modulate for mx starts. The engagement point seems narrower and I wonder if rotation speed is a factor in clutch action. I've meticulously worked though every clutch component so it is handling the power and is a silky smooth, easy pull. Plates and other components have been changed with no effect on engagement.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

The easier starting is why I do it also. I dont know if the reduced ratio puts more strain on the related parts, it may. I can say that with the corresponding secondary gearing I cant tell any difference while riding the bike.
 
You guys are a wealth of husqvarna knowledge. It's great to be around guys with the same interests. I would of never thought the whole world is into husqvarnas the way it is. My guru biker co worker told me years ago I got rid of my husqvarnas way too soon.
Well I'm back not as healthy but it's great to be here. I sold my guru buddy my RZ500 Yamaha. He has some awesome bikes of yesteryear. I turned a Honda 600 into a motard before motard were around. He watches what the European bike craze very closely.

Right now I'm picking up extra affordable parts. I'm known to take a sick husky home after a ride at 9pm. And pull the motor and have her up and running by 1am. It's just a pit stop. I couldn't sleep unless it was running for the next days outing. We learned as we went. When you do crank seals you do crank bearings too. You do a leak down test once it's all together. Take nothing for granted. We had a 125 screaming Honda the was seizing up. Before I knew about the leak down test. When I applied the leak down test I found the base gasket surface on the case was marred from the previous owner banging a screwdriver in the base gasket area to remove the cylinder. Meat cutter butcher 101.
We follow many previous owners making simple mistakes. I'm not perfect but very careful when working and boring these engines.

I'm talking about tranny gear and primary ratios. I'm not sure if there was only two sets of tranny gears like wr and cr then with the different cc's they changed the primary ratios. Then we have the final drive ratio.

I tried a smaller drive front sprocket on my 390cr but I went back to the larger one that was in it. She pulled really hard and didn't run out of rpms. Back then I rode the easy stuff and the rear wheel never stopped spinning unless I shifted. You seen 20' of undisturbed dirt in between the bike ripping. You could pick out the path of the 390. I had my '83 430 wr & '86 400 cross country. I regret not riding the 400 enough. I let my son ride the 430wr. I guess I'm playing catch up now kind of.
 
Some of the individual transmission gears may be different between 250s and opens, but the primary ratios are different for sure.
 
I been thinking about a new 81 & up case set up "OR" transmission..

It's just a thought. There's no room in the woods to stretch out a early 80's WR tranny. The 4, 5, 6 gears being a CR close ratio keeps the rpms up with the ratios tight together.
My 78 250 OR was awesome.
 
I was just looking at my 1982 Husqvarna Racing Handbook... All the information is there, for primary, secondary, gear sets, etc., on all models.
 
Ok my used set of 84 250 gears showed up today there wr I figured it out using the '81-'88 charts. Counting teeth. The same wr 6 speed gear set and exact same ratios are used in the 500cr. Ok I figured it out by going through the charts my '87 430 cr is a five speed. Now I have a six speed gear set. The primary ratios are different. The early 500 & 250 gear ratios interchange. The latter is where husky changed the faster desert bikes to slower woods bike.
 
justintendo said:
a 15 tooth sprocket is huge..with a 53 in the back would severely dog down a 250. not sure a bigger motor would like it either.
Click to expand...


I'm talking about a 430cc. If I have a lower or higher primary with mismatched tranny ratios then my only option is to change the front sprocket to dial it in. Just incase I'm stuck with what I have. I don't want it to over rev yet I don't want to bog it down.

Sometimes I think husky was correct with the automatics. Today they put the recluse clutch in on the standard tranny. What if they used a centrifugal clutch on the standard tranny. Honda uses it in there trikes and quads.
 
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