• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

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    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!

WRX400?

Another project? Not bad conditon. Whats up with the pipe or lack there of? Missing pipe and air filter a lil scary.
 
It's all there but not sure of condition, I haven't seen it in the flesh yet, a good mate of mine found it at a local swapmeet, story is that it's a one owner bike that got neglected, at $250aud (roughly $170usd) it wasn't going to last long! Not sure if I'll get to see it until next weekend.
 
It is definitely a 1985.5 400WRX. There were not many made and I have seen too may parted out. Mine was purchased after it was rebuilt by Husqvarna after the 1985 season and presented to the owner along with his 1986 ride as well. It was in storage for 24 years before I got it from the second owner who had no idea of what he had. Be sure to check for corrosion under the cover for the waterpump. That is a prime spot for corrosion from using automotive coolant in a magnesium engine case.

Exhaust parts are scarce used but you can use 1984 to 1987 expansion chambers but stay away from the aluminum factory silencers as in the quest for a quieter bike that could pass sound tests. The 1986 silencer robbed 3 hp from the same engine used in the WRX the year before.
 
jimspac said:
It is definitely a 1985.5 400WRX. There were not many made and I have seen too may parted out. Mine was purchased after it was rebuilt by Husqvarna after the 1985 season and presented to the owner along with his 1986 ride as well. It was in storage for 24 years before I got it from the second owner who had no idea of what he had. Be sure to check for corrosion under the cover for the waterpump. That is a prime spot for corrosion from using automotive coolant in a magnesium engine case.

Exhaust parts are scarce used but you can use 1984 to 1987 expansion chambers but stay away from the aluminum factory silencers as in the quest for a quieter bike that could pass sound tests. The 1986 silencer robbed 3 hp from the same engine used in the WRX the year before.
Click to expand...


so I'm prepared to ask the stupid question
from those 2 pics how can you determine its an 85.5 WRX
on the 85 they used a stay for the brake backing plate on the 86 it was a slot that fitted a tab like the 87-88, what is the 85.5?
I was unaware of a mid year on that model

on the expansion chamber don't use an 87-88 as the stroke is different
on the silencer, pretty sure the 85-86 were different enough from the 87-88 that the power robbing might not be an issue
the secret to coolant is to get premix to prevent minerals in the water side of the mix

that is a project for sure, but will be nice once you kick it back to life
 
here are the two different silencer, spark arrestor designs
the smaller is the 85-86 and they are loud
87-88 they had to meet new specs for DB's



IMG_0429.JPGIMG_0783.JPG
 
The WRX as a mid season release in 1985 so that is why I can refer to it as a 1985.5 There was a 1985 400WR with twin shock. The WRX has the DLS front hub and XC suspension while the 1986 400 Enduro has the disk front and WR suspension.
 
jimspac said:
The WRX as a mid season release in 1985 so that is why I can refer to it as a 1985.5 There was a 1985 400WR with twin shock. The WRX has the DLS front hub and XC suspension while the 1986 400 Enduro has the disk front and WR suspension.
Click to expand...



the drum brakes are definitely different, but good eye :thumbsup:
 
2premo said:
so I'm prepared to ask the stupid question
from those 2 pics how can you determine its an 85.5 WRX
on the 85 they used a stay for the brake backing plate on the 86 it was a slot that fitted a tab like the 87-88, what is the 85.5?
I was unaware of a mid year on that model

on the expansion chamber don't use an 87-88 as the stroke is different
on the silencer, pretty sure the 85-86 were different enough from the 87-88 that the power robbing might not be an issue
the secret to coolant is to get premix to prevent minerals in the water side of the mix

that is a project for sure, but will be nice once you kick it back to life
Click to expand...

Did the stroke change on the 400 as well Greg? I thought it was only the 250 that changed?
Tony.
 
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