Rennie Scaysbrook | June 17, 2019
Is it strange to declare love for a motorcycle? I mean, it’s probably morally wrong, but at this stage, I really don’t care. For this love pertains to one of the coolest bikes I’ve ever ridden in the Project 2019 Husqvarna FS450—the factory-built supermoto weapon from the “Inventors of Motocross”.
But love for the bike seems to have not been enough. In the past six months, I’ve traveled more than I ever have in this job (I know, boo hoo), and good though that is, it also means I’ve neglected getting my hands dirty with this most stupendous of machines.
That’s not to say I haven’t been riding it. As a training machine for road racing, this is absolutely as good as it can get, in my opinion. While we do have the brilliant little Ohvale machines in the country thanks to Brendan Cretu, they are too small for any normal size human being to fit on and do more than three laps without their knees breaking.
The Husqvarna is perfect for my 6’1” frame, and I’ve been burning through more than a few sets of Metzeler’s brilliant SM tires in an attempt to keep myself sharp for Pikes Peak 2019.
There’s another good side to the Husqvarna if you’re a road racer, and that’s the sheer expense of getting your knee down. Compared to real road racing, the Husqvarna costs a pittance to get out and ride. Every time you put a road race bike on the track, you can almost hear the cash registers ticking over as whatever you ride annihilates tires like Spanish wine. It’s fun as heck, but bloody expensive, too.
The Husqvarna and I have thus become the best of friends over the past eight months, and I’m struggling to think why I should give it back and not just buy it (still haven’t figured that part out yet). But a project bike needs love, and thanks to Jeff at Utah-based Toxic Moto Racing, we’ve put a couple of parts on that mainly stops the damage from when I throw it down the road, which sadly has happened twice so far—albeit at low speeds. We also put on some sweet new graphics from the crew at Rad Custom Graphics.
First up (and what we should have done immediately) was replace the stock plastic handguards with these Cycra items.
The first time I laid the bike down when I raced the wet, I broke the admittedly rather weak plastic guards. Not having a spare I had to wire then together, which looked crap and was frankly a little dangerous.
The Cycra guards fixed all this. They’re machined from 6061 aluminum, making them much stronger than what was on there before. I haven’t yet tested them—hopefully never will), but they will do a good job of keeping the levers and master-cylinder intact.
The Cycra’s were a bit tight to fit as the bend comes close to the master-cylinder, so you need to have everything lined correctly so as not to push on the top part of the brake lever at speed.
I really could have used there before I ground the axle down onto the spacer! These SLIDE Moto sliders are super easy to fit, with the front just a 6mm allen key bolt at either end—versus the through-rod of traditional axle sliders.
The rear was a bit trickier. As the spacer is threaded onto the axle (and in my case ground onto), you need a heat gun to loosen the Loctite and get the spacer off. Once that’s removed, you then re-thread the SLIDE Moto item, Loctiting that into position.
The offset of this is because the SLIDE units are smaller than the stock spacers, you need to adjust the chain about half an inch more, giving you half an inch longer wheelbase. That’s not a huge deal, because the Husky turns so fast that a bit of extra stability from the increased wheelbase is not a bad thing.
I was a little skeptical about how beneficial these ’pegs were going to be as the stock Husky ’pegs do a good job as it is, but within two corners of the first lap, the increased foot area and grip on offer from the studded pegs was a nice advantage over stock.
These Warp 9 pegs are made from the same 6061 T6 aluminum and 57mm wide, making them nearly 10mm wider than stock.
And the Slider set means I’ll be able to keep the edges of the pegs looking half decent. I didn’t realize just how much I’d worn down the edges of the stock pegs. Made with UHMW-PE (ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene, these are created by Warp 9 exclusive for Toxic Moto but will not fit a standard OEM peg.
Ryan and the crew at Rad Custom Graphics didn’t go too crazy with the design on the Husky’s graphics, just giving them a subtle tweak to make the Husky look a little more advanced over the stock colors.
I decided to leave off the front guard and fork cover graphics, as the Husky looks great with that minimalist white and neon yellow. Ryan does an amazing job and we’ve used him for many of the off road and motocross shootout graphics over the years.
This is the same full titanium exhaust system you see on the motocross track. The FMF RCT is lighter and a little shorter than the standard pipe, making it less susceptible to crash damage and helping to centralize the mass.
The pipe gives the Husqvarna a little more pep off the bottom of the rev range, especially in first and second gear. We have not yet had a chance to put this on the dyno, but I’d be extremely surprised if there weren’t a few extra poines found thanks to this pipe.
In the last two supermoto builds I’ve done, we’ve constantly gone back to the Metzelers. These are, for my money, the best supermoto tires around. The Husqvarna comes standard with Bridgestones, and while they are a good tire, they don’t have the edge grip these Metzelers have. They also seem to wear out faster than the Metzelers.
I’d love to get some Dunlops on the bike—especially once I see how Chris Fillmore does on them at Pikes Peak this year, but if I don’t get the chance to try them, it won’t hurt because I know these Metzelers are absolutely awesome.
So far, we’ve played around with the K1 (soft) and K2 (hard) rear tires, and even though the hard tire didn’t have quite the overall grip of the soft, the longevity out of the tire was excellent. Currently, we have the K0 on there (extra soft), which is at the end of its life so we’ll be throwing some new hoops on for the summer riding season.
Thanks also to the guys at Cycle City Motorsports in Lake Forest for helping out with the tire changing.
That’s it for the time being, but we’ll be throwing some more parts at this build in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
Project 2019 Husqvarna FS 450 Update 1—A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to take delivery of the same 2019 Husqvarna FS 450 Supermoto we tested in November. This is a truly excellent machine. It’s far better a motorcycle than I am a rider and only needs little mods to make it into a truly great racebike.
Project 2019 Husqvarna FS 450 Update 1
This past weekend was our first race meeting with the FS 450 at round two of the WAR Supermoto Winter Series, held at Apex Kat Track in Perris, CA. The motorcycle was still in ‘as tested’ form with mildly shagged tires and suspension settings that were some way out as a few different people had ridden the bike since I did at Adams Kart Track last month.
The last time I raced with WAR was a good one with four wins on the Project Suzuki RM-Z450 we brewed up this year, but the Husqvarna is a proper race bike built by real people so getting the bike set-up correctly is crucial to making it really go.
After the first two practices, I hooked up with Walter from Lainer Suspension out in Winchester to try to get the Husqvarna handling better. We essentially went nearly all in on the front and rear compression and rebound, increased the rear preload but we kept the front pressure stock at 10.6 psi. Those simple changes made a huge difference in how much braking stability and edge grip the FS450 had, allowing me to get on the gas ultra-hard out of the hairpins while cranked over and not have it highside me to the moon.
I will still need a heavier spring in the back, possibly a re-valve on the shock and definitely new tires, which we’ll hopefully get on the bike before round three of the WAR series in January. Hopefully, by then we’ll also get a pipe on it and some new plastics…
As for the races, it all worked out pretty well. The overall win in the 450 and Asphalt classes was good, and we had a great scrap with AMA Supermoto hotshot Bronson Pearce in the Pro 450 race, coming up just short on the line to take second. I’m pretty confident on the tarmac sections but need work on the dirt, which is where Bronson killed me each lap on the eight lap main event.
There’ll be more updates on the way as we start throwing parts at this bike but it’s safe to say this is gonna be a fun project!
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Photography by Djamil Sakhri