Vintage 1978 Huskvarna 390 OR Dirt Bike Rebuild

  This bike has a long history...which begins in Idaho Falls.  My neighbor had this bike under his deck, just rusting away until my 18-year old neighbor bud (Devin) bought it to rebuild.  After it sat in his parents garage for a year (or two?), my dad somehow came to buy it from Devin.  And again...it sat outside for another number of years.  I went off to college for a number of years, moved to Post Falls, and eventually bought a house.  At this point I think my dad realized he wasn't going to be able to get to it, so he sold it to me for pennies.  Here's what it looked like before:

 I first started work on the engine the winter of 2009 while trying to obtain a title for the bike.  These vintage bikes are a real pain to get the titles for because up until...like...'77 they didn't sell the bikes with titles in many states (including Idaho).  Nowadays you can't ride a bike offroad without producing a title to buy an ORV sticker...so a bike is pretty much useless unless you have the title in hand anymore.  Turns out the title was still in the original owner's name, who unfortunately had passed away some years ago.  Lucky for me, his wife is still with us, remembers the bike, and signed the title over to me.  It really worked out well...
  Here's some pics of the rebuild:

Clutch pack and bearings...yuck!

Bearing replacement

   To change the bearings in these old magnesium cases without warping them, they need to be heated evenly to about 300 degrees...what better way to do that than in the oven?  I have to thank the wifey for letting me do this...it made the oven smell like degreaser for a few days...

Freshly sandblasted and painted frame

Engine, swingarm, and triple-tree installed..

Rebuilt forks, carb, rear suspension, and air cleaner can installed

...just something rad about these bright red springs...

after a bit of time on the seat and fenders, and a ton of time on the tank...the finished product...

After kicking the damn thing over hundreds of times and finally getting the carb set right, it fired up...and how!  It is one gnarly-sounding beast.  Unfortunately it was 8:30 at night and there was no way I was riding this thing in the dark...not to say I didn't entertain the idea!  A couple days later I was going to ride it for the first time, but as I got ready to go it bogged down and died.  After a quick trouble-shooting session I found the woodruff key to be sheared in half!  Turns out I didn't torque the flywheel tight enough and the power was too much for the poor little 3mm key.  The crappy thing about it is...nobody carries metric keys!  I'm still in search of a damn key, but when I do get it I'll fire it up again and take some video...