Long story, but goes soemthing like this.
The bike was bought into the shop some 6 or so years ago as a plain old 350 Husaberg with a shot engine. On tear down the engine was rooted. The piston looked more like a football (oval) the valves were shot, the rocker gear was so far gone that they were not repairable and that was only what we could see given that the bike was not running.
When we presented the owner with a quote he had a heart attack and said that he would try and sell it for what he could get or simply wreck/part it out given that there could be more when we fixed what we could see and then re-assessed when it was attempted to get her going post the rebuild.
As we were (at the time) die hard BergItes we couldn't let that happen so we offered him a reasonable amount of $ and we then owned the bike. Cosmetically the bike looked like it had been dragged behind a car down a dirt road for a 100 km's. The fuel tank was cracked and split, the seat base was split and the list went on. At some stage somone had blocked off the left side air cleaner, which is not such a bad thing and really not looked after the old girl.
Given that we had a spare tank, plastics and a brand new later model seat, we swapped them out for the newer parts, in hindsight probably not a good thing to do but it was many years ago and it was simply just another Berg.
The engine was rebuilt with later model rocker gear, the carby swapped out for a flat slide as the dellorto was totally stuffed and a 00FC501 motocross exhaust system with an old Akropvic muffler fitted. The usuals were done, forks serviced and all the bearings etc looked after and when we got her going she went like the proverbial.
Kinda reminded us of just how far ahead Husaberg was in engine and chassis development at the time. Remember this was at a time when KTM offered the 128kg 400SuperComp, Honda were about to release the XR400, Husky had the handgrenade models, Kawasaki had nothing over 250cc, Yamaha had the TT350 that still had a drum rear brake and the Suzuki offering was a non registerable DR350 and here was the Berg at 110 kg and went as good as any 2 stroke that was on offer at the time and had Brembo, Magura, Ohlins and WP as standard equipment.
The bike was a work in progress and we had no intention to part with the bike as we had become very attached to her. In fact we were starting the thought process of converting her back to standard as we came to understand the rareness of the bike.
Untill..........
We found out that she had a previous life and someone had a passion for her that was far greater than what we had.
It was sad to see her go, but she will now be looked after and hopefully back to her former glory.
Now i will concentrate on the 1000hp 1998 FC600, the last true Husaberg built before it's sole was stolen by the KTM group.
