02 fe 501 id updated parts

I think you might have been scared off a bit too much. But at least pull the engine apart and inspect it. Then see what you really need. If it has less than 100 hours total then you should be fine with smaller stuff but since it’s not running be sure to check the cause of it thoroughly. Water pump seals/bearing is to be a no brainer to change since it’s cheap and depending on bike will leak somewhere between 50-120h hour intervals especially if it has been stored a while. Taffy will probably answer with some leads as well.


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I recently picked up an '01 FE 501 that had been partially disassembled by the previous owner. The cases were not split but most of the remainder of the engine was apart. I checked the cam follower bearings and found them to be badly worn. I upgraded the rockers to the '03 parts, upgraded the chain tensioner, removed the electric start parts, the kick start decomp and the auto decomp (I prefer to kick start my Husabergs). I also installed one of Taffy's dual valve spring kits. I'm sure there were some other things that it needed.

Once it was all together (running the original carb) I went for a couple of rides and enjoyed the bike immensely. However, I noted that there was a whirring noise from the engine that was getting louder and louder. Finally, after running it for about 10 hours, I couldn't ignore the noise any longer and took the engine to Thumper Racing. They tore it down and found the main bearings to be bad. Travis even said that those bearings didn't appear to have even another 20 minutes left in them!

So, now I'm having them remove the counterbalancer to eliminate another known weak spot and rebuild it using a high compression KTM RFS 540 (97mm) piston on a rebuildable Carillo rod, new main bearings, and whatever else it needs.

The point is, at least in my experience, the main bearings don't seem to just go bang without any warning. In this case, the whirring just got louder and louder. That said, I did have a cam bearing (not a cam follower bearing but one of the actual bearings that the cam rides on) fail in an older Husaberg 501 engine and it DID just go bang and die.

The factory motocross bikes came without electric starters so they had a plug. Taffy has them. They must have been bonded in with an adhesive originally because I couldn't find any other method to secure them. So, I drilled and tapped a hole in the plug and another in the engine case just next to the starter hole so I could fabricate a small aluminum bar to hold it in place. That'll make it easier to add the electric starter if I ever decide to.

I'm not sure what the material of the liners is although Thumper Racing is making me a new one for my 501. The one on the left is the new one and is thicker through the middle to better accommodate the bigger bore. It appears a bit too shiny to be a casting.



As for the nikasil, I may be wrong but I believe it to be a coating used on aluminum liners to keep them from wearing out quickly.

Yes, the rocker upgrade uses a smaller cam follower bearing pin which allows for larger bearing needles which don't wear out as quickly. I got lucky and found Dan at MotoXotica had a pair still on the shelf after all these years. If you're unable to find a set of rockers, you can still swap to a milder cam and dual valve springs which should extend the life of the original style bearings.