FS 550e (2007) – By OldMan from Portugal

What is that rubber thing under the peg?

Well Oldman,
That is a real example of an very beautiful prepped supermoto.
I take my hat of.

Grtz Rens

OldMan said:

What do you mean bush?
The tail and one of the legs were hanging out a bit on the original one but I like it that way. The thing I don't quite like is the H and G are not well integrated in the lines of the background form.

Will probably spend a bit more time into this.

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my attempt at humor

i made sure the tail on my wolf was bolted on with big nuts

Pmsl...... I was gonna say that me self...
Tail chop....
& bushie wif big hairy nuts on his.....
Ur in trouble bushie........ ;-( .. that nuts stuck in me head now... Lol sigh engrave ur cover

By the way
Again
Awesome job done.... old

Skjetvingen said:

What is that rubber thing under the peg?

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It's called "peg sliders" and it's a hard plastic, not rubber. I also have "axle sliders" on front and rear axles. It protects the bike in case of a slide through asphalt (or any other surface for that matter).

You can find them on eBay: HUSQVARNA SM610 2005 ON SUPERMOTO FOOT PEG REST SLIDERS CRASH MUSHROOM R10A2 | eBay
This looks like a refined design of what I got, same seller. He also sells the axle and bar end sliders. I didn't mount the bar end sliders because the handguards already have a protection slider on the sides.

bushmechanic said:

my attempt at humor

i made sure the tail on my wolf was bolted on with big nuts

Click to expand...

Oh I see! I noticed that on yours but wasn't connecting to it




And just to keep this updated, this will probably end up on that headlight mask

Quick update!

My friend has installed today the front sprocket I had laying on top of my desk for a few weeks. Stock was 16-38, it now has 14-40.

What can I say now it feels perfect!

I'm not a wheelie guy and I lost the count of the amount of times the wheel came up. And was still able to barely go beyond 170km/h.

It now feels absolutely addictive to go from 1st to 4th even without quick shifter it feels very quick. I'm impressed!

saw interesting thread on powder coating all manner of parts , may be of interest

KTMTalk.com - The Absolute BEST KTM resource on the planet

OldMan said:

Thanks to bush I finally got my hands on that wolf logo so I was able to sketch something quick that might replace this sticker on the rear fender:

with this:

(the yellow border is just the boundaries of the sticker)

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hey old man great thread, i just wanted to say if you make up some stickers get extra, i need one, very nice, actually a couple.

Wouldn't it be better if I just share the EPS file here? It's ok with me, really!

I reckon it won't be cheap sending some stickers across the ocean. Maybe you can find someone who makes them near you?

Hi OldMan,
Are you, beside a Husaberg lover, a graphicsdesigner?
Why do i ask? The graphics you make are looking so great and I am still desperatly looking for a stickerset for my 1990 FE 501 to give the bike the finishing touch.
It would be of great help if you could point me in right direction

Grtz Rens

rens bos said:

Hi OldMan,
Are you, beside a Husaberg lover, a graphicsdesigner?
Why do i ask? The graphics you make are looking so great and I am still desperatly looking for a stickerset for my 1990 FE 501 to give the bike the finishing touch.
It would be of great help if you could point me in right direction

Grtz Rens

Click to expand...

Hi!

No, I'm not a graphic designer. I'm actually a web designer/developer. I happen to have studied and I'm still working at a design school but I'm more on the front-end developer side to be honest.

I consider myself a person with good taste and visual culture though. Hit me via PM if you find there's anything I can help you with

Hello guys!

Consider this a sort of sentimental post please.



Bought the berg 18 months ago. I'm still in love with it! Every single time I hop on it, the muscles in my face tend to make me grin like a perv. I love every bit of it: the brakes, the torque, the handling, the weight, the looks, the smell... ok the smell was a bit off, I guess! But still, I've never felt this connection to any other bike. Although this is only my 2nd bike, I've seen lots of bikes from lots of friends and none of them had this effect in me.

A few weeks ago I read a post from Taffy (thanks for the tips, sir!) around here stating that after 10 years since bike's production, the production on spare parts would stop. That got me hard right into the heart!

That's only 4 years from now for these 2002-2008 bergs! Even though I could still be able to find some parts laying around a few shops, I can see that is going to be a hard task.

So this got me back into the engine manual to see how much of it is shared between other KTM bikes. I looked randomly for some part numbers while scrolling through the manual and looked them up on google. Sadly not many crucial parts were present on other KTM bike's manuals. (google protip: "filetype : pdf" (remove the spaces))
As far as I could tell, almost every part number starting with "800" is most probably husabergs only. Some easier to find parts such as screws, washers and o-rings don't start with "800" and a few parts are also shared with KTMs.

That got me thinking... What happens if for some reason after those 4 years, I need to rebuild the engine? It is going to be harder to find the parts, that's for sure. They can probably be more expensive too. Or it can simply be an impossible task to do. And that's what concerns me the most...

I'm not willing to force myself to give up on such a great bike because of the lack of spare parts. I would be freaking out for not being able to run my bike and not being able to do anything about it.

And that is when I started to think about selling it
My precious berg... I don't even know how much I've already spent on it, and I probably don't want to. Much time and love, that's for sure. But I guess sometimes you can't listen to what your heart says...

I've rode roughly 4000km on it, had maybe 6300km on the clock yesterday. And I still find new things about it every day.
Winter is coming around here, so I probably won't do many more km in the next few months.

I feel like if someone came to me with a SMC-R 690 I would swap bikes in a blink of an eye! That was the bike I was looking for 18 months ago, but I just couldn't spend 10K€ on it! Even after all this time, I still can't find any used ones around here. I know I can't even compare the berg to the SMC, but after all I don't need everything the berg has to offer and I most probably wouldn't be able to use everything the SMC has either.

The 525/530/500 EXC would only be an option if they had legal 17'' wheels. That's one of the reasons why I opted for the berg in the first place.



I definitively need some lights guys! :unsure:
Have in mind that I'm (unfortunately) not using the bike for racing, just commuting and a few group rides over the year. I don't ride when it's raining, I use 4 wheels and a cage for that. And I don't do the maintenance myself, I trust my friend with it.

Having that in mind, what should I do?

Hey.

My 2 Cents: I reckon keep the bike. It's pretty easy to get caught up worrying about all the things that might go wrong, when in fact there's no problem.

If you love it, and we all know you do, then keep riding it! Parts are available for another 4 years (you could do another 100K on it before then and do a full rebuild for another 100K), and then there will still be stock around too.

When I sold my FS650 to get the FS570 I thought I might be ******** buying into a "legacy", but every time I ride that bike I'm in love.

As a bit of context, my old man (literally) rides about a half dozen old bikes from the 40's, 50's and 60's bikes and he and his mates seem to find plenty of options for parts - for bikes way rarer than the 'Berg.

At the absolute worst, you can fit another powerplant in it, but unless you're completely flogging the **** out of it, I reckon you'll be sweet!

Ride it another 4 years. Keep it as a classic and THEN go get whatever KTM (or whoever) are pumping out...

p.s. before I bought the FS570 I rode the SMC 690 R and thought it was a pretty average experience compared to the FS650 and FS570... For that amount of cash you could get a commuter style v-twin Hypertard to compliment the 'Berg!

hey there old man

the engine wear parts are made of metal

we can make parts out of metal and in fact there are many companies already making the parts you will need as one offs for not all that much money

crank works can make you a crank, carillo can make you a rod, westwood, la sleeve or cylinder works can make you a liner, CP, wossner, JE, prox or wiseco or can make you a piston .. in fact they already have pistons available. kibblewhite already make replacement valves/guides and seats, gaskets bearings and seals are easy. cams .. webcams, thumperacing already make billet cams that fit

the rest of it like aluminium castings and gears/clutch basket etc will be the most expensive to have made but it can be done and its getting cheaper all the time

plastics .. relatively easy to make fibreglass or CF ones, electrics .. aftermarkets available

I'll have my 650s running for the next 20 years at least no problem at all and it will still be cheaper than buying a new bike every 2 years like my mates do.

keep your chin up old man!

Indeed, you'll never get out of it what you have in it (or what it is truly worth). Sure, some of the parts are simply going to disappear - but that is true of all bikes.

I know a Velocette guy that rides his Velo every day. Where do you get parts for a Velo? Parilla? Mv Agusta (pre 2000), Vincent, Indian . . . . and on and on. Even the Ktm 690 will soon run it's course with parts availability (hell, if you have a Honda 350 from back in the day I can give you a list of parts you'll never see again - and production was in the hundreds of thousands).

So, what to do? Keep the berg, buy the bike you want since you won't make enough of the sale of the berg for it to truly matter. May be another Penton in the future. All of the ingredients are there, low production, numerous championships, European, ... who knows? Frankly, I'm riding mine until it's dead. Then I'll resuscitate!

Hi Oldman,
I wil threaten you right away Don't you even consider a nanosecond of selling youre bike.
You'll be sorry from the minute you sold it, and as the other guys say there possibilitys enough to get parts or as Bushie says to make them
I agree with RVJ about taking care of the bike, so i think that it's good that you don't lose sleep over this issue.

Grtz Rens

p.s.you know that this is a helpful community, and if called up on you, in fact i know, you're there for us

When you get feeling that way, take it for a ride. Don't live in the "what if?" Lack of parts is still a few years away. I've run in to parts for my 01 that aren't available from Ktm. But, I have found other sources. I bought an 03, sold a few things off it, bolted on my spares, at final tally I have a complete bike for spares or whatever and the bike didn't cost me a cent. In fact I'm 75 dollars on the plus side.
I think what you are really suffering from is bike lust.
Think of what you can fix on your bike with that 10,000 euro that you would have to spend on a smc.
If you are worried about down time. Keep your eye open for a spare motor and put it on the shelf.

First of all, thanks everyone for the time and tips. Really appreciate it!

I guess from every point you guys pointed out, this was the one that made up my mind (pointed twice, if I'm correct):

Kayeffess said:

Think of what you can fix on your bike with that 10,000 euro that you would have to spend on a smc.

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Which is totally true! I wouldn't buy a new SMC, simply can't afford it. But even though I could (maybe) sell the berg for 4k€ I would have to spend another 2k or 3k to buy a used one. And even after that I had no ideia how bad it could be. Can't forget the bad luck I had with this berg — 500km after I bought it, bearing failed, 900€ in damage — so I guess I can never be sure of what I'm getting myself into.

For that amount of money I guess I'd rather stick with the berg and spend those 3k over the years as needed.


@bush, I have no doubt you will carry your bergs around as long as you can (forever). But I'm not such a wizard! If there's anything I'm never too sure of what I'm doing is anything mechanics related. I can't even bleed the brakes or change the oil filter myself without having lots of doubts...



Thanks again for the tips everyone! I guess I'll have the berg around for a few more years

Phew!!! That's very reassuring Oldman,you just scared the **** out of us
Don't you ever do that again
Just remember that here a guys enough to help you out, also in the mechanical department! Or other problems

Grtz Rens

p.s.As for the wizardry send a registration form to the school of wizardy down under
mine didn't came back sofar

Beautifull 550!!!
Only use it for road can't imagine the plastics stayin that nice and shiny if you also use it for offroad now and than...
The stickers look great not to much (Hate thos busy decal sets) but very nice details keep it up
And the bike looks much better with that ktm mask/headlight great mod:happy:
Also what handguards are those racetech....