My Newest Berg

As some of you out there know, I have ridden a Berg for 5 years now, an 04 450 FE has been my ride of choice.




However in November of last year my berg and I had an altercation with a very large tree, breaking my wrist and ribs and trashing my little blue and yellow friend at the same time.

Now that my wrist has healed and Elders Insurance has paid out, and I don?t have to go overseas again for work, I can get a new addition to ride.

At first I thought the choice was easy, I wanted a new EFI berg, but after a long think about it I couldn?t justify the money to be spent. Then the long hard looking for a replacement started. The final choice came down to the following. It had to be Euro trash, (don?t like JAP crap), 450, 08 and less than 1000Km or 30 hrs.

I found 3 bikes that fitted this, 2 08 berg 450 and an 08 Husky 450.

Action KTM Gold Coast :angry: missed out as they are stuck up **** wads that will not budge on price even after they have had the bike 5 months.

Full Throttle in Brisbane :| nearly got the nod. I was ready to buy a very nice 450 husky, but they wouldn?t drop just a little bit more.

Sutto's of Sydney :bounce3: They are unreal. Bought a nice 08 450 with the full fruit like SUb Tank, all the hard parts, MOUSSE tubes and they are freighting it to QLD for me. All I have to do now is rego and ride. AWSOME

YYYAAAAHHHHHHOOOOOO. I just picked up my new Berg. It is late and dark here so I will just have to wait to ride it tomorrow, although i did a quick lap around the block. It looks to be just as Dan at Suttos said it was. I will stiil strip it down and look at it all, and make my changes and set it up just how I like them.

More pics and info to come,

Ok, time for a bit of an update.

I got the bike registered with no problems at all, then stripped all of the items that were not required. While doing all of this i fitted my heavy rear spring, yes i am a fat boy at around 110kg, set all of the clickers to their mid-range, set the front and rear pre-loads and moved the handle bars back on the tripple clamp.

I was all set and ready to go, Sunday was the first rdie I had been on since November 09 due to breaking my wrist and ribs and writing the old 04 off.

It was an awsome day, we had a few light shower a few days before so no dust and the day was clear. A good mate and i set off to MT Mee in Brisbane. The bike started great and idle to warmth well.

This bike is great. The punch from the engine is absolutley superb, it responds so much quicker than the old o4 that it is hard to keep the front down. This thing has more pull than a 15yo boy in a brothel.

It turns out that the suspension is near spot on for me at where i had it set, just needed a small tweek to settle the rear down in loose terrain, but then again that might be me that needs to settle a bit. It handled great, the front turns in beutifully, holding a tight line, but allowing a line change at the mere twist of your body and repsoitioning your weight. With the front lofted you can select where you want to drop the front tyre, all with your weight positioning. When the rear hooks up coming out of a turn, it is very hard to keep the front down, even sitting on the tank filler does not stop this. Only thing is when it breaks, it breaks and showers the world behind with huge roost.

Great i have an awsome buy and the smile was from ear to ear. The only big issue was the fact that the baras were too far back, cramping my position and inducing massive arm pump. As I was lacking tools to adjust this, I had to live with it.

As we continued we got into some quicker flowing tracks, just as i was about to have a go and round up my mate. ...............................................................................................................................

Silence, with my mate riding into the distance.


:angry: :cuss: F(#*#&$^#$_@_*^$*#@_@, this is all I could think and do.

Luckily a 4WD came along and was able to tow me towards a major road so I didnt have to puch it out.

When I got home I put it away in disgust. I thought great I have bought a lemon.

I rang Dan at Suttos on Monday morning to see what I could do.

All I can say is SUTTOS AND ALL OF ITS WORKERS ARE THE BEST

Dan and Chris have been great, they agreed that they needed to get it back and look at it. This would be expensive with freight, so i put it to them that I would do all of the work if they paid for the parts. Chris agreed so the strip down started.

It turn out that the left hand inlet valve adjuster nut was not torqued correctly. When the nut cam off, it jammed the cam shaft with the exhuast valves open. As i was moving, the wheel continued to try and turn snapping the cam chain feeding it into the bottom of the cranck case. All of this bound up the engine, locking it all solid.

I will post pics of all this tomorrow.

I sent a list to Suttos, and sat back to wait.

Today i recieved a box of all the bits to rebuild the engine. As i said SUTTOS ARE GREAT. All of the parts a brand new, just as I orderd Total cost is over $1500 retail. I even got a phone call from the previous owner. This guy has a set of ******. He had the courage to ring me and say sorry for the probs that have happened, and that he had payed half with Suttos.

The thing with the whole bike is that it was sold on as a second hand bike on Consignment, and as such had no warranty at all. Suttos could have told me bad luck see you later, but nope they have looked after me a treat.

:bounce3: :cheers: THANK YOU DAN AND CHRIS AND ALLOF THE SUTTOS STAFF :bounce3: :bounce3: :cheers:

The reason for the delayed post,

I wnated to give Suttos the chance to do something in there own time, with no prejudice or malice from the public or outside. And as you can see by my previous. THEY HAVE :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

It has been a long time since the last update, but finally it has been done. I was lucky that the 04 was never picked up by the insurance company, so I put the 04 motor in the 08 frame to enable me to keep riding this brilliant 08.

As I went throught and pulled the 08 motor down, I found that the liner was scored. I sent it of to the local Nikasil plater, and it took him a lot longer than expected to plate. Basically he stripped out the old Nikasil, Reapplied it then honed it to size. Sounds easy, but every time he tried to hone it to size to size it went out of round. He was waiting on the installation of a new machine, so i told him to leave it until that was in and sorted..

When I got it back 2 months later, the barrel is within 0.0005" round all the way through, with a 0.003" piston clearence.

So the fun of rebuilding it all started. As I have been busy with work, and I had the 04 motor to ride, there was no rush. Finally though it is all built and back in the bike. Started it up and it ran very nicely for the about 5-10 minutes. Shutdown, and started it a couple of times, and it sounds like all is good.

I still have to put all of the plastics back on and tidy it all up, but that will be done over the next couple of weeks as i cant ride it at the moment. The day after i got it all started up, I had my 3rd knee op.

Hopefully the next 6 weeks go quickly, so I can ride once again.