Demo'd an SM510

[BikePilot]

And it pretty much rocks Very much a race-oriented machine that's just civilized enough for street use, though I wouldn't want to tour on it (and I'll tour on most anything). Lots of vibration, very uncomfortable seat. But the motor pulls very well from about 3-9.5k rpms. Full throttle in 1st gear isn't possible without looping as best I could tell (even with my chest on the crosbar). Full throttle in 2nd gear works just fine so long as you keep the weight forward. The 6spd gearbox is nice, shifts well, seems to have good spacing giving its sporting mission (pretty close ratio, but not ultra close).

The fuel mapping at low throttle openings is crap, but that can be fixed (the husqvarna rep stalled it about a dozen times on the test loop then looked very sheepish when I didn't stall once). The motor also feels just a bit choked up at the top end, but it only had 46 miles on it so may just need some breaking in or perhaps more FI tweeking up there.

The handling was fantastic, very nimble, but still solid and stable feeling. Suspension excellent. Really worlds better than stock MX suspension for street duties - much stiffer and more heavily damped. Brakes were the stuff 1-finger stoppies are made of.

The ergonomics were very good as well. Great bar-set-peg relationship, very flat seat, easy to move around on - overall just right. Even the rad shroud cutouts were well placed and made a nice notch to lock a knee in for stoppies.

I don't think I've ridden any other bike that would allow me to go faster in tight stuff. At a place like deals gap this thing would be king.

[tl1000lasse]

[wreckah]

good report josh!

i would love to own a real SM again

[Duken4evr]

My buddy Ken in SoCal has one of these. It is an older model with the FCR carb. UpTite Husky gave him the jetting specs and a mod to the stock exhaust that uncorks it. Evidently the stock can is made by Arrow and of high quality, it just has a restrictor in it for sound control reasons. Putting a new more tapered needle and main jet in it and removing a cone shaped thing from the inside of the exhaust liberated quite a few EPA snuffed horsepower.

I agree with BP, you don't want to tour around on one of these. Riding it around town without getting thrown in jail is hard enough Never had so much fun in an empty parking lot. We set up a little course and I was rippin' off 3 gear wheelies and doing stoppies in no time. In fact, going from a wheelie to a stoppie and back to a wheelie was a one finger tug and a flick of the wrist away. It is one crazy bike.

The thing revs to the moon too. I thought I was revving it pretty high and then looked at the bar graph LCD thing (it has no numbers, just a bar that gets longer as you rev it) and it was only 2/3 of they way up. Scientific curiosity get the better of me, so naturally I pinned it to until the line was as long was it was going to get, right into the rev limiter. Oh my. The thing had to be spinning 11,000 rpm. What a top end monster for a thumper. The front end was very light the whole way of course.

Can't imagine trying to ride a similarly uncorked TE510 off road. There may just be such a thing as too much power

[BikePilot]

The new one has numbers for the tach, kinda wonky actually because it is in 1 rpm increments with what seemed like a 300rpm margin of error (judging from how much it jumped around when cruising at a constant speed)

It also had some seriously mean induction noise and decent exhaust bark - no need for after market stuff to make it sound sound sweet from a rider's perspective. The thing just dripped with visceral character. I'd have liked the versys a lot better if I didn't ride this first I think

[BikePilot]

Oh, one thing I forgot, the exhaust routing is really unfortunate on the 510 imho. If I slid all the way forward and placed my foot just with the ball of my foot on the peg and tucked in sport bike style, where there should be a heal plate is an extremely hot header. Really cooked my left foot/ankle that way (though thick leather boots). I'd have to fab up some sort of heal plate, then would probably have the whole system jet hot coated. A lot of heat coming off of it in general.

[TLR-Billbo]

nice

on a side note...Ben's backflip ski will be ready in a few weeks

let's see...my boat fueled RTR is approx 300lbs, and is 800cc w/100HP. His boat RTR will be ~150lbs, 900cc and 170HP

[OldTLSDoug]

Husky's rock!

[BikePilot]

Indeed they do Doug I was slightly disappointed that they didn't have a 610 on hand to sample as well

Sounds really sweet Will though I must say, I think my arms are still stretched out a bit from the ride on your ski