The truth behind the faltering Husaberg by Joël Smets
Our colleagues from MXVintage have been asking 12 questions to ex Grand-Prix riders for years and a few weeks ago it was Joël Smets' turn. The Lion of Dessel was asked about the past, present and future of our sport, but also about what was wrong with his Husaberg in 1999.
That last year on the Swedish machine is finally revealed in the interview because the supporters at the time had come up with the wildest stories about what was wrong with the engine. (ed.: The Husaberg came to a standstill many times during the 1999 season while Smets was on his way to a series victory and it took almost a whole year before the problem was found. All kinds of stories appeared in the press and the supporters came up with sabotage theories. In the meantime, KTM had bought Husaberg and one of those stories was that the Austrians preferred to see a KTM win the world title. Peter Johansson rode a KTM that year but had to give up Andrea Bartolini who won the world title with an experimental four-stroke Yamaha .)
MXVintage: Your last year with the Husaberg was quite dramatic with recurring technical problems. There was a lot of secrecy in motocross circles about this problem and that is why we ask you to finally reveal this story to our readers. Joel Smets"The problem was that we only found out about the problem with this Husaberg at the end of the season. The problem was caused by the cylinder head. The lower block was identical to the versions of previous years, but to improve performance a new cylinder head was developed. It actually worked perfectly in terms of power, but the problem was that this head generated just a little more heat. As a result, the block became 5 to 10 degrees warmer and that cannot or cannot be the limit of whether or not to march. At the beginning of the season we had several problems with the ignition so we thought that the higher temperature would affect the ignition. We then started searching together with the engineers and the ignition manufacturer and adjusted a number of things. We thought that the problem had been solved, but unfortunately that was not the case. Ultimately, we discovered that the slightly increased temperature in the cylinder head caused spontaneous combustion of the mixture. So it was a kind of detonation. This caused the engine to run very irregularly and sometimes stalled. Once the engine had cooled down a bit, it ran perfectly. Try looking for the problem with a cold engine when everything is running perfectly at that moment.”
You can read the full interview with Joël Smets on the website mxvintage.be
Photos: archive
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