Dive Inside A Husqvarna FS450 Top End Rebuild And Refresh

We all love to ride our bikes, but one eventual rule of riding any bike that you love is routine maintenance. From tires to motor oil—and even decals—things wear with use, and over time. Here, YouTuber Justin of the channel Chaos Causes takes us through some recent work he did on his Husqvarna FS450 supermoto. 

The video starts with a rather nice little tribute to Ken Block, and his undeniable influence on gearheads all over the place, no matter how many wheels they prefer. Since last year’s tires on the FS450 are on their last little gasp of life, what better way to send them off into the sunset than to do a little supermoto silliness with Jim Khana? 

After that, it’s time to swap out the old tires for some beautiful new Michelin track-only rubber. Nice new tires are almost always an automatic performance upgrade, but CC also went in for an aesthetic upgrade next with a new set of decals. The old decals peel right off, revealing that blue and yellow Husqvarna paint job underneath. After some careful cleaning to make sure the new decals will adhere properly, Justin now has his number officially on his bike for the next season. Nice! 

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Finally, it’s time for the biggest job he has on his list: Rebuilding the FS450’s top end. Having a dedicated (mostly) track machine means it takes a bit more abuse than your average street machine, and will thus likely need to be rebuilt more frequently. There are, of course, recommendations from KTM for both the bottom and the top ends, which Justin goes over in his video.  

As anyone who’s ever spent time on any forums or other groups can tell you, riders also have many and varied opinions of their own about when and how rebuilds (as well as other maintenance) should be done. Ultimately, though, as CC states here, the best option for you is probably whatever helps you sleep better at night.  

He feels that 150 hours of use is the right time for a top-end rebuild for his machine, so that’s what he’s doing here. He’s got OEM gaskets, as well as an OEM piston that comes with pre-installed piston rings, and he even got himself a piston ring compressor to make the job just a little bit easier. 

After it’s all back together, and he’s walked you through how KTM tries to make it easy for you to find top dead center without too much fuss, we come to what may be the most relatable moment in the whole video.

There’s a bit at the end where CC is hesitating to start up the bike after making all his repairs. Sure, like anyone who’s taken their bike apart, he’s probably checked all the fasteners and torques multiple times already, as well as gone over whether he’s truly gotten everything back where it belongs. Still, though, that nagging feeling that you’re forgetting something will haunt you until you hear the engine run AND that it doesn’t sound like anything’s broken.  

Finally, he gets the courage to do it—and for the brief moment that we hear it in the video, it sounds quite good. He’s said that he’s off to go test-ride it, but presumably we’ll find out how that went in some video further down the line (since he works on multiple things at once). 

How nervous do you get when you’re starting a bike up after having done serious work on it yourself? Do you have any tips and tricks for getting over that nervousness? Let us know in the comments!