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THE SOLAR HUSKY

1970 HUSQVARNA 400 CROSS OWNED BY STEVE McQUEEN

By Rick Sieman and Rob Phillips

THE SOLAR HUSKY
1970 HUSQVARNA 400 CROSS
BUILT BY STEVE MCQUEEN’S SOLAR AUTOMOTIVE
By Rob Phillips as told to Rick Sieman

                    ***
   Husky restoration expert, Rob Phillips http://www.huskyrestoration.com, is no stranger to this site. However, the bike shown here is quite unusual in that it is not a resto bike, but rather a cleaned up version of one of Steve McQueen's original 400 Huskies.  Yes, what started out as an ordinary restoration, turned out to be much more of a discovery of a completely unique 1970 Husky cross. Follow along with us as we uncover Rob’s latest treasure.   Rick Sieman

                                                  ***

    It appears lightning has struck again. I was lucky to find one of McQueen’s motorcycles, but it appears I found another, built by his shop, Solar Automotive. Based on the evidence, this bike was owned by McQueen originally. The story gets a little technical. I purchased this very cool old school (Frankenstein) Husky from a gentleman who we will call John. He did not have any photos of the bike, so I went by his description to buy the bike.
   He told me about some really nice design changes done to the bike, so I bought the bike.  He retired the bike to under his porch in 1978, where it stayed until January 2010.  Since it was a LA California local bike, it weathered well, so to speak. The owner told me this was originally a 1971 Husqvarna 250 that was heavily modified. He did some work himself, but to my surprise, most of the conversion was done by “Solar Automotive.”  I questioned John about Solar Automotive and he said yes, Steve McQueen’s Solar Automotive.
    I eventually received some photos from John and the bike was in pretty sad shape, but it was complete.

                   
    It was now March and I finally got the bike to New York. Close inspection showed the front brake hub as being a smaller 250 and the fuel tank says 250 Cross. Aside from that, there was not much of his 250 left.

    Front forks had been lightened, steering triple tree cut for lightening, and handle bar mounts raised one inch by John. The neat part was that the handle bars were titanium. The  levers and throttle were original Magura, but the grips were made by an LA California company called CAMCO?  Rear swing arm was stretched one inch, reinforced top swing arm gussets and the lower shock mount moved forward. To top it off, a nice set of Koni shock absorbers. The engine was now a 400 Cross with the original 400 pipe.  Carburetor was a Bing and the air cleaner bracket was a one piece after market item. Close inspection of swing arm showed it had a 10mm swing arm axle. This put the bike into 1970, so the original 1971 250 frame was gone. The owner confirmed this.
    Here is where it got interesting. The bike was built by Solar according to the owner and some modifications were done by owner because he said they
were not the best welders. Ouch! You might ask, so what are the frame and engine numbers?  Well, they were not original and they were stamped in by Solar. Why, because this 1970 frame was stamped 670030, which anyone with Husky frame number knowledge knows that if it starts with a 67, it is a 1967 motorcycle and 67’s were also two piece frame. This was one piece frame. To make matters more puzzling, the engine was stamped with the same number, which is also incorrect, since 400 engines start with 400, 401, 402 or 403.  I showed this to Don Ince and my friend Christer in Sweden and we agreed it appeared to be a stamp over on the engine.

    I am planning to pull the engine to see if we can do some forensics to determine the original engine number.

                                  

     Stamped over engine number. Usually the engine number are under cylinder head on the left side. It is blank on this engine.

                                                                                              

    Now the clincher!
 
    Good old buddy Don Ince of  http://vintageviking.com found a Med International document dated Jan 1971 signed by Edison Dye and invoiced to none other Solar Automotive  Steve / Don.  Don is Don Mitchell, Steve’s race manager.

   The invoice was for a replacement frame and it stated that Steve’s original frame was broken in two places.

                   

    Now back to the frame number. Replacement frames do not have frame numbers stamped on them, which explained how a frame we know came from Solar was able to be stamped with a new number on an original blank surface.  
 
   Why did Solar stamp this number and what does the number represent?

   Also on the document was a note (not shown) to Pierre, Edison’s shop foreman, to give Solar the aircraft bolts they got from Rohr Aircraft.
There were a number of aircraft bolts on this bike. I looked at a few of the bolts. On the head of a few of the bolts is a number.
 
     Seeing them without a magnifying glass, the first letters looked like ROHR, for the aircraft company. The original ROHR Aircraft is gone, but there is a website of Rohr employees, Alumni. I emailed them and they responded, saying Rohr did not make their own bolts. I viewed the bolt again with a magnifying glass and saw RD111. Close to ROHR with poor vision. Now I had a real number and tracked it down to a company making aircraft bolts.
 
    I emailed them the bolt number and they kindly replied with basic information on the bolt, but they said they could not give me any more information because the information was proprietary to Pratt and Whitney, Rocketdyne.
 
    I emailed the company back thanking them and told them about the motorcycle. The person responded with,  “I guess McQueen only puts the best on his motorcycles because those bolts are made only for rocket engines.”

    Closer look at the bolts on the whole bike showed a few original bolts, a few aircraft bolts, four titanium bolts to bolt the engine on and, of course, you just got to have rocket engine bolts holding your shocks on.
 
    Still more.
 
    The motorcycle was filthy from 32 years of being under the porch, so I decided to take the bike down the local car wash to use the high pressure sprayers.  After about 30 quarters, I noticed all of a sudden the paint was coming off the frame. Since I  have restored a bunch of these bikes, this should not be happening. So I was looking at the frame under the paint and it was shiny. I know chrome moly can be polished to be shiny, but this didn’t look right. I left the car wash puzzled and stopped by a friend’s body shop and showed him. He knew right off.  “That’s what I did to my race car, its nickel plated.”

    I took the bike home and saw that the frame, foot brake lever, brake rod, brake stay, chain guide, skid plate and swing arm were all nickel plated. I spoke to the last owner John and he said he knew nothing about the frame being nickel plated.
 

                   

    A few nights passed until I started cleaning the bike up and noticed the center exhaust bracket was almost twice as long as normal. I took the pipe and seat off and would you believe the frame had been cut at the seat area, rear hoop connections were re-done, a gusset plate welded in and because the rear hoop section is tapered in the front, the seat pan was also tapered in to match the hoop. I then saw looking up front, there is a one inch piece welded into the front down tube.

    So prior to nickel plating, the upper frame section was raised an inch. The reason for this I am sure was to lower the CG of the bike and increase the wheel base. Wheel base was almost 3 inches longer than stock now. WOW!
 
    The rest of the story?   Who knows where it will take me.

    As a final note, the original owner spoke of the company name as Solar Automotive.  People know about Solar Productions, Solar Engineering and Solar Plastic, but this the first I have seen the word “Automotive” used?   I spoke with Marshal Terrill and he had not heard of it either.  Hmmmm?
   I started dismantling the bike. Like my other McQueen bike, the plan was NOT to restore this bike, but to give it a super cleaning.
    It had a nice set of 12 inch Konis, which I took off so I could have the internals rebuilt. Not in bad shape, but the seals were shot, as you might expect. I removed the engine for an internal rebuild.  I noticed few things unusual with the engine. The first was that a large, very short, aircraft bolt was  built into the top left side cover as a second oil fill hole. The original right side filler cap and vent hose was modified and fitted with a 3/16 inch steel braided hose and  fitting. Engine side cover bolts were high strength Allen cap and they were nickel plated.
     The another unusual item was the engine color. It looks like a very faded black, almost titanium looking, but the problem with that it was uniform over the entire engine. I took a photo of it with a normal cover so you can see the difference. What was that all about?   
     Update May 13, 2010. Thanks to Rick Horvat, the engine coating was identified as Kal-Gard.
    I tracked the company down, now called KG Coatings.  I spoke with Chris Fazio, General Manager, who was very helpful. He spoke to the original founder, Joe Ardigo of KalGard, but no records exist.  Chris believed the coating was their 2300 Original Gun Kote. I’ve got to say that for almost 40 years old, this coating was in remarkable shape. You’ll see it in the final steps of the clean up. Chris says the coating is impervious to any chemical, so I expected a nice clean up.  After seeing this, I was sold on this product. Great stuff. See it at http://www.kgcoatings.com.

                   
                   
                   


I took the rear wheel off. Changes: Axle thread changed to fit the multi spline 7/16 aircraft nut. Custom chain tensioner spacers were made of aluminum and extended to cover the aircraft nuts. A 7/16 socket fits perfectly inside.

                   
    Rear brakes were stock, but the brake plate bushing is now aluminum.  Brake stay and chain guide were nickel plated, aircraft bolts and brake stay stretched one inch.  You can see the stretch next to the chain guide.

                   
    Rear swing arm was nickel plated and stretched at rear one inch. Shock mounts moved forward 4 inches; minus the one inch stretch, the shock was 3 inches forward from stock.  That would open the top clearance above the wheel and really change the geometry of the suspension. Top surface of swing arm was heavily gusseted. I placed a normal swing arm along side.

                   
                   
                   
   Here is where the frame was stretched. Rear hoop connections were tapered in. Large gusset added.

                   
                   
    Front down tube lengthened.

                   
   Titanium handle bars raised 1 inch.

                   
    Tripled tree clamps cut to save a few ounces.

                   
    Front forks were turned down to lighten. Almost a 1/4 of inch was taken off the diameter.
                   
   The after market air bell bracket and foot pegs. Don said Edison Dye did sell those types of foot pegs.

                   
     Skid plate. The plate was original, but nickel plated. Tabs were welded to the frame to eliminate the original clamp. You can also see this unusual color to the engine side cover and a good shot of the left side oil fill plug.

                   
    Here’s where a frame support hoop that went from both the side rails to down tube that was removed.

                   
    The beginning of the clean up.
   Swing arm was stretched and chain wear strip welded above the mount.
   This is where the lower hoop used to go from side to side. You can see the patch on the center of the down tube.
                   
    Here you see the frame extended, front tube, rear hoop tapered in and gusseted.

                   
    Rear hoop gusset cut and spacer welded in.

                   
    This is a side by side comparison of the Solar frame and a stock frame.

                   
    Nickel plated skid pad. Tabs for skid plated welded in and a extra tube in center welded in the joint of the Y section.

                   
   Nickel plated swing arm. Shock mount moved 3 inches forward from the stock location.

                   
   Fantastic old school modifications with a little bling.

                   
   She’s finally done and runs like a champ.