50 Things to Check Before Buying a Used Husqvarna Svartpilen 401

Used Husqvarna Svartpilen 401. Is it awesome? Yes! Can you trust the seller? No! 

I’m Adrian. I’ve worked in the motorcycle industry for 15 years, been riding for almost 20 years, and here are 50 things to check and watch out for, before you buy a used Svartpilen 401.

We’re going to be covering body, front end, rear end, handlebars, control switches, tires, wheels, pulleys, engine, transmission, clutch, electrical instruments, fuel stuff, and other miscellaneous stuff like paperwork. Let’s get right into it.

Also, before we start,

1. I was in a bad car accident, this is only my second time recording standing up ever since, so if I’m all hunched over and my garage is a disaster, life’s rough right now and I’m doing the best I can.
2. Stick around until at least the electrical section, because, honestly, these bikes are known to have a couple electrical issues that I’ll cover at the end.

We’re going to start with just an exterior look at the fuel tank. Don’t just look at it from far away or everything’s going to look pretty. Look at it from up close, run your hands over, feel everything. I’ve shown motorcycles on my channel in the past where the dents have gone unnoticed until you get the bike home and look at it from just the right angle. Just because the seller says it’s never been dropped, doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth, so don’t just use your eyes, use your hands too.

If the handlebar’s been swapped, you should definitely look around here, to make sure that the new handlebar has enough clearance, and hasn’t been rubbing along the front of the tank and damaging it. Sometimes what people tell you is an upgrade, actually does more harm than good.

Here’s a very Svartpilen 401 specific tip. In early models, the wires back here behind the headlight have been known to be too tight, to rub and wear through, and cause all kinds of electrical problems, make sure all the wiring still looks okay and isn’t being pinched tight anywhere.

Did you know about that one? Drop a comment because I’m curious how many people still know about this, or if it’s mostly forgotten info now.

The next thing I want to check out are fenders and fairings, and again, we’re not just doing a far away check of like, “Yup, that’s a fender.” We want to get up close, we want to see what’s happening. You can look for any kind of thing that might have ruined the shine a little bit, like if there was some rubbing from the seat, a backpack, saddlebags, whatever.

To look under the seat, just insert the key here, turn, and take a look around.

Front fender, where we typically see damage if the bike has been down, is right around the front curves here.

The next thing I want to look at is the seat, especially if you’re buying from a really short or really tall person. Sometimes people tend to modify their seat, and while that’s great for them, it’s not always great for us normal folk, so again, don’t trust them to fully disclose anything, tries your eyes, your hands, and in this case, have a seat and trust your butt too.

Now that we’re right up close with things, it’s a great time to look for any signs of paint damage or pitting anywhere on the motorcycle. The Svartpilen 401’s haven’t been out for a decade yet, so they really shouldn’t look too rough yet, so if the one you’re looking at does already look rough, it’s probably abused and neglected, and that should be a red flag to you.

This Svartpilen 401 only has _____ km on it, however, we know it was stolen, crashed, and recovered by police, you can watch my last video if you want the details on that. I’m not too worried about that because it did go through insurance, and they did send it to the actual Husqvarna dealer, and they did go through it and restore it completely. BUT, if the 401 has been through some similar shit, and the seller says they repaired it themselves, you may want to be a little less trusting.

If your Svartpilen 401 has a windshield or a fly screen, look for scratches on it. If someone tries to tell you, “it wasn’t dropped, it was just a flying rock hit it” – No, it didn’t. Flying rocks might leave one single impact mark, they won’t leave scratches inches long. That tells you the bike’s been dropped and went for a slide. Same thing goes for any body damage. If they tell you “My kid just dropped it while it was parked” but you see a two inch scratch, they’re lying to you, that bike was being ridden at a good speed when it went down.

You also might want to ask if any accessories come with it, and see what kind of shape they’re in. Remember, just because someone paid hundreds of dollars in extras, doesn’t mean they’re worth a dime to you. So don’t pay extra for stuff you wouldn’t have put on your motorcycle yourself.

When it comes to the front end, we want to look at the forks. We want to make sure that everything is straight. You can stand over the bike up here and look straight down at it. You can also look at it from here. Just make sure there’s no pitting or rusting happening on the forks and look for any black lines that are coming around here. If they have that, that’s a good sign that one of your fork seals is blown. Here’s an example of what a bad fork seal looks like, one fork is fine, the other is all oily from a blown seal.

Fork seals are one of those annoying things where like a seal itself is $20, but it might be a couple hundred bucks in labor to actually get to the seals, which sucks. So don’t pay the same price for a bike with leaky seals as you would for a bike without leaky seals and your wallet will thank you.

If this is saving you money already, do me a solid and hit the like button, it helps me a lot and lets me know you want more Husky 401 content.

If your seller is a midget, check along the top of the fork tubes, make sure it looks like this, and that the tubes aren’t being attached way lower, that would mean that the front end was lowered, and that’ll throw the handling. It’s not a difficult fix, you can do it yourself, but it’s something that you should know to check before you ride the bike. It also tells us that the back end may also have been lowered, but we’ll get to that a little later.

While I’m up here, I also like to look for cable clips, just to make sure everything is kind of snug in place as it should be. And I also want to look at the cables. Just look for anywhere the cables may be bent too tight or look wet or anything just seems out of place

While we’re looking at the front end, let’s check that the steering head bearings feel good. All I’m going to do is rotate the handlebar from side to side, making sure I can go all the way in both directions, and making sure that everything feels even and smooth all throughout with no weird notches along the way.

While you’re up here, let’s really give the suspension a testing, let’s make sure the springs bounce back up and aren’t all squishy or saggy, because again, front end work isn’t cheap.

Obviously, if you can take it out for a test ride, what I like to typically do is, let’s say I’m buying this Svartpilen for $3,500. I will bring $3,500 with me and I’ll say, ‘Hey, I know you probably don’t want people doing a test ride, but what if I give you $3,500, count it, make sure it’s all there. I’ll ride this up and down your street. If I damage it, you already have the money, and the deal’s done. If I come back, and I don’t like the bike, I can give it back to you, and you can give me my money back.” Once people have a few thousand dollars cash in their hand, they usually go quickly from no test rides to here’s the keys, go test ride, pretty quick.

Now let’s check out this girl’s rear end.

To check rear suspension, you just sit on her and bounce up and down. You can have someone tell you how much the seat goes down when you should on it, a couple of inches of sag is okay.

And while I’m back here, I also just like to make sure that all of my ties and cables and everything are in place, everything looks good and clean and not messed with. That’s perfect.

The last thing I’d recommend checking, again, especially if you’re buying a shorty, is look around where the rear shock mounts, and see if there’s any extra pieces going on, that could be a lowering link, designed to drop the rear suspension and the rear seat height, by an inch or so. If you see one and don’t need one, it’s not a big deal, but I’d recommend removing it when you buy the bike, as that’ll generally give you more ground clearance and better handling. Then you can turn around and sell the lowering link, or keep it for when you want to sell the bike down the road.

Now let’s work on the handlebars, controls, switches, and grips.

The throttle should have a tiny bit of free play, and then when you do twist it, it should snap back. It does.

Hit the starter, make sure that works.

Make sure the kill switch works to both stop it from starting, then turn it off when it is starting.

Make sure all four signals work, and check the horn and high beam and low beam too.

It’s a good idea to check that the controls on the odometer work. Don’t be surprised if you need the strength of God to push these buttons. Your bike is fine. All Svartpilen’s are like this. Don’t ask me why.

Lastly, and a lot of people forget this, don’t forget to check that BOTH your front and rear brake levers activate your rear brake light.

We’re trying to find as many issues as we can, both so we won’t have any expensive surprise problems, but also so we can negotiate with the seller and keep our costs as low as possible if anything does come up.

All right, now let’s talk about tires, wheels, pulleys, that kind of stuff because I think it’s some of the most important and also the most overlooked stuff, especially among new riders.

I use this little tool called a tread depth measurer to see how good the tread depth is, and that works really well for most motorcycle tires, but not so much for the original tires on the 401, because of these great big blocks they have. So I’d recommend you check out my video called 7 Ways To Tell Your Motorcycle Tires Need Replacing, where I’ll show you all of the other ways to know your tires are bad, even if the tread is good. Spoiler, look for sidewall cracking, manufacturing date, and the overall shape of the tire – are they flat on the top and curved on the side? If yes, they’re cooked, toss em.

Check the tire pressure. They should be 29 psi in the front, and 29-32 psi in the rear. If the tire pressure is below that, odds are the seller was not taking care of their tires, causing premature wear and damage to them, and that’s gonna suck for you if you buy this bike.

You should also make sure that the tires on the front and back are the same make and model. Tires are designed to work as a matching set, so if you have a Pirelli on the front, and someone cheaped out and put a Shinko on the rear, your tires will still work, but not as well as they’re designed to.

I really want to urge you to really watch my tires video, and really check out the tires thoroughly, because if you need to pass any kind of inspection to register your used vehicle, and you find out that the tires aren’t as good as the seller told you they were, that could set you back another $400 or $500. So really, watch my 10 minute video and learn about tires, it won’t just save your bank account, it could also save your life.

Svarpilen’s have spoked wheels. You’re going to want to see if any of them are loose. Some people run a screw driver across all of them to see if they all sound the same, you can just grab them with your hand and give them a shake.

Another thing you want to look at are for any balance weights. Balance weights are stuck on along the rim to keep your wheels balanced and stop things from getting sketchy at highway speeds. If your used Svartpilen 401 doesn’t have any, odds are someone saved a buck installing their tires themselves, didn’t balance them, and you’re going to have to pay a shop to do that.

Remember, any issue found before you buy is money saved. Any issue found after you buy it is usually money lost.

Now, staying up here, we should also check your brake rotors. They should be smooth, but with high mileage or with bad brake maintenance they can get really rippled. If that’s the case, they’re going to need replacing. Unlike with fork seals, labor for doing this is cheap, but the rotors themselves are expensive, so touch them on both sides, and make sure they feel smooth.

Now is the time to also check brake pads, which I can’t show on the camera, but the meat of the brake pads should be ideally at least 4mm thick. I don’t know what that is in inches, probably like 3/16^th or some dumb fraction like that.

Let’s have a look at the chain. You’re going to want to make sure that the chain’s not worn out, so no weird crooked looking kinks in any of the links. Make sure the chain’s not all rusty. Make sure the chain has the correct amount of slack or free play, which is usually about 1.5” inches. Also make sure that the teeth on the sprocket are symmetrical, they aren’t curved like a shark fin, and at the top they should be flat, not pointy. Everything here looks pretty good.

Okay, so now let’s talk about engine transmission clutch all that stuff, oil level, color, etc.

First, you’ll need the seller or a friend to sit on the bike and it perfectly straight upright to do the oil level check. The oil level should be between these little notches that indicate the min and the max.

You’re also going to want to make sure that the motorcycle starts right up, that it idles well. Look for any kind of smoke coming out the back. If it’s kind of dark, oily smoke versus if it’s kind of like a white smoke, means totally different stuff. So just keep an eye on what’s coming out there.

So if you see that it can’t even hold idle, that should be a little bit of a red flag for you. And next year, I want to listen to any noise that may or may not sound correct. If there’s a ticking sound, anything like that, just use your ears and use your common sense.

While the bike is idling, you should probably keep it on for five or ten minutes and make sure that the fan comes on, especially on these motorcycles. The Husqvarna 401’s have been known to have fans fail, and that means your bike could overheat. Better you find out if the fan doesn’t come on before you buy the motorcycle, than after. If the fan is busted, and you don’t know how long it hasn’t worked, walk away.

If you’ve owned a Svartpilen 401 and dealt with the fan or any other failures, let me know in  the comments. Your ownership experience could help someone buying one right now know what to expect and what to keep an eye out for. Help a fellow rider out and drop a comment!

You’ll also just want to check out your exhaust system and see if it’s been modified in any way. And you might want to ask what’s been done to the bike because if you do see aftermarket pipes, some people also do an aftermarket air filter. And then the question is, is a bike running too lean? And that means it’s getting too much air going through and not enough gas. Now, motorcycles come very lean from the factory these days already, and that’s because everyone’s trying to meet emissions and make things as clean as possible. When you add a performance exhaust and air filter, you’re adding more air in and out, but if you aren’t adding more fuel to the mixture, things won’t run right, so you might need a flash or a fuel processor which can cost you a couple hundred bucks if the seller didn’t also add that on.

If they have done nothing to the pipes, then you’re okay. Another thing about exhaust pipes to make note of is they tend to show where bikes have been dropped. So give that a good look for any scratches.

Check the motor carefully for any signs of leaking, seeping, weeping, dripping, staining, just any signs of any fluid-ing that shouldn’t be happen-ing.

With the transmission, I like to just click down to first, roll the bike forward, up to neutral, roll a bit, up to 1^st gear, all the way up to 5^th and then all the way back down just to make sure the gears are all there. Alternatively, take it for a test ride, we already talked about how to do that. If for whatever reason, the person refuses a test ride, even with money in their hands, just take your money back, take it as a red flag, and walk away, you don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.

And now we’ll talk about my least favorite subject matter in all of motorcycling, which is electrical.  God help us both. I’m going to make this suck as little as possible, but finding and diagnosing an electrical problem can get crazy expensive, so you’re better off just making sure the bike doesn’t have any before you buy it, and walking away if it does.

Here’s the simplest way I’ve found to do a 15 second electrical test:

I bought this multimeter for $18 like 15 years ago. They still only cost $18. They will last the rest of our lives.

Access the battery on the Svartpilen 401, or if it has a battery tender pigtail, access that.

Use the multimeter, positive to positive, negative to negative, to check the voltage. When the bike is off, it should be around 12.7 volts.

When you first turn the key to the on position, the voltage should drop, BUT, when you hit the starter the voltage should go up to somewhere around 13.5-14 volts, and when you rev it up it should increase.

If it does, that means your charging system is working.

BUT, if it goes as high as 15 volts, or can’t get up to 13.5 volts, your charging system is either overcharging the battery, or undercharging it, either way, there’s a problem with your charging system, and that can be expensive.

I have a video that tells you when to just recharge your motorcycle battery, versus when you need to fully replace it, you should check that out for more details. I’ll link to it in the pinned comment and in the description too.

Another Svartpilen specific piece of motorcycle advice is to check these wires right here on the right side and make sure everything is both tidy and undamaged.

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, but make sure your license plate light is working or the bike won’t pass your local state or provincial inspection, all because of a $1 light bulb.

Okay, now let’s talk about your fuel lines and your fuel tank.

Look inside of the tank. Just because the bike might have really low miles, that isn’t always good. Neglected motorcycles often develop rust inside the tank, that rust can wreak a lot of havoc, so take a look in there for signs of rust or orange gas.

Check the hoses under the tank and make sure everything is dry, no signs of leaks.

Hey, I should mention clutch cable, you’re going to want to make sure this has been adjusted to see how it feels. Make sure it doesn’t sound really dry.

Likewise, I forgot to mention the brake lever, give it a squeeze, and check out the color of the brake fluid. The brake fluid should be a very light color, not dark, and the brake lever should feel consistent whether you squeeze it once, or 100 times. I have a full video on 3 ways to tell if your brake fluid needs replacing, I also recommend watching that because it’s probably the thing motorcyclists neglect most, which is crazy, because it’s literally one of the most dangerous things to neglect. I’ll link to that video too.

Now’s a good idea to ask the seller, ‘Hey, what do you do during the off-season for storing it for the winter?’ If they say, ‘I just park it,’ then it’s like, ‘Okay, well why aren’t you putting stabilizer in your gas tank? Why are you gonna set me up to have clogged up fuel injectors?’ Asking this stuff, put them on the spot because you should be taking care of your fuel, you should be taking care of your bike over the winter, and if these people aren’t doing it, it’s going to be headaches for you down the road. And they should have to compensate you for that.

Alright, last few things to cover that are just general good to know information. Any motorcycle made in the last 40-ish years will have it’s unique Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN#, stamped on the front of the frame right here. You should check that with the seller’s ownership paper to make sure that the VIN # on the paper matches what’s on the bike to make sure it’s not stolen.

Speaking of, both Canada and the US, and probably whatever country you’re watching this in, will have a police and/or government website where you can enter the VIN#, just to make sure the vehicle hasn’t been marked as stolen. Someone tried to sell me a stolen motorcycle a few months ago, I reported to them police, video coming soon, so, subscribe to see that.

Another tip: I also like to ask about all things maintenance-related. Like, when’s the last time the air filter was replaced? Because nobody ever replaces the air filters. What kind of oil do you use? Because if they’re really hesitant, they probably haven’t been changing the oil that often. Where do you buy the oil filter from? Where did you get the tires from? Anything that kind of makes them sort of be a little bit on the back foot about the work that they’ve done is probably a good way to kind of make them feel a little bit insecure that maybe they should have taken better care of their motorcycle, especially if they haven’t taken better care.

The person you want to buy from, is the person who will love to answer all of these questions, because they have truly loved and cared for their motorcycle and are excited to talk to you about it.

If they shrug it off like “Oh the dealer did the work.” – Ok cool, let’s see the receipts? You spent thousands on maintenance and don’t have any receipts? Ok, no problem, let’s call up the dealer and ask them to send us a copy of the receipts now. Don’t be shy to do this. I used to work at a dealer. It probably happened at least a couple times a month that someone would call to request a copy of their invoices to give to a new buyer, it’s not a big deal.

You know what else isn’t a big deal? Hitting the like button to help a motorcyclist trying to help other motorcyclists. What’s the top thing you learned from this video, or, is there something I left out that you could teach me? Drop me a comment and let me know.

I’m Adrian. Subscribe for more no-nonsense, no fluff motorcycle content.

As always, thanks for watching, ride safe, but have fun! Peace!