Husqvarna 901 Norden

This entry is part 3 of 18 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #52

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Husqvarna has offered some great bikes in recent years, but the Norden is something really exceptional. We haven’t fallen for a bike as hard as we fell for this one since the 701 Enduro.

Husqvarna has come up with a new term: ‘gravel travel’.

The idea is, bikes like KTM’s 890 Adventure R are offroad-oriented adventure bikes.

They’re rough, tough and ready to smash through the really crazy stuff, from the Amazon Basin to The Sahara.

The Norden has less of an aggressive off-road edge and therefore will work best on less demanding off-road surfaces – like gravel roads.

After riding the bike for a couple of days, we believe that’s undeniably true. Our only problem with the gravel-travel concept is we feel it implies the bike’s a soft option that vastly underrates the 901’s ability.

It’s no 701, but the Norden is entirely at home off road.

It’s not an 890!

The Husqvarna presentation of the bike made a big point of the Norden not being a direct competitor for the 890 Adventure, so we’re going to deal with that straight away.

The Norden’s mechanicals are the same as the 890’s. The electronics probably aren’t identical, but they’re very similar as far as we could tell. Even the prices of the two bikes are so close it really doesn’t matter much. Like it or not, potential buyers are going to at least make the comparison.

The challenge for Husky as we see it is to try and get the Australian adventure-riding community to be realistic about what they want from the bike.

We feel the overwhelming majority of potential buyers looking at 900cc twins will be better served by what the Husky offers.

The 890R will definitely be the go for Simpson crossings and Cape York trips – for those who seriously want to tackle that level of challenge on a 900cc twin – but for sightseeing in the dust and rock of The Flinders, runs along the Great Ocean Road and into the forests and dirt roads of The Otways, Nullarbor Plain crossings, and general bitumen riding, the Norden is absolutely superb.

A very tidy-looking and capable bike, both on and off road.

The bare facts

Just to ensure we’ve presented the bike properly, it’s an 889cc parallel twin with a very usable – and sensible, in our opinion – suite of electronics,105hp, a slipper clutch and a seat which can quickly and easily be set at either an 854mm or 874mm seat height. Suspension is WP 43mm upside-downers at the front and a WP Apex shock at the rear, and lighting is exceptionally good. Fuel capacity is 19 litres – at the prices during our test ride about $150 to fill from reserve – and the wheels are a tubeless 21-inch front and 18-inch rear. There’s three riding modes on the standard bike: Street, Rain and Offroad, and there’s an optional Exlporer mode which gives the ‘slip’ function on traction control which we thought so incredibly brilliant on both the 790 and 890 KTMs, and which means ponying up for an extra $320.That’s the bare essentials.

What the spec sheet and the brochure don’t really convey is the beautiful look of the bike. It’s not the colour scheme we’re talking about. That won’t appeal to every-body, although we thought the bike looked schmick. It’s the way the panels and parts are shaped so there’s no edges or ledges sticking out anywhere to snag anything, and the way the cable runs are carefully thought out so there’s no loose loops or flapping ends. The Husky folks mentioned several times Husqvarna is a quality brand, and we certainly felt the attention to detail on the Norden justified all they said.

Even the lighting was beautiful. The retro headlight shape housed an LED array that gave a bright, white, wide LED beam, and the spotties are integrated into the fairing.

The footpegs had rubber inserts which had been removed before we arrived, and the handlebars, in a subtle way, we felt were shaped more for comfort than getting the elbows up.

One thing which did make our eyebrows climb a little was the width of the seat. It’s narrow at the front, which worked really well for standing up on the ’pegs, but wide enough to take a real barge arse at the back, and that made it the best seat in the house on long road sections.

It was very comfy.

The whole bike was very comfy, actually.

It’s not often we enjoy long road sections as much we enjoyed them on the Husky.

Weight is carried low. It’s hard to grasp just how light and nimble it feels.

Feel good

We’re going to mix a few a bits and pieces of system detail with feel while actually riding because it’s the best way try and demonstrate what we want to say.

The first thing is, as an overall observation, the Husky Norden is a fair fricken demon on a tight, twisting mountain road.

Seriously. We were left wondering at our-selves. Very few dualsporters will allow slicing through mountain blacktop with the speed and aggression we enjoyed on this bike. We know there are plenty of good performers, but the Norden with its slipper clutch, cornering-sensitive traction control and ABS, fantastic quickshifter and a system Husky calls Motor Slip Regulation (MSR), kept inviting to us to go deeper and deeper into turns and lean the bike further and further until we honestly began to ask ourselves if we ever would find the limit.

Fortunately we didn’t, which makes it even more impressive when we think back over some of sections and how they were handled.

We also want to give a cheer to the Pirelli Scorpions which, once again, showed how incredibly capable they are both on and off road.

On the long straights it was a matter of flicking the cruise-control thumb button to the left, pushing it forward or pulling it back to set the desired speed, and letting the bike keep everything safe and legal.

We heard a few of the other journos discussing the screen not being adjustable and not working so well with the seat in the high position, but that will depend on the rider. For us it was great with the seat in either position.

The braking, no surprise, was every bit as good as the motor and gearbox. Control is superb, even with the bike leaned well over, and the confidence given to the rider from the whole set up is very strong.

It’s a fair demon on a tight, twisting mountain road.
Performance sparkle was maintained in some startlingly deep water crossings.

Husqvarna Norden 901

Recommended price: $25,050 ride-away.
Web: husqvarna-motorcycles.com/en-au

Engine type: Two-cylinder, four-stroke, DOHC parallel twin
Displacement: 889cc
Bore x stroke: 90.7mm x 68.8mm
Power: 77kW (105hp) @ 8000rpm
Torque: 100Nm @ 6500 rpm
Compression ratio: 13.5:1
Transmission: Six-speed
Lubrication: Pressure lubrication with two oil pumps
Cooling: Liquid-cooled with water/oil heat exchanger
Clutch: Cable-operated PASC slipper clutch
Starter/battery: Electric starter/12V 10Ah
Fuel system: DKK Dellorto (46mm throttle body)
Engine management/ignition: Bosch EMS with RBW
Control: Four valves per cylinder/DOHC
Silencer: Stainless-steel primary and secondary silencer
Primary drive: 39:75
Final drive: 16:45
Traction control: MTC (lean-angle sensitive, three-mode, disengageable. Explorer mode optional)
ABS modes: Street (cornering sensitive)/Offroad
Ride modes: Street, Rain, Offroad, Explorer (optional equipment)
Engine Management Systems: MTC, MSR, Easy Shift
Cruise Control: Original equipment
Technical Accessories: Connectivity unit, TPMS, heated grips and seats
Connectivity: Turn-by-turn navigation, Call-in, music selection
Frame: Chromium-Molybdenum-steel frame using the engine as a stressed element, powder coated
Subframe: Chromium-Molybdenum-steel trellis, powder coated
Handlebar: Aluminium, tapered, 28mm/22mm
Front suspension: WP APEX-USD 43mm with compression, rebound, preload adjustment
Rear suspension: WP APEX-monoshock with rebound and preload adjustment
Suspension travel front/rear: 220mm/215mm
Front brakes: Two four-piston calipers, radially mounted. Ø320mm brake discs
Rear brake: Two-piston floating caliper. 260mm brake discs
ABS: Bosch 9.1 ME (incl. cornering-ABS and Offroad mode, disengageable)
Front/rear wheel: Tubeless aluminium spoked wheels 2.50 x 21”; 4.50 x 18”
Front/rear tyres: Pirelli Scorpion Rally STR 90/90 R21; 150/70 R18
Chain: X-Ring 520
Steering-head angle: 64.2°
Tripleclamp offset: 30 mm
Trail: 106.9mm
Wheelbase: 1513mm ± 15mm
Ground clearance: 252mm
Seat height: 854mm/874mm
Weight without fuel: 204kg
Fuel capacity: 19 litres
Service intervals: 15,000km

The Offroad mode was just what we wanted. Power delivery and throttle response were everything we could’ve wished.

Rebound

Once we went offroad we expected the bike to very quickly come up short, but it didn’t. Naturally the Husky folks had chosen a route which showed off the bike off at its best, but even so, on gravel, loose dirt, corrugations andin some startlingly deep water crossings, the Norden still maintained its performance sparkle and made the whole experience an absolute celebration of riding. The power delivery was hefty but well under control, the standard footpegs felt great and, best of all for us, the Offroad mode was just what we wanted. Traction control was backed off to right where we liked it, ABS on the front was controlled but not aggressive and the rear switched off, and power delivery and throttle response were everything we could’ve wished.

Husky could’ve left us in that happy place, but to the company’s credit, we were taken to a trail and warned it would likely be a challenge for the bikes. We were asked to slow down and get a feel for how the bikes coped. It was a rocky, shitty track
with some ruts and erosion mounds and, sure enough, the Norden very quickly came back to Earth. Sometimes a bit too quickly.
We were forced to slow things down considerably.

But still, given the opportunity to tackle the obstacles at slower speeds, as we’ve found with so many bikes in the past, the Husky romped it in. No problem at all.

A little careful line choice, a judicious use of throttle and some control applied to just how far the bike was thrown skyward and the Husky skipped and bopped its way along the trail like a good’n.

The standard forks and shock did a good job, but the XPLOR upgrade was amazing.

Part of the point of the rough trail was to give everyone a chance to try the optional upgraded suspension which was fitted to the two sweep bikes, and holy spear us in the eye with a red-hot header pipe, Batman! The bike we rode had the top-level upgrade with larger diameter forks and reverse-cone valving, and we shit you not, it was incredible.

The upgrade front and rear tallied to a whopping $7,800, but the result was absolutely astonishing.

After we’d ridden that bike we stood around drooling and were too stunned to ride the other bike which had kept the same diameter fork legs as the stocker with different internals and a few other bits and pieces as part of a less-extreme upgrade.

There’s not too many places off limits to a bike as good as this one.

We didn’t get a price on that set up, either. We’d ridden the best. We didn’t want to try the rest.

What was really interesting about that was, as we sulked about how the standard bike had missed out on the super-duper suspension, photographer Wilko pointed out how good the standard bike was on the road, and especially on gravel and corrugations. We realised he was right.

The standard bike is excellent at what it’s intended to do. And then opinions started to float around that the upgraded suspension wasn’t as razor sharp on the road nor as steady and planted on some the flatter, loose surfaces.

That was interesting, and it was true as well. It was what Husqvarna had been trying to get through to us. The race-standard suspension is there for those who want it, but most buyers will find the standard set up on the Norden well-suited to the bike’s intended use.

We were happy again.

Excellent for its intended use.

No apology

We’re clearly smitten with the Husky Norden 901 and we’re happy if it shows. It’s a beautifully finished, well-thought-out, stunning performer in the right situation, and we believe it’s the situation a high percentage of Australian adventure riders will find themselves in a high percentage of the time. If the rider gives the bike a chance it’ll cope with the unexpected with real confidence, and it’s an absolute pleasure to ride.

We haven’t mentioned how light the bike feels, but it’s a significant contributor to the overwhelmingly enjoyable riding experience on all surfaces. Having the fuel carried so low is brilliant, and while we’re speaking of fuel, the 19-litre tank gave us a comfortable 350km or so before hitting reserve. We didn’t run it dry, but we’d work with 350km plus reserve as a safe range in mixed terrain.

Attention to detail is impressive.
The TFT screen is easy to read and the menu easy to navigate.
Panels and parts are shaped so there’s no edges or ledges sticking out.
The retro headlight shape housed an LED array that gave a bright, white, wide LED beam.

There’s a stack of accessories available of course: luggage, an Akro, phone connectivity, Husky-branded apparel, heated grips and seats, a taller windshield, lowering links and heaps more. Get on to the Husky website to find out about those things.

Better still, get into a dealer and ride one. Everyone should get to enjoy a bike this good once in a while.

The retro headlight shape housed an LED array that gave a bright, white, wide LED beam.