KTM North America filed a new federal recall on August 7, 2026, admitting that the rear brake caliper on a batch of its Husqvarna and GasGas off-road motorcycles can crack and break while riding. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration logged it as campaign 26V443000, covering 6,257 bikes: the 2022-2024 Husqvarna FE 501S and FE 350S, along with the 2024 GasGas ES 350 and ES 500.
A Rear Caliper That Can’t Handle Rolling Backward
KTM’s own filing says the defect surfaces “during backwards rolling,” when the caliper can crack near its primary pin casting and eventually break apart. That detail is more useful than it sounds. A floating brake caliper is engineered around the loads it expects in normal, forward-rolling use — the disc spins one way, the pads clamp down, and the caliper body reacts against its mounting pins along a predictable path. Push the bike backward with the pedal applied — walking it out of a truck bed, backing down a ramp, or scrubbing speed on a steep downhill — and that load path reverses. A casting with a thin wall section or a hidden void from the foundry is exactly the kind of flaw a forward-only durability test can miss for years.
NHTSA’s consequence statement doesn’t hedge: a cracked or broken rear caliper reduces braking ability and increases the risk of a crash. On a knobby-tired enduro bike, that’s not a minor inconvenience. Riders lean on the rear brake constantly to modulate traction on loose dirt, roots, and rock, which is a different job than the rear brake does on a street bike, and losing it mid-trail is a bigger problem than it would be commuting to work.
The fix costs owners nothing. Dealers will pull the rear caliper and replace it free of charge once parts are available. KTM expects to mail owner notification letters on September 2, 2026, but owners don’t have to wait on the postal service. Call KTM and Husqvarna customer service directly at 1-888-985-6090, or search NHTSA.gov by VIN to check a bike’s status now.
The Second Caliper Recall on This Platform in 18 Months
This is the second time in about a year and a half that KTM has recalled essentially this same bike family over a cracked brake caliper. In February 2025, campaign 25V074000 covered 5,116 units of the same-generation Husqvarna FE 350S and FE 501S, plus the 2024-2025 GasGas ES 350 and ES 500, because the front caliper could crack near its upper guide pin. Different caliper, different mounting point, same basic failure mode on the same platform inside the same product cycle. Two separate caliper castings failing on the same bikes within eighteen months points toward something more systemic than one bad batch of parts: a shared design margin, casting supplier, or material spec across the whole caliper family that isn’t leaving enough room for real-world loading.
It’s an awkward look for a manufacturer investing heavily in its image at the top of the sport. Red Bull KTM’s factory MotoGP program just locked up its 2027 rider lineup, while its production enduro bikes are racking up a second brake recall on the same generation of hardware. Racing budgets and production parts bins don’t always share the same quality control, even when they share a badge.
What Owners and Used Buyers Should Do Now
If you own a 2022-2024 FE 501S or FE 350S, or the GasGas equivalent, don’t wait for the September letter. Call KTM’s customer service line or search NHTSA.gov by VIN to confirm whether your bike is in the affected population, and get on a dealer’s schedule as soon as the rear caliper is available.
Shopping the used market for one of these bikes is trickier now, because there are two overlapping recalls to check instead of one. Ask the seller for dealer paperwork covering both campaign 26V443000 and campaign 25V074000, and don’t take a clean-looking bike at face value. Off-road machines rarely get titled, registered, or tracked as carefully as street-legal motorcycles, so recall history is exactly the kind of detail that gets lost in a private-party sale. Running the VIN yourself before handing over money takes a few minutes and costs nothing.
It’s also worth knowing that recall repairs don’t expire with a used sale or an out-of-warranty odometer. A manufacturer is obligated to fix a safety defect for free regardless of who currently owns the bike, as long as the VIN falls inside the recalled population. There’s no statute of limitations tied to purchase date the way there is with a factory warranty claim, so a five-year-old bike bought without paperwork is still covered.
None of this makes the FE 501S or FE 350S bad motorcycles. Austria’s enduro engineering is still some of the best in the business, and a caliper casting problem is a manufacturing quality issue, not a design philosophy failure. But it’s a reminder that even race-bred, boutique hardware runs on cast aluminum parts made by whichever supplier won the contract, same as anything else on the road. Recalls like this aren’t limited to two wheels or gasoline, either. 2026 has already seen manufacturers pull back everything from enduro bikes to self-driving taxis over defects that only surfaced after thousands of real-world duty cycles. And if a 501cc thumper isn’t eccentric enough for your taste, we’ve covered motorcycles built around a 600-horsepower big-block Chevy engine, brakes presumably included.
Source: NHTSA Recall Campaign 26V443000, filed by KTM North America, Inc.
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