fast idle wax

[redrider]

Hi everyone, my name is Brian and I,m a member of the Macedon Ranges Ulysses branch ,Love the site and hopefully will get to meet some of you. My first question  is. can the fast idle wax be adjusted on the throttle bodies to bring the revs down a bit as the motor is warming up? At the moment the revs creep up sometimes to 3000rpm but only for a brief sec

[Brock]

Welcome to the Nut House, from an old fart in the West.

From what I have read around various fora (forums???) that seems to be standard, not sure if it can be adjusted.

[Aj1300]

Hi Brian, welcome to the site, my bike will get that high  for a short time. It only happens when I start riding  from cold and I just putt along till I get 3 bars. 

[Streak]

Hello Brian, welcome aboard our good ship  I am sure man of our brains trust will have excellent answers for you!

Hi everyone, my name is Brian and I,m a member of the Macedon Ranges Ulysses branch ,Love the site and hopefully will get to meet some of you. My first question  is. can the fast idle wax be adjusted on the throttle bodies to bring the revs down a bit as the motor is warming up? At the moment the revs creep up sometimes to 3000rpm but only for a brief sec

[Whizz]

Hi Brian, welcome to the funny farm and I can honestly say that I have no idea whether it can be adjusted or not, but mine does the same thing for a short time. 

[Biggles]

Welcome to the kingdom of the wise.

Namely, ST owners!

My ST1300 started doing this recently.  It idles fine at start up, but then goes to 3000 to 4000 RPM for a few seconds- maybe 15, before settling down.  Someone suggested a build-up of sticky fuel residue in the vacuum lines that the ECU derives its information from.  To check would involve removing more bits that I want to just now (seat, tank cover, tank raised, air box top, funnels, airbox bottom (big pain to refit) then delve into the engine bits then do it all in reverse.  So I'm living with it for the time being until I need to go there (e.g. to clean my K&N filter) or because I'm desperate for some flagellation.

Someone somewhere blamed Shell petrol for it.  If you use Shell you might see a connection.  I've been using it for years (it's handy and has discounts) and this has only started in the past couple of months.

[saaz]

It sounds like you have normal behaviour Brian.

As Biggles says, there have been some owners who have had the start system play up due to blockages in those vacuum lines. You can synchronise the idle setup, supposedly this may make it run more consistently. Note that this synch is not synching the throttle bodies, which are non-adjustable.  I don't know if the wax pellets that run the system might change their behaviour over time, or if any part of the system needs cleaning/lubricating.

[redrider]

Thanks for all your input fellas. might just leave things alone for the time being.

[OzRider]

RR check your water level in the radiator.

I had the same trouble because some idiot who worked on the bike  (me) forgot to connect the overflow hose so upon pressure the excess was being discharged to atmosphere and not the well hidden and unreadable resevoir bottle.

Therefore the radiator was running low and the idle wax was heating up using engine heat not radiator heat, have a look Im saying ive worked on your bike and not connected the hose  its just that the radiator level may be low.

[RGardner]

Hi All,
The same problem has just started happening to me so I looked it up in the good old Haynes Service & Repair Manual (excellent purchase courtesy of Amazon). The actual problem is that even after the usual morning warmup (long enough to get the helmet & jacket on) and start down the drive, the revs shoot up to 4,000. They stay high for the first couple of intersections which leaves absolutely no engine braking effect and is quite dangerous.
The Haynes Manual refers us to section 4.19 'Starter Valves - Synchronisation' and I quote:
"...on completion (of another process) check the starter valve synchronisation. Note: Honda do not specify this as a service item advising that it need only be carried out if the starter valves have been removed from the throttle body assembly. The procedure...only alters the starter valves which control the idle speed when the engine is cold and warming up. On high mileage machines the linkage could wear and produce uneven idling when cold and warming up. If this is the case then the syncronisation procedure should be carried out."
It then goes on to describe the procedure which requires a manometer to check and adjust vacuum pressure. My bike is on 52,000km which I would not call high mileage. However, long story short, it's booked into Honda for next week to get it sorted.
Cheers.

[redrider]

Hi all. thanks for all the replys on this subject.I,ve dug deep into this problem as I know a lot of st1300,s have the same problem. I had the air box out to fit up a cruise control  and thought I would study up the fast idle wax unit. Here we go. On top of the wax unit which is located on the left side of the valve body mid drift there is a small shaft with an adjusting nut and a small dob of white paint on it, turn the nut 1 to 1 1/2 turns anticlockwise .this will close the starter valves only slightly and stop the idles going through the roof. Don,t  worry if you think your putting them all out of synch ,your not, it is just one small adjustment that moves the starter valves all together but only slightly.My idles were up to 3000 to 3500 sometimes on a really cold day,now they dont go over 2000 rpm Good Luck and if you decide to have a go just keep in mind the exact amount you turn the locknut ,cheers Brian                               PS.starter valves can be synchronized with vacum gauges and it may smooth your idle

[RockyRural]

I had a similar problem also compounded by the fact the bike would not idle sometimes,

Removed airbox locate 5 way vacumn link, found it was full of sticky fuel residue, removed, replaced, problem gone, bike idles perfectly.

[Gadget]

Lately mine has started well in the morning, then after putting the Jacket and Helmet on the idle gets rough and the engines stalls. 

Restart and keep the revs above 2000 manually and ride off to work.  Any backing off of the throttle causes the engine to die and then run start.  This can last from 2 to 30 km.  Sometimes just shutting down the engine and restarting fixes it.

Of course every time I take it in for a service it's not playing up.   

Anyone else had this problem or is it related.

[RGardner]

Mine was doing the same thing as per two posts ago. I cost myself a lot of labour time at Honda by incorrectly pre-diagnosing the problem to them as the fast idle wax. Turns out the problem was simply caused by me changing the coolant the weekend beforehand. I hadn't revved the engine hard enough during the coolant-change process which had left an air lock in the system. The lack of heated coolant circulating resulted in the idle system not detecting the engine was warming up and therefore triggered the 4,000 rpm. The high revs then lasted until the engine heat itself (rather than the heated coolant) shut the fast idle down.
Cheers,
Rob