11000 miles on my 2012 and the start idle does same as
@roadrider , even going to 4000 RPM on a cold day.
The Starter Valve Linkage is fine. I can pull it by hand to close the intake and get down to 1000 RPM. Then it settles back against the cold Wax Actuator and the RPM shoots back up when I let it go back.
The Was Actuator is working. It extends as soon as hot fluid is flowing by it (can see it moving when the coolant hose to it is warming up) and then the RPM settles down to 1000. It just tale a long time for hot fluid to get to the Wax Actuator.
Does it sound like a lazy T-Stat?
Slow movement of the wax unit could be either a slow (or more likely seized open) thermostat or maybe a partial blockage in the wax unit hoses. If the thermostat is working properly you should be able to keep a hand on the radiator for a couple of minutes after starting and have it stay basically stone cold then suddenly get too hot to touch. If on the other (unburned) hand the radiator slowly heats up, then the thermostat is stuck open; that would certainly extend the warm-up time.
I have had a bit more experience with starter valves since my original post; my recently acquired 2009 VFR800 uses a mechanically similar system to the 1300, and as received (82000km but had been parked up two years by the PO) it had very out of balance SVs. It took me a while but I eventually traced that to the "fixed" reference SV and its neighbour being seized partly open. As you may imagine it took some finagling to get these loosened up, and in the process I changed the reference SV's setting.
As you may know the other three SVs get synchronised to the reference SV so that the vacuum in the intakes is balanced when the engine is warmed up and the wax unit has relinquished idle speed control to the idle stop screw. It took me quite a number of iterations to get the reference screw set just right so that the cold idle speed was in my desired range (I aimed for about 2000 on my VFR) and handed off control to the idle screw at around 1200rpm. Unless it was optimised, the idle was either too high or too low when cold, and the adjustment was very sensitive.
I confess I don't understand your comment about being able to move the starter valve linkage by hand to drop the idle speed. You should only be able to move the linkage to
open the valves further as the wax unit nut would stop you closing the valves, unless the wax unit is already in the hot position. When the wax unit is hot (the shaft has extended) then you can easily move the starter valves to open them further.
The thing that determines the "openness" of the SVs is their adjuster nut settings (screwed in opens the valve more = more air = higher idle) and the action of either the wax unit or the idle screw. So to have such a high cold idle the starter valves are too far open; that could be the SVs themselves (if someone like me had foolishly adjusted the reference screw) or the wax unit (if the "unadjustable" nut had been wound down on the shaft to open the SVs further. Given your bike is currently already experiencing aberrant behaviour I would suggest firstly a decent synchronisation, and then if the idle is still too high, I would back out the wax unit nut (when the engine is cold) to drop the idle back to a more reasonable value.
When your engine is hot and the idle adjuster has the idle at 1000rpm, there should be a some slack between the idle stop screw and the wax unit nut.
There is a video on the VFRs starter valves that I found pretty useful.
Not totally true, But I thought everybody knew too
