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Cold start rpm low....in Hawaii ?


TurdFerguson

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Yes, I understand....you are freezing and it's 80 degrees here, sorry bout that.

 

So I have a 07 and my buddy a 02 both with around 12k miles....We bought them both this November so we are comparing oddities against each other's machine. More on that in another post.

 

When starting "cold" neither bike goes into a high idle. Neither bike is warm enough to register on the temp gauge at first start.

 

Both bikes crank a few revolutions, start and then struggle with a 1000 rpm idle until warm and then 1200-1300 normal idle.

 

02 is totally stock, 07 has all the easy mods (flapper, snorkel, PAIR) done by PO. Why? I couldn't tell ya, 02 is a much smoother bike.

 

So are both of the wax thingys that pull on the idle air valves bad?

 

lemmeknowdaddy-o

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They do stick, corrosion on the operating rods. I use ACF50 and push them in and out a few times to clear them. Air can also be trapped in the system so a rad burp could slso help.

 

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TurdFerguson - If you search you'll find a lot of posts on the flapper, snorkel, PAIR mods. I've made these mods on other bikes I've owned with no ill effects.  When I did the same for my 2006 VFR it ran rough especially right off idle.  After a week I put it back to stock.  Smoothed it right out. No more off idle stumbles.

I also had the insufficient cold idle speed problem. The PO had just upped the rpm's with the idle knob but that made the idle when warm like 1600 rpm.  I set the warm idle back to 1200 and adjusted the wax unit setting. As I recall it only took about one turn of the adjusting knob to give a decent cold idle speed.  A lot of folks say you never need to, and should never, adust the wax unit. And that's probably true if it was adjusted right initially... YMMV

Good luck

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That's interesting Mark, I didn't know it was adjustable. I'll look into that. The rods on both bike move smooth as butter....by hand.

 

Ive ordered a unmolested air box ($50 shipping for a $20 part...gotta love Hawaii).

 

i plan on taking her back to what the educated Honda engineers had created.

 

Mahalo,

TF

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  • 3 weeks later...

This one is not uncommon at all, quite a few of us have this 'issue' during cold weather with 6th gens. After five years I've never managed to, or known/found anyone that has solved it. Even Mother Honda has no answers. I thought I'd cured it some while ago but this is one of those intermittent issues that can fool you into thinking it's fixed after you've tinkered with something when in fact it's not.

 

All we do know about this, it is NOT the wax idle unit. You can even replace the whole unit and linkages, and it'll STILL do it. One thing we HAVE found out is that if you electrically disconnect the MAP sensor, the bike will fire up perfectly normally from cold. Plug it back in, and it'll do this bogging down to a stall trick. And no, replacing the MAP sensor with a new one doesn't fix it.

 

Personally, I live with it. All you need to do to 'bypass' this issue is simply tickle the throttle when you fire it up. Hold the rpms at about 2k manually for about 10-15 seconds, then ever so gently let go. If it's warmed enough it'll go into 'normal' high idle warmup. If it bogs down, tickle it a bit longer till it does. Mine NEVER fails to start doing this, it's only EVER bogged down and died on me if I fire it up and don't tickle the throttle.

 

Oh and PAIR/snorkle/flapper mods have absolutely nothing to do with this issue.

 

I've had my bike completely back to factory stock, and it'll still do it. I've always had a feeling it's something to do with the ECU.

 

I can guarantee what will happen is you'll tinker with something, fire it up and it'll run up as it should at which point you'll think 'hurrah, it's fixed!'. What is more likely is that the ambient temperature was just high enough for long enough for it to not do it. Mine ALWAYS does this if the ambient temperature is below 10C for anything more than 12 hours.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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On 2/24/2019 at 12:54 PM, adsrox0r said:

This one is not uncommon at all, quite a few of us have this 'issue' during cold weather with 6th gens. After five years I've never managed to, or known/found anyone that has solved it. Even Mother Honda has no answers. I thought I'd cured it some while ago but this is one of those intermittent issues that can fool you into thinking it's fixed after you've tinkered with something when in fact it's not.

 

All we do know about this, it is NOT the wax idle unit. You can even replace the whole unit and linkages, and it'll STILL do it. One thing we HAVE found out is that if you electrically disconnect the MAP sensor, the bike will fire up perfectly normally from cold. Plug it back in, and it'll do this bogging down to a stall trick. And no, replacing the MAP sensor with a new one doesn't fix it.

 

Personally, I live with it. All you need to do to 'bypass' this issue is simply tickle the throttle when you fire it up. Hold the rpms at about 2k manually for about 10-15 seconds, then ever so gently let go. If it's warmed enough it'll go into 'normal' high idle warmup. If it bogs down, tickle it a bit longer till it does. Mine NEVER fails to start doing this, it's only EVER bogged down and died on me if I fire it up and don't tickle the throttle.

 

Oh and PAIR/snorkle/flapper mods have absolutely nothing to do with this issue.

 

I've had my bike completely back to factory stock, and it'll still do it. I've always had a feeling it's something to do with the ECU.

 

I can guarantee what will happen is you'll tinker with something, fire it up and it'll run up as it should at which point you'll think 'hurrah, it's fixed!'. What is more likely is that the ambient temperature was just high enough for long enough for it to not do it. Mine ALWAYS does this if the ambient temperature is below 10C for anything more than 12 hours.

pretty much sums up the life of owning a VFR

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I'm going to try a little grasping at straws here.

I wonder if running premium hi octane fuel could be an issue here! Are you running these fuels?

I know of cars NOT designed for Premium Fuels that can be very reluctant to start and idle poorly in cold conditions until warmed up. The reason is that Premium Fuels are not as volatile as normal standard unleaded, the colder the ambient temperature the worse this problem can become.

Just something to think about, VFR's run happily, and are designed for standard unleaded. (Not mentioning Ethanol added fuel, I avoid these at all costs).

 

Cheers.

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I’ve had very similar issues. It’s all micro issues, but it bothers me. I wish my VFR revved smoothly with throttle application throughout the rev range out of gear. Eh whatever, runs great when in gear. 

 

As for the pair snorkel etc... doesn’t make much sense to modify. For some reason my flapper is totally disabled electrically and I can’t figure out why. 

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I had a similar issue but with my 01 and like MarkDetroit, I adjusted the wax idle lever and all was good afterward.

 

As far as PAIR, Snorkel and Flapper goes, I’ve seen many post with different results to say for sure whether these make things better or do nothing. On my 09 I will say, the only thing I was able to tell from the snorkel delete was a louder bike with a deeper growl.

 

The PAIR delete however was only necessary due to using the auto tune feature of the Rapid Bike tuning module. Disabling at the least, is also necessary for Dyno tuning as well. As for the flapper, I also didn’t see a real difference there either so both the flapper and snorkel went back on. I will say where I really felt a HUGE difference was when I had the injectors removed and professionally cleaned. The bike started right away and ran so much smoother!

 

TurdFurguson, as for your first world problem with shipping, yeah the cost of living in Paradise, right? Although I will say that looking into shipping from the mainland to Australia, that cost seems to be exponentially higher! 

 

Well good luck on resolving your issue, I’m pretty confident you’ll get it worked out.

 

Cheers.

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Mahalo everyone for your help and advice.

 

I put the bike entirely back to original, except for the pair valve, and though the cold idle didn't change it runs MUCH better overall.

 

So much so, I pulled her OFF of Craigslist and plan on keeping her for a bit longer.

 

Aloha,

Turd.

 

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