Between my wife and I, we've now had 4 950's and ALL of them have had inconsistent idle issues. I have had the local mechanic do an "idle drop" and carb sync on mine to fix this ( a couple different times for reasons I don't want to get into here) , but each time he has complained about the difficulty he has had getting the idle to sit at 1400 rpms. Twice he's been successful, but the third time, on my basically new (1000 miles) bike, he made the idle less erratic, but it is still inconsistent. Basically when the bike is hot (on its way to 5 bars and back), the idle will fluctuate between 1250 and 1700 rpms, especially after "blipping" the throttle. We live at 7000 ft. above sea level and I think this has something to do with the issue. Does anyone have a sure fire solution to this? I am NOT interested in aftermarket jetting or anything like that. I do think this is resolveable with the stock equipment, but it seems to be hit and miss using the KTM recommendation of "set the screws to 2 1/4 turns out and sync the carbs" or the more old-school "idle drop" approach.
Good luck on this one... I had a similar experience while "tuning" with the FP kit. Seems that the idle adjuster is VERY SENSITIVE and in combination between it and the air idle mixture there is (if you know the secret chant) just the right place for everything to settle in. Assuming that the carbs are synched and the air idle screws are not set too lean, you may just want to play with the idle knob and give it a goo 1/64th turn one way or the other and see what happens. I would guess that at Flagstaff you may need some small adjustment to your jets but... hey, if you're headed south it really won't need it then would you?? Best of luck!! Rick (Happy idle set at 1250rpm with no probs!!)
If you're constantly at 7K, you could try a larger idle air jet (maybe a 52?) and a slightly leaner idle mix setting (maybe 2 ~ 2 1/8) HTH mully
That's the only shitty part about living in the Great American West. If I go south, everything is much lower within about 50 miles, If I go to Colorado or Utah, or just up the hill behind my house (San Francisco Peaks) everything gets much higher. Woe is me! Mix screws are currently set at 2 1/6 out... I HAVE had everything set so it would stay 2 times now. (Former bike) Shoulda wrote that down, I guess, but once its set, I really didn't want to thread the mix screws in and out to check setting and potentially throw off the sweet spot(s). On the intake leak, I've heard that before as well but I highly doubt all 4 bikes had the same issue as they have all had the same symptoms. I did have an intake leak on my first one and stalling at idle accompanied all of the other symptoms. Any other ideers anyone? I guess others have experienced this, right?
Well, for what its worth, I've experienced similar problems on every CV-equipped bike I've ridden at altitude: you dial up idle screw setting to open the butterflies and get your desired speed, and at some point there's enough ported vacuum signal to make the slides hang.......the 950's no more sensitive than, say, an airhead BMW IMHO. The limiting factor on the 950 seems to be that you get into oil light flicker if you let speed get too low.....not good for bearings, no My Precioussssss. mully
Mine does the same thing at 500' el it comes a goes it will idle at 1400 some of the time then it will act up sometimes I never could figure it out. Just wanted you to know that mine is acting the same way at near sea level. I don't like mine to stall so sometimes I have to run my idle a little over 1,400 to make up for it droping rpms at idle. My bike runs great from sea level to 10,000' but I do wish it would idle a little better.
