No idle and high idle problem

Ramseybella

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Josh is correct, but don't sell the bike.
Nothing like passing misery to another unsuspecting owner and knowing it was a lemon.

With that, it's the same line of BS i got from Yamaha..
I would try another shop that has been around for some years with a good reputation of good service...
The service manager is being lazy, with that in mind i wouldn't let him change a tire...
USA Yamaha gave me the same line of Shit as well, they know what's going on as i was told they have replaced harnesses and that the issue as i have said many times with the 2012 and 2013 models.
Relocating the Stator cable doesn't work you can check the battery till the cows come home, i replaced mine and that didn't work.
You can record it while it's happening but as with most cases it will happen when you can't do this..

This SOB Gremlin follows Murphy's Law, when it happens it only happens when you are alone and not at the garage.
Like the old loony tunes cartoon, the demolition guy that finds the frog that sings but he can't get it to sing in front of the music promoter...:D

Do a little test, take the battery side cover off start the bike while it's idling lightly push a tug at the pile of spaghetti harness wires at the top and see if you can get a reaction form doing this. Don't go heavy handed just wiggle stuff and push and pull the wires.
I was able to get a reaction on one wire don't remember what one it was..
The tech that did mine only was able to get it to stall.


Since he had the harness with him he just replaced it and it's been running fine ever since.
Report it to the highway safety web site a few of us have.
You need not stop calling, warranty or not it's dangerous, not normal and not a comfortable feeling.
Like if i just happen to be riding and it jumps RPM's and i slam into the rear end of a car, stall turning at a turn light and get rear ended by a car behind me.
Off road and this all happens stalls in the middle of nowhere.. Just think of the law suit that could come of this...
I will back you on that, it's not right for them to blow you off on a serious matter such as this..
You have to be creative on all the safety concerns about this issue.
Tell him you reported it to the Highway safety, tell him your concerns are serious.
And to let you know they are reading this and are taking a head count..
So keep being persistent and don't stop..
But do find an honest serious Yamaha service manager...
Would be nice if us fortunate ones could give the name and phone number of the Yamaha service manager that helped them out.
YOu can call them and ask for some advice to point you in the right direction in your state or surrounding states.

This was my five star angle service manager at Bobby J's Yamaha his name is Robert the phone number is: (505) 884-3013
Tell him the year the symptoms and that you can't find any shop manager that will take you seriously and with Yamaha USA customer service.
And that you read from a guy in New Mexico on this forum that had this problem completely fixed in his shop and ask what should you do..
If others can add to this list we may have something to place a bet on, it's a long shot and they may be able to get some response
Apparently he had enough clout to get them to cover me off warranty and money in my pocket as well...
I was happy just with the fix and the fact that there honest people still give a shit working in the business..
It's only a long distance call why not?
 
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MichTenere

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Thanks guys for all the input! Will see if I can replicate it in the garage and video it. Will also hit up Robert. A bit from Michigan but maybe he can give me some points remotely.
 

JoshMundy

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Richland WA
So I am st about 10 starts and 120 miles on bike since new wiring harness and so far no issues like before. However now it is running rough at 3000-3500 rpm, lots of sputtering popping out exhaust. Wondering if fuel is related, old and been sitting so long. Burning through this tank to then refill with fresh fuel before calling shop.
 

tntmo

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Well I just got back from a 17,000 mile trip from San Diego to Alaska, up to the Arctic Ocean, to the east coast and back home again. I did the required 26k valve check early (20k) miles and ever since then I haven't had the idle/revving issue. Perhaps while I moved the harness, or disconnected and reconnected the plugs I solved the problem? Interesting......
 

JoshMundy

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looks like someone has documented video of it happening to him, and its right along with what I was experiencing, besides the bucking issue near end of video


I also got an email from NHTSA askign questions about my issues
 

blitz11

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looks like someone has documented video of it happening to him, and its right along with what I was experiencing, besides the bucking issue near end of video


I also got an email from NHTSA askign questions about my issues
Wow. That's pretty damning. Interesting to see if that has been sent to NHTSA. (My 2013 has been really good - it died once about a block from the house and wouldn't start, and i've had one other hard start in 25K miles.)
 

Checkswrecks

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He's also got a Part 2 to expand on his issue:

Again, if you have these issues go to NHTSA at SAFERCAR.COM and file a complaint. These are what the manufacturers REALLY pay attention to, because they are what NHTSA uses to develop recalls. I believe that you can post links to files like these videos IF IF IF yours is really identical.
 

911guy

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I have several videos of me almost hitting cars at intersections when my motorcycle surged forward. I will see about posting on YouTube since they are to large for this site. I have been a loyal Yamaha fan for 50 years and I cannot believe this has not been addressed. This is a death waiting to happen or how many deaths have already happened. Yamaha where are you?????? Is this something that takes many deaths to get your attention? I have filed a complaint at the NTHSA but never heard anything. I know there are three things regarding a lawsuit. What did you know ? When did you know about it? What did you do correct it? I believe you have known what the problem was. I believe you have known for at least two years. I also believe people in people in management have known about it (because they have replace wiring harnesses at no charge with no warranty). I also believe that that it is trying to be hidden so they dont have submit a recall. There has been no concerted effort to address this. Yamaha??
 
R

RonH

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Every problem a few encounter is not reason for a recall. Great that Yamaha has helped a couple guys that were out of warranty. Have to give them credit there. I wonder when motorcycles were even first considered for recalls? Back in the 70s and 80s even if the wheels fell off there was no recall. No one ever heard of a recall until at least the 90s on a motorcycle.
 

dark knight

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Re: Idle speed problem min 800 max 3500

Long delay in getting an answer on this as I went on holiday while the shop had my bike.

Turns out the linkage on the side of the throttle bodies was seized. I haven't picked up the bike yet due to work so haven't been able to get the mechanic to point out exactly where the problem was, but apparently Yamaha have been asking questions as they haven't seen this before. They wanted to know if I lived by the coast, was the bike used much and do I do short or long mileage trips.

I live at least a 100m from the sea. The bike has done approx 14000m this year. Riding is work/commuting only and shared with an FJR, with most of my journeys 100m plus.

The bike was left sitting for 3-4 weeks before this occurred which can't have helped. I was moving house and waiting for a new set of dunlop rs2's and it hadn't been washed, but even if it had I don't tend to be that detailed when washing it. As I use my bikes all year round this isn't a good sign, if it's just a case of more careful washing I can cope with that, but I had enough problems with the FJR that I was told needed a new wiring harness at 3yr old and all the earthing issues. If the S10 is going to need constant attention with panels off, deep cleans, etc. then perhaps I need to look elsewhere. Can't imagine many modern bikes are going to be that different with all year round riding requiring high maintenance.

I had a similar problem with my 2011 S10, poor idling and misfiring at speed, it took me and the dealer months to find the fault.

The fault was due to poor connector contact plating on the wiring ( four wires, some screened) from the TPS to ECU, the same real problem as the S10 recall on the headlight cable assembly.
There was a recall on the R1 number RM/2013/031 for a similar problem.
On this recall they supplied a new cable from the TPS to ECU to cure the problem, it will fit the S10 and has the same wiring colour coding.
I have written a letter of complaint to Yamaha, as I regard it as a safety issue, as on a closed throttle the res would not go below 2,000 RPM.
 

eemsreno

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I talked to a guy last week that has a 2012 and he was out east riding the East discovery route when his bike started idling at 3,000 when he put it in gear and he had to ride slower or faster just shifting up or down no need to ever give it throttle.
Then it was getting very hard to start.
He said that he made it to Romney Cycle and they called Yamaha and started to explain the problem and Yamaha said replace the harness.
They paid for it but he had to overnight it at his cost of $140.
He said it runs great now.
 

dark knight

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I talked to a guy last week that has a 2012 and he was out east riding the East discovery route when his bike started idling at 3,000 when he put it in gear and he had to ride slower or faster just shifting up or down no need to ever give it throttle.
Then it was getting very hard to start.
He said that he made it to Romney Cycle and they called Yamaha and started to explain the problem and Yamaha said replace the harness.
They paid for it but he had to overnight it at his cost of $140.
He said it runs great now.
Yes, that was an option I had, but he bike was out of warranty and the the main cable harness is £1,100, fitting it £400, so not really an option, the R1 recall cable is about £50 with fitting about £100.
 

Kevhunts

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Got my recall notice in the mail yesterday.
 

JoshMundy

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Just update, bike is still in the shop. Still rough idle / constant throttle. Yamaha covered replacing throttle bodies and o2 sensors. After that shop said was running well, and then after they did a long test ride and got back, acted up again. Now I understand its slightly derailing from topic of the forum, but wanted to throw it out there
 

SparrowHawkxx

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Re: Idle speed problem min 800 max 3500

So there are three separate threads on this issue. I've been struggling with it for some time. I'm not sure how it turned out for anybody else, but you can see my last post in the thread attached below (copied here: I've made an interesting discovery. My bike was behaving very poorly over the past week or so. Usually this low idle/high idle problem has been very intermittent. This week it was more or less a problem all week. One night I came home and started feeling around in the wires on the right side of the bike (didn't feel like taking the cover that hides all the electronics/battery off) and had the bike repeatedly stutter, or rev (like I was using the throttle). It wasn't a 100% correlation, but it happened enough times that I felt confident that it was wiring related.

Fast forward to today: I couldn't replicate the problem even with the bike running at 2K idle in front of me. However, the battery appears fine (somewhere just north of 14V). I felt around and moved wires and the bike did periodically act odd. Ultimately, however, I kept my finger on a particular wire and nearly got burned. The engine was really hot, but I noticed that this wire cooled down very rapidly when I shut off the bike. I traced it back and it connects to the ground and then back up to the negative battery terminal through the part of the harness that I touched and got weird behavior.

Soo...I pulled apart the 2" long white/translucent connector that sits just by the battery. As soon as I got the connection loose a ton of sand fell out of it and appeared to be inside of the female part of the connectors. I blew it out (with a good deal more sand coming out) and then douched it good with the miracle (expensive) computer contact cleaner/anti-corrosive/protector stuff that comes out at 100mph.

Anyway, I'm not going to hold my breath, but it seems plausible that this could be the problem.

http://www.yamahasupertenere.com/index.php?topic=17321.0


So the update is that a week later and it seems to be running as good as ever. We've had a wretchedly wet and humid past week and I've ridden to work whenever it hasn't been pouring. The bike has idled fine all week and has not done anything abnormal. Given that it was increasingly consistent in it's failing, I'm hard pressed to believe that my discovery didn't have something to do with the problem. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It certainly couldn't hurt for those who have the idle issue to check the connector noted above and see if the wire is hot and/or if cleaning the connection up helps. I have to say that I'd be deeply satisfied if I saved myself weeks and hundreds/thousands of dollars of frustration with dealers. Even moreso if I could help out a brother rider.

Good find Nimbus!
I have not seen any other talk about this connector being a problem but I think this deserves some attention.
Maybe should be a separate thread.

I saw your posting while troubleshooting my No Idle problem which first occurred for me in mid September this year.
(I have a 2013 with 78,000 miles)

I had the tank up troubleshooting my problem so I did not check for the connector getting hot. I unplugged the connector and it was full of fine grain sand like you said. This is the white connector that runs vertically just behind the battery.

I removed the pins so I could get all the grains of sand out of the connector then reassembled it. The top connector is open, that's how all the sand gets in. I wrapped tape around the top of the connector to keep this from happening again.

This did not fix my No Idle problem but while going for a test ride I noticed my voltmeter was reading 14.1 V again.
Since I put the voltmeter on about 5 years ago, It had consistently read 14.1 while going down the road. Then around the beginning of this year I had noticed it was no longer reading that high it was about 14.0 and sometimes 13.9 and I did not know why.

These wires are in the grounding circuit (a black and a black/white wire) so a resistive connection there would explain why the reading on my voltmeter changed and why your connector was getting hot.

20181008_0520.jpg

You can see the tape I put on the top of the connector. The yellow tape above it is original not added by me.
I used regular electrical tape at first but I like the 3M Temflex Rubber Splicing Tape (link) better so I re wrapped it with that after the picture.
 
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wera688

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My 2014 with 107,400 miles has been doing this also. High idle. I have the same issues as described below. Seems the recall does not cover the 2014 model or has anybody else come up with a fix?
 

HOBBYMOTO46

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Jul 19, 2019
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Hello

I solved the problem after 2 years of working on a xt1200z.

So the problem is the lead wires from the tps and accelerator senzor to ECU.

I changed the wires withe and black with another wires wich had good isolation and the bike is running perfect.

I had the same problems, no idle, and some time accelerating by his own.

If you need more info let me know.

Greetings from Romania
 

redbarron

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I bought my 2012 Super Ten this past June. It's been over 100 degrees here in Texas so I only put about 300 miles on my Big Blue Beast. Rode my bike 3 days to work this week and noticed a sticky idle. Meaning it behaved as if the throttle cables were getting pinched on a carburated bike. The idle was erratic up and down, died several times, hard to restart and tweeky.
I wanted to say Thank You to all of you who posted here because it was a huge time saver! Went by my local Yamaha dealerr and informed him of what the symptoms were and that there was an outstanding recall on the wire harness. He checked my VIN and the previous owner I'm guessing, decided to pass the problem on to the other guy, which turned out to be me. Got the harness ordered and will be scheduling my Recall service to be done soon. I'll update the differences when I return...hope it's a night and day difference and idles smooth as butter.
KP from Dallas
2012 Yamaha Super Tenere - Blue
1981 BMW R100RS Red/Black Smoke
2005 Suzuki DRZ 400S - Blue


Sent from my LM-Q710.FG using Tapatalk
 

GreyNomad

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I bought my 2012 Super Ten this past June. It's been over 100 degrees here in Texas so I only put about 300 miles on my Big Blue Beast. Rode my bike 3 days to work this week and noticed a sticky idle. Meaning it behaved as if the throttle cables were getting pinched on a carburated bike. The idle was erratic up and down, died several times, hard to restart and tweeky.
I wanted to say Thank You to all of you who posted here because it was a huge time saver! Went by my local Yamaha dealerr and informed him of what the symptoms were and that there was an outstanding recall on the wire harness. He checked my VIN and the previous owner I'm guessing, decided to pass the problem on to the other guy, which turned out to be me. Got the harness ordered and will be scheduling my Recall service to be done soon. I'll update the differences when I return...hope it's a night and day difference and idles smooth as butter.
KP from Dallas
2012 Yamaha Super Tenere - Blue
1981 BMW R100RS Red/Black Smoke
2005 Suzuki DRZ 400S - Blue


Sent from my LM-Q710.FG using Tapatalk
I have had similar problems with my 2011 S10 - no idle (engine stops when throttle closed) or very high idle (like having uncontrollable cruise control!) and very difficult starting. All the indications were faulty TPS. Took to my dealer in Sofia, Bulgaria where I live and he also thought TPS. Fitted a known serviceable one before ordering a new one (expensive piece of kit) but no different. So they started looking further and found that the throttle servo motor was sticking. Cleaned and lubricated it - problem solved. Then they balanced the throttle bodies (something I couldn't do at 20000km service) as well. So instead of several hundred pounds to fix only cost 45 (labour rates are much cheaper here!). Rode the bike home (250km) and was the best ride I've had on it for a long time. Still behaving fine. Hope this helps anyone who is having difficulty getting this problem proper diagnosed.
 
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