My'95 is not starting first try and once it is started, the idle falls so low it sometimes stalls.

The idle can be ramped up by the screw plug that can be see through the side fairing, right?

Could the trouble starting after sitting for a week or two be due to the fuel going stale?

I use regular unleaded (91 octane).

Could air be getting into the fuel system somewhere?

It's manageable, just not ideal.

 

Stale fuel in the carbs can varnish up the jets and cause just what you describe.
Ride more (no excuses ) or put some Sta-Bil in the tank, and run it through the system for a while. This won't help your current condition however. That will probably require you to pull the carbs and clean them out.

 

I had a few things I wanted to sort out on the bike before I started playing with the carbs... oh well, great laid plans of mice and men... or was it just the mice?

 

Maybe it is possible that there is some water or trash in the tank. Clean/check also fuel ventil and fuel valve vacuum tube.

I first used 95 oct but now there is 98 oct petrol and it feels even better. Maybe it helps also with starting

 

Just as Jokiset said, there could be crap in the tank. Is there a screen in the peckcock or something like that which could have pick up that junk. I have seen where the gas has become a gel like substance around this on different bikes.

 

What is the condition of your battery??

 

When I bought it, he said it was on the third battery, it doesn't sound like it's labouring while turning over.

I'm going to flush out the fuel system and make sure there is no gunk anywhere between the fuel cap and the carbys, if that doesn't fix it, I'll move on to cleaning the carbys.

I'll check for kinks too because it sometimes feels like it's starving for air or fuel when I strap it out... the air filter is 1,500km old

 

When you do the flush out make sure you spend a couple of bucks and put an In Line filter on mine tucks under the rigth hand side cover with no problem, also you might look at the plugs, mine has a funny issue with SOME different fuel suppliers, the fuel seems to GLAZE the plugs up and makes it hard to start and has a slight miss at idle, so I try and stick to one fuel supplier and when I had no option on the weekend the old problem of hard to start came back. So tonight I took the plugs out and buffed them up and she is nice and easy to start again, last time I did this was about 3,000 ks ago approx 4 weeks ago, and they should be right if I stick to the one brand of fuel. Hope this helps you or gives you an idea as it is a lot easier to undo those two bolts at the top of the tank and lift it up and remove the plugs that pull the carbs off eh.

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