08 SMR510 starting and idle issue-SOLVED

I have a 2008 SMR 510 and I had the engine rebuilt due to a minor piston failure (part of the crown chipped off, very strange). Anyway, ever since I have noticed that I need to slightly crack the throttle to start the bike. I also have noticed that I cannot get the idle to go past 1800 rpm even with the adjustment screw bottomed out. Once started it idles fine other than the occasional idle flame out. The bike runs great and the starting/idle thing is mainly an annoyance. I'm looking to sell the bike, but I would like to fix this prior to sale for the future owner.

The bike is equipped w/ a PCV and autotune if that makes a difference. Any ideas? I've read that a TPS reset is not necessary when using a PCV so I'm not sure what else to do.

What about unhooking the pcv and the auto tune and see if it will work. Just a thought

I got a 08 te510 and I've never had to use throttle to start it ever but once when didn't start for a while just a little choke.My bike seem to idle a touch lower when I added a tuner with standard settings around 1750rpm before tuner around 1850 which for me is enough for bigger bore engine

I tried unhooking the PCV and autotune but the behavior was exactly the same. It's strange to me that the idle screw can't get the idle revs above 1800rpm. If any of you guys really crank up the idle adjustment where does it put you? My guess is that it shouldn't be too difficult to get over 2000 rpm with the idle adjustment.

isn't 1800 enough ?

did the valves get damaged by any part of the piston?if so were they repaired?dan

All valves were replaced.

Your cam timing may be off by one tooth, most likely on the exhaust cam. It happened to me twice, I could not get the idle up to where it needed to be and when the bike heated up, it wouldn't run as good as it did before the work I had done on it.

Did you use the same thickness of head gasket that was in the bike originally?

Post a pic of your cam chest, like this one. make sure the TDC double dimple on the timing gear is aligned with the hash mark on the head.:

I tried to get a picture but I couldn't get the focus right. I have the double dimple aligned with the mark on the head. What is the correct alignment for the intake and exhaust cams. I assume you align the dimple on the gears with the top of the head. If so, then it looks like my exhaust cam is off by what appears to be 1/2 of a tooth. It is currently a bit below the top of the head, but if I rotate it one tooth it is a bit above the head.

You are talking about the single dimples on the left side of the bike/cam gears, right?

The alignment of those dots are variable: sometimes they might be perfectly aligned with the head, sometimes they might both be below the line, sometimes both might be slightly above the line.

The best thing would have been to take a pic of the alignment BEFORE the rebuild, even I didn't do that.

What I did do is this: get it to where both dots are equally in the same position in regards to the head line, and then look at the double dimple, how far off from its line is it now. I found that mine was far off its mark so I went ahead and moved the exhaust cam one tooth and then made both single dimples equally located again and the double dimple was much closer to its mark and the bike ran great and idled as high as I wanted it to.

So I finally found the CORRECT alignment marks and sure enough the exhaust was off by one tooth. I aligned it properly, put it all back together, and it fired right up without any throttle and idled like before the rebuild. I can't believe the builder that did the rebuild for me missed something like this. I owe you a case of beer!

You're correct, I was looking at the single dimples on the outsides of the cam gears. I realized there were paint marks on the other side of the cam gears but they were hidden.

It shouldn't have taken me 10 days to read this in your original post "and I had the engine rebuilt", that's a dead giveaway for the cams being reinstalled wrong, along with with bad idle and other symptoms.

I know this is a long shot but how do I know if my cams are aligned. I purchased a sm510 and the last 2 owners couldn’t figure out why the rpms would jump around a lot and backfire as well. I’ve checked the shims and they were good at that time but it’s still doing it.