Chuck:
Below is a picture showing the location of the wax valve. As you can see, it's buried pretty deep in an area that is really dense with hoses & cable bundles.
You might want to consider taking the upper fuel tank and the airbox off the motorcycle this winter, and having a good look inside that area. While you are in there, you could do the following maintenance activities, which I am pretty sure would solve your problem for good:
1) Clean out the five-way-tee using a pipe cleaner. The five-way-tee is visible directly below the wax valve in the photo, it connects 5 vacuum hoses together. A blockage in this tee will result in unreliable idle speeds.
2) Synchronize the starter valves on the throttle bodies using a manometer. Chances are there is someone in the BC area who has a manometer you can borrow - that would save you the $150 cost of buying one. Here are links to a couple of articles that discuss this:
ST1300 - Throttle Body Synchronization
Excessive Idle on cold start up (there's a video at the end of that post that is interesting)
3) Inspect the various cooling hoses in that area for leakage, and inspect the hoses leading to and from the wax valve for kinks or blockages.
None of the above tasks are difficult, they are easy do-it-yourself tasks, but the whole process of disassembly & reassembly takes time, it is a winter project for sure. If you don't already have a set of JIS screwdrivers, for sure you will need them to remove the lower portion of the airbox. If you try to remove the fasteners that hold the snorkels down using a Phillips screwdriver, you will strip the heads of the fasteners.
Michael
Wax Valve
