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At idle your alternator is not putting out very many amps. As your rpm's go up, your alternator puts out more juice. So, you are right--those bright bulbs might be drawing more amps than your alternator can keep up with AT IDLE. How big are those bulbs anyway? If you put 2X55W bulbs in there, you may never put out enough amps at any rpm. So I would not get too carried away here. I had to replace my stock 35W bulbs last summer. My dealer gave me 25W bulbs to replace them with. He said I probably wouldn't notice the difference in brightness..he was right. I couldn't see too well with the 35W bulbs and I can't see with these 25W bulbs, either

Anyway, as a suggestion, before I went through the pain and suffering and expense of putting a bigger stator in, I would either put those smaller bulbs back in, or if you really like them, change all my other bulbs to LED's to try to bring my total amp load down, and set my idle speed up as fast as I can go without the clutch trying to grab, and maybe put a bigger battery in to gain some reserve amps. On my bike, stock battery is a 9AH and I replaced it with a 12AH that fit in there (same dimensions). It gives me a little more CCA's, might take a little more time to charge, but I haven't had any more starting problems.

I would check the headstock bearings, too, by putting the bike up on the stand so the back wheel is off the ground. lean on the back end so the front wheel is off the ground, then wiggle the front wheel/forks and look for play in the head stock. It is just like a bicycle, ball bearings(don't be surprised if there is no grease in there).

While it is on the stand, check for play in the swing arm. When I checked mine, I could spin the washers on either end with my fingers. It looked to me to be a long through-bolt with a pinch nut, washers, and rubber bushings instead of bearings--I hope I am wrong. but I snugged the nut up, and also the nut/washer/bushing at the front of the motor mount.This reduced my vibration problem to some degree, also.

While it is still up in the air, pull the cover off the CVT and inspect your belt. Start the bike and check the belt while it is running. The belt should run smooth and tight, all the way through its gear range and back down to idle again.If you see lots of deflection in the belt, I would be looking at the torque spring first. On my bike, I could easily spread the sheaves against the pressure of my torque spring--it was that weak. I had about 2 inches of deflection while running--the belt was actually wearing against the inside of my cover! I replaced my torque spring with a "white" spring from MPS Racing, and the personality of this bike changed drastically!! It is like a whole new bike! I went from anemic and full of vibration to smooth and powerful and fun to ride!

I don't know--maybe I'm just lucky, but my speedo reads within 2-3 mph of my GPS at any given speed. The last time I checked it with the GPS, I set the alarm at 80 mph and when it went off, I looked down at the speedo and it read about 82mph. When I got back to the house, I checked the GPS log file and it actually recorded a top speed of 81 mph. Now that was with new Shenkos, which seemed to be a little taller than the stock tires, tho they had the same numbers (size) as the original tires. I do think my odometer is a little optimistic, but not much. Maybe 5% or so. I am going to check that when the weather gets a little more stable around here.

It is at the front of the motor on mine. Follow that heavy red wire from the solenoid down to it. Kinda hard to see with all that plastic in the way, but it sits in front of the crankcase of the motor, and just under the front motor mount.

I was just out there looking at mine, and there is room to reach under there with a ford wrench and tap on it if needed. You might try jumping across the solenoid with a screwdriver of something metal to see if the starter works or if the solenoid is going bad. Making contact a couple of times across the solenoid might make it come loose if it is stuck. I've had that happen to me with the 150, but it had a kick starter, too, so I was able to free it by kicking the kick starter. Unfortunately, these 250's don't have one.

The last line of that article points to a more likely motivation--$70K

If you are having problems with your enricher and you know it is good, you might look at your low speed jet and idle mixture settings. Cold start mixture equals idle mixture+low speed jetting+ enricher circuit. Initial cold start enricher mixture is fixed as far as I can tell, so if your idle mix or low speed jet is set too rich, you will have problems starting with the enricher added in.

I had this problem one time with my JCL 150. When I got it, it wouldn't start unless it was hot outside. I would have to choke it with my fingers and keep fiddling with it until the motor had really warmed up. Adjusting the idle screw out only helped a little. So I drilled out my low speed jet and everything changed. It would start on the first lick in even the coldest weather, but would start to load up and die as the bike warmed up. If the bike sat long enough for the enricher to cool off, it would flood out and not start at all. I could crank the throttle wide open and crank the starter until the mixture leaned out and it would start. I had drilled that jet a little too much. I wound up replacing it with a #42 jet and that fixed my problem. It starts good when cold or hot, has real good throttle response and acceleration, doesn't load up when it is hot. Idle mix is about 1 1/2 turns out.

Probably cost you what- about 3 dollars in gas?