Put the 2011 RT in the garage after a ride into the mountains on Sunday and when I started her up this morning the check engine light came on and it went into limp mode. I shut it down and restarted a few times and on the fourth try it ran without the check engine light but seemed to idle rough.
I headed to the dealership and the computer on the BUDDS revealed that it had failed to come out of idle mode a few times.
The tech cleaned out the throttle body and took it for a test drive. He told me it felt rough until he put it into the 6-7,000 rpm range for a while and then everything smoothed out.
He put it back on BUDDS and showed me the history of the engine speeds since last August when I bought it. In 9500 miles the engine has spent 56% of its time under 4,000 RPM, and not very much time in the 5-6,000 range.
His advice was to keep it in third and fourth gear longer, and to stay out of fifth until it gets around 5,000 rpm. I had been going into fifth once it got in the 3,500-4,000 range but apparently that is a no-no.
The riding habits from my Gold Wing days need to be discarded and there is a need to go back to the style that I rode my Yamaha twin with.
I hadn't realized I had fallen into this bad habit.