This was a used 2000 with ~4400 miles on it. It looked very clean, but something very strange:

I started it up and its really cold out so it was working a bit. I let it warm up really good, but I was unable to cut off the choke without the bike stalling. The guy was working the idle adjustment and said that what he did was let it warm up a bit then ride it and as it warmed up more he would play with the idle adjustment until it was normal...??

I let it warm up some more and was able to cut off the choke and let it idle a but when I would work the throttle it wasn't very responsive at all - when I released throttle the engine would kind of wind down slowly rather than responsively slow down the RPM's.

Is this just a carb issue? The guy is really good on the price so if I have to do some work I'm ok with that, but if this is a bigger issue I might want to investigate some other options.

 

sounds like it could be a cold carb issue - hard to tell for sure without listening to it - i'd recommend riding it or getting a friend to ride it before buying to make sure its not way down on power. with only 4000 miles on it its probably just carb tuning, maybe some old gas.

 

Sounds like an adjustment issue, or a carb cleaning. Seems like the 250 is a cold blooded ride from what I have read so far. Good luck.