Icing take place when the temps are cold,.... freezing or even above. And it is the rushing wind chill factor that takes the temps of the air coming into the carb and intake to well below freezing and forming ice inside the carb and intake manifold. If the engine can possibly warm up before the icing takes place, then icing will usually not occur. But w/o a heat riser, or any kind of a hot air intake, the only chance is to minimize the air volume that is sucked into the carb while the engine is warming up, therefore why I said to use low RPMs.
Once the icing has started, probably as soon as you reved the throttle a couple times, it will not thaw out, no matter how far you ride.
The best way to stop it is to let the engine idle so that the heat from the engine will thaw the ice, or you may have to even shut it down, and hope the heat from the engine will thaw the icy carb and intake.
I know from experience that once an engine starts to ice up, it can be very hard to stop it w/o stopping the engine.
In icing conditions, the air fuel mix is really screwed up and the symptoms are exactly as you described.
Bubba wrote on 10/28/09 at 11:10:18:Routy, you may well be right. Although I did lean up the idle mix screw before I headed home it seemed to run like a champ on the way home (about 45 degrees). Since they're calling for 15 inches of snow today there's no way I'm gonna test the theory...I guess I'll need to wait until I have a good cold day.
It was weird...I didn't see any other bikes out that day????
BTW when you say to warm it up with low rpm's how long are you talking? My ride in takes about 30-40 minutes...I would have thought that it would have warmed up by then...
Thanks