I was wondering if you guys thought that 1400 Rpm is kind of high? I had mine set at 1400 and it just seems really high to me. I know this is what the manual recommends. What do you guys think?

 

Nope, thats seems very normal to me. Its a one cylinder machine, if you had it much lower ,it would not run...
just for comparison, a 400ex idle is set at 1400rpm+-

 

Maybe i'm listening to it incorrectly. But 1400 is correct I guess

 

How can those of us tell if it 1400 RPM. Is there a way to tell by listening. I use to be able to set timing by listening when moving the distributor on a car. My Rancher AT sounds like it is barely ideling, but if I speed it up, it is hard to shift into forward or reverse.

Surely there is away to tell.

 

If you really want to be absolutly correct.. you would need to get an aftermarket cdi with the correct output for wireing in a tach. Generally, all honda's come with the idle set at or near 1400.
If your valves are out of adjustment, this could cause the machine to have a rough idle, stall or poor performance. How many hours since your last adjustment?