Hi everyone,
Long time lurker here. This is my first post so go easy on me. I've been riding a 2011 Kawasaki Ninja 400r for over a year now and I've run into a problem. I was hoping someone here would be able to give some insight... please? I'm reposting this from a thread I created on Reddit in hopes that one of you owns my bike as well... my 2011 Ninja 400r. I noticed that some CBR250r owners are experiencing a similar issue but I can't say for sure if it's the same...
tl;dr, my bike dies at idle when cold and the Kawasaki representative/technician says its normal for small displacement bikes with EFI and there is nothing they can do about it. My bike is still under the extended warranty plan that the original owner purchased. Is this b/s? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Background Info: For those that don't know, the Kawasaki Ninja 400r was a motorcycle that was only released in Japan and Canada. It is the same as the 2009-2011 Ninja 650r except for a smaller 400cc engine in place of the 650cc engine.
Situation: In late summer of 2013, my buddy low sided my bike on a side street. I rode it in to the local Kawasaki dealer and the mechanic said that it was all mainly cosmetic damage. It was nothing serious, except for the crazy cost of replacement parts (mostly covered by my buddy... but thats another story). Since I hit 12,000km at that time, I decided to let them do the scheduled maintenance as recommended by the manual. However, when I got my bike back, I noticed that my bike's RPMs dropped all the way to 0 rpm as I pulled my clutch in at the first red light or stop sign. I noticed that this usually happened towards the beginning of the ride but it also happened towards mid-ride (15min) a few times. The bike would also seem to have trouble accelerating hard off the line during the beginning of the ride. This went on for about 1000km before I decided to bring her back into the shop for inspection. Initially, the mechanic thought it was the spark plugs or the throttle bodies. After swapping both during the winter, the bike still showed the same problem. There were no error codes detected. The mechanic was able to get the bike to fail on a bench test so he knows I'm not making this up. However, after checking compression and a bunch of other factors (I'm not mechanically inclined enough to repeat everything he said), he was unable to find the source of the issue. He suggests that it's a problem with the ECU, similar to the reason for the recall of the Ninja 300 (apparently, they used to run too lean). A rep from Kawasaki came and checked out my bike but was unable to replicate the problem during the test ride (I was told that the bike was already warmed up due to bench testing). The rep eventually called me to get my side of the story. After explaining all this to him, he said that it's likely that they won't be able to fix my bike. He said that he can hold onto my bike all summer and slowly test and replace every single part but he's not convinced that it will solve the problem... he says he'd much rather have me out enjoying my ride since it operates "perfectly". He further explained that this occurs during cold starts in smaller displacement motorcycles like mine, even if they are fuel injected, because that is simply the nature of these smaller bikes. I went on to argue with him that my friend's Ninja 300 doesn't experience this issue but he insists that they won't be able to do anything about it. My mechanic has been super helpful but suggests that Kawasaki won't do much about this because it wasn't widely distributed model and that it's likely that the only thing that will fix this for me is a power commander. Is what the Kawasaki rep saying legit at all or is he just trying to get out of this issue? Apparently Kawasaki Canada is only a distributor and he's limited in what he can do as a result... The silver lining is that he's willing to compensate me with some parts for my bike (he knows it has been dropped before).
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Long time lurker here. This is my first post so go easy on me. I've been riding a 2011 Kawasaki Ninja 400r for over a year now and I've run into a problem. I was hoping someone here would be able to give some insight... please? I'm reposting this from a thread I created on Reddit in hopes that one of you owns my bike as well... my 2011 Ninja 400r. I noticed that some CBR250r owners are experiencing a similar issue but I can't say for sure if it's the same...
tl;dr, my bike dies at idle when cold and the Kawasaki representative/technician says its normal for small displacement bikes with EFI and there is nothing they can do about it. My bike is still under the extended warranty plan that the original owner purchased. Is this b/s? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Background Info: For those that don't know, the Kawasaki Ninja 400r was a motorcycle that was only released in Japan and Canada. It is the same as the 2009-2011 Ninja 650r except for a smaller 400cc engine in place of the 650cc engine.
Situation: In late summer of 2013, my buddy low sided my bike on a side street. I rode it in to the local Kawasaki dealer and the mechanic said that it was all mainly cosmetic damage. It was nothing serious, except for the crazy cost of replacement parts (mostly covered by my buddy... but thats another story). Since I hit 12,000km at that time, I decided to let them do the scheduled maintenance as recommended by the manual. However, when I got my bike back, I noticed that my bike's RPMs dropped all the way to 0 rpm as I pulled my clutch in at the first red light or stop sign. I noticed that this usually happened towards the beginning of the ride but it also happened towards mid-ride (15min) a few times. The bike would also seem to have trouble accelerating hard off the line during the beginning of the ride. This went on for about 1000km before I decided to bring her back into the shop for inspection. Initially, the mechanic thought it was the spark plugs or the throttle bodies. After swapping both during the winter, the bike still showed the same problem. There were no error codes detected. The mechanic was able to get the bike to fail on a bench test so he knows I'm not making this up. However, after checking compression and a bunch of other factors (I'm not mechanically inclined enough to repeat everything he said), he was unable to find the source of the issue. He suggests that it's a problem with the ECU, similar to the reason for the recall of the Ninja 300 (apparently, they used to run too lean). A rep from Kawasaki came and checked out my bike but was unable to replicate the problem during the test ride (I was told that the bike was already warmed up due to bench testing). The rep eventually called me to get my side of the story. After explaining all this to him, he said that it's likely that they won't be able to fix my bike. He said that he can hold onto my bike all summer and slowly test and replace every single part but he's not convinced that it will solve the problem... he says he'd much rather have me out enjoying my ride since it operates "perfectly". He further explained that this occurs during cold starts in smaller displacement motorcycles like mine, even if they are fuel injected, because that is simply the nature of these smaller bikes. I went on to argue with him that my friend's Ninja 300 doesn't experience this issue but he insists that they won't be able to do anything about it. My mechanic has been super helpful but suggests that Kawasaki won't do much about this because it wasn't widely distributed model and that it's likely that the only thing that will fix this for me is a power commander. Is what the Kawasaki rep saying legit at all or is he just trying to get out of this issue? Apparently Kawasaki Canada is only a distributor and he's limited in what he can do as a result... The silver lining is that he's willing to compensate me with some parts for my bike (he knows it has been dropped before).
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
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