The story of my 250, with a lesson at the end

[Tooch]

So a friend gave me her 2008 Ninja 250 with 5600 miles on it because she is moving away and didn't want to cart it to Texas. Perfect! My wife wants to learn, perfect bike to do that with. Only problem, it hasn't run in 2 years. So I haul it home, drain the gas and put in fresh and change the oil go to fire it up and a lotta chuggalugga but no start. Balls.

So I order a carb rebuild kit ($40ish) as well as a stage 2 Dynojet kit ($80) because I decide I want to ditch the emissions crap, run a slip on ($60) and lose the air box ($25 for 2 pod filters and $11 for a breather).

I tear down the carbs and they look awful. Run it through an ultrasonic bath for hours and let the floats soak in seafoam before scrubbing them with a toothbrush. I also found both diagrams slightly torn, so order those as well ($35/ea on eBay before you go spending an absurd amount of money for slides and everything).

I finally get everything back together and the bike refuses to run right. What the hell? The idle is all over the place and sometimes skyrocketing to 7000rpm and even stranger when I'd turn the bike off fuel would just start pouring from the carbs. I pull the carbs back out twice and disassembled the floats looking for something causing them to stick.... Nothing!

Short story long I hopped on here and checked some diagrams and found I accidentally capped off the fuel vent in the center of the carb. I ran a hose down to the bottom, of the bike and boom! Problem solved! Thanks guys!

[Tooch]

I'll get up more pictures as I can

[ducatiman]

tooch, may I ask what method was involved in your diaphragm swap?

[Tooch]

Sure, it was actually pretty simple. I let the slides/diaphrams soak in hot water for a few minutes, then just pulled the diaphragm off by hand. They were still a little tough to get off, but since they were getting replaced I wasn't too worried. I ordered a couple of these

KAWASAKI Ninja EX250 EX 250 250r 16126-1198 CARBURETOR DIAPHRAGM NEW | eBay https://ebay.us/DYVkad

And let them soak for a couple minutes in warm water. Them just slid them back on the slides. It was a bit of a pain like I said, but we'll worth the time