2014 Ninja 300 Crisis

[9DogNC]

Just bought my 2014 ninja 300 off marketplace, rode it 5 miles home and rode it around town for a bit and the bike works fine, until I tried to park it.
Wanted to lock the bike since I was going to be parking it for a little bit and when I try to push the key down and turn it into the lock position the thing requires a good amount of force before turning way too far, now the key is stuck in the ignition and the cylinder spins around 360 deg and does nothing (see video), if anyone has ever had this issue before please tell me how you fixed it as I still need to register the bike and I have to be able to ride it to the DMV so I can't have it be broken for too long before it's illegal to ride on the street.

TLDR: Ignition cylinder broke and spins 360 deg around with key stuck in it and does nothing, bike I just bought stuck in parking lot with key in it.

[9DogNC]

Posting this in case anyone has the same problem, what happened was the bike was steered too far to the left for the lock to properly engage, if you are trying to lock your ninja 300 turn the wheel all the way to the left and then back a little bit and don't put too much pressure on the key to lock it (it doesn't take much force). Unfortunately in order to fix the key being broke off in the ignition you have to do a pretty extensive disassembly, removing the triple tree, partially removing the fuel tank (to get to the connector), and removing a lot of the fairing. If you're in a pinch you can do what I did and remove the lock and drill a screw into it in order to just turn the bike on with a screwdriver but if you can spare the few days I would recommend just getting a replacement kit and installing that straight away (like $30 on amazon). Beware you will need internal bolt extractors (the ones that drill into the bolt) in order to remove the ignition from the bike so its not something you can just do with common hand tools, the job took me maybe 4-5 hours total but that was my first time working on a bike so results may vary.

[Triple Jim]

Thanks for the update. I've noticed that behavior with other motorcycles too... the lock won't activate if you turn the handlebar all the way to the stop. You have to back it up a little.