Idle problem

[J>A>V]

So i just had my carbs on my 2006 kawasaki ninja cleaned today, apparently they were very dirty. . . its not bogging down anymore when i roll the throttle, but i still have a problem with the bike holding an idle. The guy who owned the shop said i just need to ride it around a little to fix the problem. So my question is: is this normal? is the carb just needing to time for the gas to run through the system? Verrrrry unsure.

[Motofool]

No and no.

[dirty nasty]

You need to find a new shop, that guy has not a clue what he's doing.

What I would recommend is you clean the carbs yourself. It's not hard, at all. While you're in there you need to drill out the limiter caps for your mixture screws, clean that area out real well and adjust them accordingly. They control your idle to off idle fuel flow, which is where your problem lies. Because they have the caps on them and cannot be accessed without drilling them a lot of people neglect this step in carb cleaning. You can't, because then the job won't be finished. After those passages are cleaned I would set them to 3 turns out from fully turned in. If you did everything right you should be able to go from idle to WOT and have no stumbling, coughing, missing, bogging, or anything. It should pick right up (well, as fast as a Ninja 250 engine can pick up speed anyways) in the revs and go clean to redline.

If you don't feel confident and if you live anywhere near western MA I could clean them for less than what your guy did.

[alex.s]

What do you mean won't hold idle?? It dies? Or the idle goes up and down? If it has been sitting awhile things may be in iffy condition. Riding it could help depending on the problem but probably wouldn't change anything if there's fresh gas in it already. If the idle flops around it could need the carbs synced. Or a valve adjustment. If it dies maybe the guys didn't do a very good job cleaning it.

What exactly does the bike do that you don't want it to do?

[J>A>V]

the bike works fine now. i really don't have a problem with it, except for that it wont hold an idle. and what i meanby it won't hold an idle is that, for instance, when im at a stop light i have to roll the throttle to keep it on. if i let go of it the bike shuts off. i really dont think he did a bad job, either. I mean it feels smoother than before he cleaned the carbs.

[J>A>V]

sorry not necessarily roll the throttle. but like feather to where the rpm will sit around 2000.

[n4mwd]

You didn't actually say what the idle problem was exactly, but sometimes when carbs are handled during cleaning, the little vacuum lines can crack if they are dry rotted. This leads to a vacuum leak and can cause idle problems.

Believe it or not, sometimes riding it around for a while can indeed fix it. But the solution is to actually replace them. I had this problem myself. I used fuel line from the hardware store to replace all the old carb tubing completely.

In my case, that still didn't fix it. I finally tracked it down to one of the mixture screws. Not the adjustment, but the screw itself. Turns out it was leaking.

There is a little tiny washer and o-ring in there. The o-ring can get flipped off to the side and not seal anything. Its very hard to get them in correctly.

To see if this is your problem too, start the bike and put your finger over the mixture screw hole on each side and see if it makes a difference. The mixture screws are located on the front-bottom of the carb and are inside of round tubes.

[alex.s]

if it does that when its cold, use the choke. if it does it once its warmed up, you might just need to adjust your idle speed higher.

your pilot jet (slow jet) might be clogged still, but if your mechanic cleaned it, that shouldn't be the case. if your gas tank is old and rusty on the inside, it can send bits of rust down the gas line which clog up your jets. but if the mechanic just cleaned everything properly and it was like that after cleaning, that shouldn't be the case.

the idle adjust nob is on the left by your knee when you sit on the bike. try turning it up (clockwise)

[alex.s]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

There is a little tiny washer and o-ring in there. The o-ring can get flipped off to the side and not seal anything. Its very hard to get them in correctly.

To see if this is your problem too, start the bike and put your finger over the mixture screw hole on each side and see if it makes a difference. The mixture screws are located on the front-bottom of the carb and are inside of round tubes.

did you remove the cover caps yourself or were they already gone when you started working on that carb? im wondering if they just got messed up somehow or if someone did the messing.

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by alex.s

did you remove the cover caps yourself or were they already gone when you started working on that carb? im wondering if they just got messed up somehow or if someone did the messing.

It had to be me. I drilled out the covers and replaced the screws, etc with the ones in the kit. In retrospect I should have left the old ones in there. How often do screws go bad anyway?

In my case, getting them in just right was pretty rough. If you just drop them in, they wont land right and then they can actually flip around so that the washer is on the wrong side of the o-ring. I also tried putting them on the screw with the spring and just screwing them in place, but the problem there is that if you merely touch the spring to the sides while you are trying to get it in there, the spring flings them off and you have to start over.

I thought I had them in right, but obviously not.

Oh and yes, if the guy failed to clean the pilot jets (which are kindof hidden and hard to remove), if would also cause an idle problem if they are clogged, but I think it would have to have been there before if that was it. That is, if it was idling good before, but not now, I doubt its the pilot jets.