So I convinced the dealer to drill out the starter jet and the bike now seems to be fixed.

I have to snap the throttle open right after pressing the starter button to get it to fire up, and it won’t idle with the choke on once it’s running, but it does start immediately every time now.

I have to hold the throttle open after it starts and wait about 6-10 seconds, then turn the choke off or it will die while idling. Not perfect, but I can live with it. At least it’s reliable enough I don’t have to worry about getting stranded somewhere.

My dealer knew nothing about this problem, or the fix until I told him about it. He asked Kawasaki about drilling the starter jet and they sort of beat around the bush. His su****ion is that Kawasaki can’t tell the dealerships to do that because it’s part of the emissions system and they’d get in trouble with the EPA for tampering with it.

They’ve since done the same thing to 2 or 3 other customer’s bikes who have had starting problems and it seems to have solved the problem.

Before having this done I had the ACR repair done that Kawasaki recommended, but it had no effect.

To anyone who has a cold start problem, my recommendation would be to start with drilling the starter jet and ignore Kawasaki’s ACR “solution”.

 

If it now wont run with the choke on it seems they may have made the hole just a bit too big.But at least it starts for you now.

 

mine has this issue ive found shut the fuel off when parked and go to E3Diamondfire spark plug part number E338 and mine takes like 1-2 seconds fires right up im in nh so still quite cold and i start it with fuel off then when fires turn it on works for me no issues