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My son has a Ninja 250 motorcycle with 2 barrel carb.
It sat for a nearly a year without being run.
We tried to start it the other day to get ready to sell (see thread in Swap and Sell soon ) and of course it did not run well. It would only start with full choke and you could not turn the throttle at all or it would die.
We took the carburetor off yesterday and removed the bowl covers. I found that one float needle valve was stuck. We fixed that and blew carb cleaner through many other ports. We removed main jets and cleaned some tiny holes there. We reassembled the bike. I added a couple of ounces of Seafoam to an empty tank with a 1/2 gallon or so of fresh fuel.
Well now it does not start well. I sprayed carb cleaner into the intake and it started easily and will run at high RPM's. But it will not run at low RPM's, nor will it start w/o a squirt of cleaner in the intake.

I'm kind of hoping that with Seafoam sitting in carburetor for a day or so that might help. But I remind myself that "Hope is not a strategy".

Any suggestions on what to clean or adjust or hit with a 5lb mallet to get low idle working again?

Thanks

_________________
"Ruttin' is racing"

Chris Suich
Apex, NC
AutoX 2012 Nissan Leaf (Quietly changing the world)
AutoX 2003 Mini Cooper S (on sabbatical)
RallyX 1993 Nissan Sentra - "Le Tigre"
FunX 1970 Camaro LT1 ('95)

I have a zzr600 that is carbed. my experience is to get it turned over, let it run... and then go blow the rest if it out of the system on the street. I havent gone a full year without a start, but it has sat for 4-6 months between starts, run it for 50 miles to a tank of gas, and then it gets parked again. I know the 250 is a bit more finiky.

(word of advice. if you want to sell it, and enjoyed riding it before it was parked... dont ride it)

Did you change any of the settings on the carb before you put it back together? Did you remove or mess with the idle adj. screw?

Was it running well before you let it sit for a year??

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"Never let life be shaped by fear of its end"

No, you're a towel!

There is a set of adj screws still under the factory plugs that we did nothing with. We didn't mess with any other screw settings. It was running fine before it sat.

_________________
"Ruttin' is racing"

Chris Suich
Apex, NC
AutoX 2012 Nissan Leaf (Quietly changing the world)
AutoX 2003 Mini Cooper S (on sabbatical)
RallyX 1993 Nissan Sentra - "Le Tigre"
FunX 1970 Camaro LT1 ('95)

Make sure you are doing your start/run testing WITH the air cleaner in place. The restriction of the air filter provides a fair amount of richening of the mixture. I had a heck of a time getting a bike to run w/o the air cleaner in place, which worked fantastic with it back on.

_________________
Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1