hello all. Hope you are already up and running. I just put the zxi back together after cleaning out the gas tank. It had black gummy crud in it. Lots of it. I was hoping that was the only source of the zxi's idling problems.

All the following was done on land with a water hose:

First off, after reading about 100 threads about SeaFoam, I tried some of that today. I'm going to check it again tomorrow to see if it sitting with SeaFoam/gas helps any more.

Now, what it does is start and run. It will stay running without having to be held at 4K or high revs, which was the case before I cleaned the tank. Yaaay. Now, it coughs or sputters briefly when i hit the throttle, then jumps.

But when I do rev it up, it really 'hangs' at high RPMs, and takes a while to go back down to an idle, way too long.

Most times it eventually does go back down to about 2K- 1500 rpm and idle there, a little rough though. But a couple of times it instead wanted to keep revving up even higher after I let off the throttle, even after I yanked the kill lanyard, and turned the switch to 'off'. Evil possessed beatch.

Also I read on a bunch of threads that a too-lean idle setting might be a cause of this. How can I figure out that, and if I figure out it is, how do I get it adjusted properly?

Thanks

 

I would venture to guess that some of that black crud made it into the carb, in which case you need to clean the carb thoroughly. Sometimes the seafoam will take care of that for you, check and see, otherwise the carb will need to come off. Also when you get it running in the driveway make sure to test it for real before you make any big plans, many carb issues will only show up when its under a load, so you might be running good till you put her in the water. Good luck!

 

Thanks for the reply, PROM. I have torn the carb down and cleaned it out, checked linkages, etc. There was no sign of gunk. But if you look at the photos at:

Index of /98 Kawasaki 1100 ZXI

you'd see that maybe one of the three needle jets looks like it is worn away more than the other two. It's kinda hard to tell. As far as just replacing the jet, it appears that the needle jet is pressed into the housing.
If it were worn away, would that produce the problem, of the rough idle and runaway?

I ran it without the air cover on (but with the flame arrestors in place). All three carbs seemed to do the 'runaway' in sync.

JBP