Photo: Kawasaki
Kawasaki J300 owners started to report certain issues with their scooters in late 2015, and the House of Akashi is now taking action to fix this. The first batch of recalled machines includes 1,927 J300 scooters from the 2014 and 2015 model years.
The Japanese manufacturer says that the problem was only detected in certain J300 scooters, and the 2016 model year ones and the new J125 models are not affected.
The owners of the recalled units, however, may be at risk of crashing in case the engines of their scooters inadvertently stall. Kawasaki tracked the issue down and says that one of the settings in the scooters' ECU may be responsible for the defect, and they plan to upgrade the software to a new, compliant version that solves the problem.
Several Kawasaki J300 scooters were reported to stall when the engine was still cold, without any warning. Other customers report that even after the engines of their scooters were heated up at normal operating temperature, they had trouble re-starting the machines after brief pauses.
Reportedly, the fix is a quick ECU software reflashing job to be performed by authorized Kawasaki dealers. This usually involves connecting the bike to a computer and replacing the troublesome ECU software with a newer version that has the problems fixed.
Under normal circumstances, the software upgrade should take around 10 minutes, so the riders will be able to hop back on their scooters in no time.
Both base versions and those equipped with ABS are recalled, in both model years. For the 2014 J300 standard, the recalled VINs range from RGSC40000E1000101 to RGSC40000E1200863, whereas the ABS version units have VINs between RGSC40000E1100101 and RGSC40000E1700268. For the 2015 model year, VINs range from RGSC40000F2200101 to RGSC40000F2400502 for the standard version, and RGSC40000F2300101 and RGSC40000F2900120, for the ABS one.
The owners of the recalled units, however, may be at risk of crashing in case the engines of their scooters inadvertently stall. Kawasaki tracked the issue down and says that one of the settings in the scooters' ECU may be responsible for the defect, and they plan to upgrade the software to a new, compliant version that solves the problem.
Several Kawasaki J300 scooters were reported to stall when the engine was still cold, without any warning. Other customers report that even after the engines of their scooters were heated up at normal operating temperature, they had trouble re-starting the machines after brief pauses.
An ECU flash job should not take more than 10 minutes
The first issues were signaled to Kawasaki Espana, apparently, but we can expect this problem to be a global one. However, fixing the software problem is an easy task for the Kawasaki dealers and it shouldn't take too long.Reportedly, the fix is a quick ECU software reflashing job to be performed by authorized Kawasaki dealers. This usually involves connecting the bike to a computer and replacing the troublesome ECU software with a newer version that has the problems fixed.
Under normal circumstances, the software upgrade should take around 10 minutes, so the riders will be able to hop back on their scooters in no time.
Both base versions and those equipped with ABS are recalled, in both model years. For the 2014 J300 standard, the recalled VINs range from RGSC40000E1000101 to RGSC40000E1200863, whereas the ABS version units have VINs between RGSC40000E1100101 and RGSC40000E1700268. For the 2015 model year, VINs range from RGSC40000F2200101 to RGSC40000F2400502 for the standard version, and RGSC40000F2300101 and RGSC40000F2900120, for the ABS one.
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