The baby Ninja has always been a crowd favourite. The 2013 Ninja 300 with its grown up styling and 39PS mill has been a runaway hit with riders all over the world praising the fun-factor of the motorcycle to the sky.
As an enthusiast, you probably have been there. When a motorcycle turns out to be more exciting than you thought it would be, things just don’t rumble along mundanely. She screams for attention, love and greasy fingers. On various international motorcycling forums, owners of the 2013 Ninja, both the models -with and without ABS- have been complaining of random instances of the Ninja 300 stalling upon deceleration.
A quick fix recommended by some riders was to blip the throttle to match the engine speed with the road speed before downshifting. Optimally, this is how one would ride any motorcycle, it does help for smoother transitions between gears. While the issue is limited to only some of the units, riding at the limit might also be the reason why there hasn’t been any review of the Ninja 300 where a motorcycling journo has mentioned the stalling issues.
A quick peek at the Transport Canada Road Safety Recalls Database shows that one issue, as mentioned is related to the engine while the other is related to the ABS unit.
Recall Details – Engine
“On certain motorcycles, the engine may stall while decelerating. Engine stalling would result in a loss of motive power, which could increase the risk of a crash causing injury and/or property damage. Correction: Dealers will replace the engine control unit (ECU).”
Recall Details – ABS
“On certain motorcycles, the ABS hydraulic unit may have been contaminated with debris during manufacturing. This could cause the ABS system to function improperly and in an unexpected manner, which could increase the risk of a crash causing injury and/or property damage. Correction: dealers will inspect the ABS unit and replace if necessary.”
Here’s a video of the stalling issue.
We currently do not have information on whether this recall will be extended to models sold in India, or Europe. If we had to take a guess, we would say the recall should be exclusive to the models manufactured in Kawasaki’s plant in Lincoln, Nebraska.