Kick start on the X?

I think this has been covered before, but I thought I'd ask just to make sure. Is there an aftermarket kit or can you adapt another bikes kickstart to the X? I'm tired of relying on my battery.

you can always push start it

but no, havent seen or heard anything that would work so far since owning this bike.

little squirt wrote:

you can always push start it

but no, havent seen or heard anything that would work so far since owning this bike.

Hey squirt, have you push started this bike? I've been meaning to try it. Thought that with the electric fuel pump I would need a long hill.

mordicai wrote:

little squirt wrote:

you can always push start it

but no, havent seen or heard anything that would work so far since owning this bike.

Hey squirt, have you push started this bike? I've been meaning to try it. Thought that with the electric fuel pump I would need a long hill.

You do need a bit of juice left in the battery to push start the bike. ZED's stator croaked in the middle of nowhere. After it wouldn't run the starter anymore, I think he got about 6 push starts out of it before it would NOT run again. The bike wouldn't idle and ran progressively worse and worse to the point that ~40km/hr in second gear was as slow as he could go. He made it to within sight of the Sprinter before it died on him the last time - could have been much worse!

Trip Report - includes stator failure

Thanks KLR, My feeling was ,that would be the case. But if everything worked well and the only issue was a bad battery, I would think you could run it 0.k. What you think?

With a bad battery & a functional stator, yes the bike should be operational. If the battery was truly, completely flat, it is unlikely that the bike would start, but just a tiny bit of charge left & it should be able to be bump started still.

I suppose the reason we don't have the option is the EFI, dead battery = no fuel.

Yeah you need enuf charge to get the fuel pump to go as well. My battery got drained when someone hit the heater switch on my grips (before i had it relayed), I bump started it and rode around for about 20 minutes before shutting it off. It was enuf to get a good charge back in it to use the starter button.

Hertz wrote:

I suppose the reason we don't have the option is the EFI, dead battery = no fuel.

That's a lame excuse, because the new YZ has EFI, a kick start and no battery. And sleds have had batteryless FI for a long time.

There's not even a designed-in provision for an optional or home-brewed kickstarter kit to be installed because the engine was designed from the start to be electric start only.

On a bike where a kickstarter can be installed if you want, the crankcases have the machining done where the parts required would simply have to be added.
In other words, when such a bike is new, the kickstarter parts were simply left off, and installing the kit puts them back on.

The WR-250R or X doesn't even have the engine designed to accept the required parts.
Can you see, for example, a blocked-off hole in the clutch cover (right-hand side) for a kickstarter shaft to poke through?

Why is this?
My opinion is that the factory decided to cut costs by not including a kickstarter, they felt that most wouldn't miss a kickstarter (because these days, if it's not electric start, people ask what the problem is), they may have felt that the bike was pretty much biased toward lots of street use, anyway, and, probably at the head of the list, the engine wasn't borrowed from a dirt bike - it was a new design.

The simplest backup would be a second battery, like a small thin lithium ion one that lived behind the stocker or run two lithium ions.