KZ Will stay running at idle

I recently picked up a 1981 KZ250D2. It had been sitting for a year. I Drained the old fuel out of the card and put new gas in. I can get it running as long as I have the throttle on. As soon as I let off it dies. I plan on taking the card off of the bike and taking it apart and cleaning it. This is my first Kawasaki(had Suzuki GS before) Is there anything I need to look for in particular?

You may have to adjust the idle setting on the carb.

Where do I find that? Would that fix the problem without having to pull the carb?

It will be a knob on the bottom of the carb rack, centered between all of em. That will adjust your idle speed up and down.

More than likely the carbs will need to be removed and cleaned out.

Single carb...should be pretty straight forward to clean it out.

Idle is set by the screw in red, right side of the carb. If you tear down the carb be very careful not to damage the rubber diaphragm. Do not spray cleaners on it or rip it. Big bucks for that part.

It will only run at 2500+ rpm. I think it is a carb problem but I will check that screw

I believe 16014 is the one that might need adjusting

Let me try a better picture, hopefully.

OK it seems the filters at work are messing with my attempts to post a pic.

Do you know that you can access your bikes part diagrams on the Kawasaki website, or other sites such as Bike Bandit? The pictures will be nicer than the one I posted.

My guess is your idle jet is plugged up, so no gas would be flowing at idle. When you give it some throttle, gas is coming out of the intermediate jet and letting it run. Just my guess.

Try this pic...

It's a little bigger.

I took the carb off last night and cleaned it out with some carb cleaner. I sprayed out all the jets and cleaned the floats. I noticed that there is a sping loaded flap on the choke plate that was hanging down. I fixed the spring on that and put it all back together. It runs much better now and It idles about 1500 rpm with only a few sputters. I am charging the battery now so my next project is checking the valves and tires!

Thanks for all your help