Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

I had the engine out of mine then put it back in without needing a red key. So did madkaw

If the red keys are anything like the Honda cars had, putting the red key in the ignition was a costly exercise as the keys would need to be reprogrammed. This also rendered the car useless if you didnt have the car at the dealers.

I know things have now changed and its no longer such a big problem, but the red key is mainly used to reset and re program the ECU, should you loose a key or need to have additional keys cut if you had a key stolen. The red key deletes the old codes.... The keys no longer dis arm the ECU t start the vehicle.

The red key holds all the ECU codes to allow the dealer or Locksmith or owner in some cases to easily reset the ECU and program keys. Without the Red key, you can still have this done, but the ownership of the vehicle would come into question and you would have to prove that prior to the codes being looked up from the manufacturer. They would have to plug The ECU into a computer and program it that way. So, for every time you wanted to reset the ECU, you needed to have it done by a specialist....

I suggest you get a few keys cut N coded, keep one in a very safe place and make sure someone else know about it.

I would also suggest that the insurer tried to recover the keys for the bike as its usually a requirement to have all keys when ownership changes to the insurer. I would imagine that the red key is no longer available. Unless the insurer did not try to recover them, you my have a very slim chance in getting it. Either way, i hope the re build works out.

The red key in a kwasaki, is nothing like the red key in the Honda cars.

i bought by 06 zx10 with only the red key, got 2 blanks from Kawasaki and god them cut and coded. the red key was used to put the ecu into key programming mode.

if you have a key that has been already programmed (by kawasaki or by a locksmith with equipment) then you dont need to program keys.

the bike ecu itself programs the black keys.

Righto, so losing the red isn't so bad after all. I was thinking that it's real important because the Kawa shop told me it is, maybe they just wanted to sell me an ECU... If I see a cheap ECU/key set on ebay I'll get it anyway.

Thanks for the replies and all the advice guys

I think you read my post wrong Wattie.... I have said pretty much what you did. Just took longer to do it,

Either way, they are similar setups.

Whickle wrote:If the red keys are anything like the Honda cars had, putting the red key in the ignition was a costly exercise as the keys would need to be reprogrammed. This also rendered the car useless if you didnt have the car at the dealers.

Not really mate,

you can ride around on your kwak with the red key in and it wont hurt the bike.

to program keys you need to use the red key in conjunction with a "special plug" (i call paperclip but cant be sure) into a plug in the ecu, which the puts it into key tuning mode.

using a red key in a kwak wont render all the other keys useless.

These guys can do the coding, they are customers of mine & can trust them to do the job properly.
http://www.innerwestsecurity.com/inw_wp ... /Home.aspx

Jesus...just bring back the "good old fashioned key" FFS!
All this electronic crap won't stop it being knicked anyway

hahahahha yeh they should bring back the old-fashioned key alright ! and while they are at it, whatever happened to kick-starters ? These were gold when your new-fangled starter motor stopped spinning......and another thing, that bloody DFI is crap, it takes forever to start - they should just fit remote-float Amals to all new bikes, with that bloody tickler you use to flood the carbs for a perfect start every time !