This is happening on Daughter's Kawasaki Lakota 300.
Was getting hard to start, pulled plug and it was fouled pretty bad with carbon.
Put new plug in, properly gapped it, fired right up.
Went riding Saturday for about four hours, she said it died at least a dozen times. Would start right back up. She also said at times it was like she was loosing power in 4th or fifth gear, like it was bogging, then would die.
I rode it, seemed to do fine, did notice a high pitch sound coming from front of bike twice (almost sounded like 2 stroke) lasted for only a second or two under hard acceleration.
When revving bike hard in nuetral it produced a little black smoke.
I pulled the plug and that new plug had carbon build up on electrode, tip and first thread or two.

Any ideas what could be causing these symtoms?

 

The black carbon fouling is probably a good indication that your lakota is running very rich. Changing the main jet size would probably help your problem. You may also have to shim the needle, but the main jet is where I would start.

 

i would give what screaminv said a try for starts....also doing a quick compression check also wouldnt hurt, it should be around 150-165psi. Thats a nice lookin lakota whats it got on it for parts?

 

If your Lakota has never had jet changes and ran fine in the beginning, I would not change any of the jet settings in the carb. Something else has changed and that is giving you the rich condition. Are you at an elevation? Is the choke cable correctly routed and not sticking? Is your air filater clean? Is your float level in the carb correct? Is the float needle valve seat clean in carb bowl and does it shut off the fuel flow when raised? There are several things that would create a rich carb condition.

 

If you've changd your jetting check that.

Otherwise the choke cable could be stuck. I was fouling plugs on my KFX700 a while back and it was because of a stuck choke cable.