When the Recall Itself Gets Recalled
Kawasaki issued a second recall for the 2024-2026 Ninja ZX-6R on November 26, 2025 (Motorcycle.com, 2025). Same bike. Same problem. Same crankshaft bushing seizure that can stall the engine mid-ride and lock the rear wheel.
The first recall – issued in June – was supposed to fix this. It didn't.
This defect is worse than a simple manufacturing flaw. It's not what Kawasaki built—it's what Kawasaki's own dealerships did to the bike while "fixing" it.
Now 20,301 ZX-6Rs sit under a stop-ride order (Motorcycle.com, 2025). Kawasaki has no remedy "under development," which is recall-speak for "we don't know how to fix it yet." Owners are grounded indefinitely.
What Failed
The #5 metal crankshaft bushing can seize when the crankcase bolts are torqued incorrectly during the prior recall repair. Excessive bolt torque damages the bushing by disrupting oil clearance between the crankshaft and bushing. The bushing seizes. The engine stalls. If that happens at speed, the rear wheel can lock.
This isn't a parts defect. It's a repair defect. The June recall sent owners to dealerships for a fix that introduced a new failure mode. Mechanics were told to torque bolts to a specification that – under certain variations in the tightening process – destroys the part the recall was supposed to protect.
Kawasaki's remedy protocol was inadequate. The first recall affected 17,792 motorcycles, with 11,019 remedied as of October 17 (Motorcycle.com, 2025). The company sent thousands of riders back out on bikes that could fail because of what the dealership did to them.
The Scale
20,301 motorcycles (Motorcycle.com, 2025). That's smaller than Bozeman, Montana (59,872), smaller than Ithaca, New York (33,978), and smaller than Carson City, Nevada (58,474) (World Population Review, 2026).
Every one of those riders trusted the recall process. They got the notice. They made the appointment. They handed the keys to a certified Kawasaki technician and waited. They rode home believing the problem was solved.
It wasn't. The bike is less safe now than it was before the recall, because the recall itself is the source of the new defect.
The Math Nobody Wants to Do
A bushing seizure at 70 mph doesn't give you options. You don't have time to pull the clutch, find neutral, coast to a stop. The engine locks. The rear wheel locks. Physics does the rest.
NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) shows 6,228 motorcyclists died in crashes in 2024 – 16% of all motor vehicle crash deaths (IIHS, 2024). A mechanical failure that locks the rear wheel under power is the kind of failure that turns a commute into a crash scene, and a crash scene into a statistic.
Kawasaki received one crash report before issuing the second recall. One that they know about. How many more unreported near-misses? How many riders who felt the engine stumble, pulled over, and wrote it off as a fluke?
The stop-ride order is the right call – six months late.
What a Recall Is Supposed to Mean
A recall is a manufacturer's acknowledgment that something left the factory wrong and needs to be made right. It's supposed to be the safety net: the thing that catches the defect before it catches a person.
When the recall itself fails, that net is gone.
This is Kawasaki's second attempt at the same problem, and they still don't have a fix. The first remedy made it worse. The second remedy doesn't exist yet. In the meantime, 20,301 motorcycles (Motorcycle.com, 2025) sit in garages, driveways, and dealership lots, unusable, while their owners wait for a company to figure out how to undo the damage its own service network caused.
The Question Nobody Is Asking
If Kawasaki's certified technicians – following Kawasaki's repair protocol, using Kawasaki's specifications – introduced a defect severe enough to trigger a second recall, what does that say about the quality control behind the first one?
A recall is supposed to be the fix. When the fix is what breaks, the manufacturer has failed twice: once in the design, and once in the remedy.
Kawasaki owes its riders more than a stop-ride notice and a vague promise that a repair is "under development." It owes them an explanation for how the June recall made thousands of bikes less safe, and a timeline for when – if ever – those bikes will be rideable again.
Until then, the ZX-6R is grounded. Not because of what Kawasaki built. Because of what Kawasaki tried to fix.