I wanted to write this up so others who are having the same problem can save the hours & dollars I've spent trying to figure this issue out.

The Problem: Rarely, most noticeable on colder days and only when the bike was completely cold, the starter would suddenly die while trying to start the bike. It acted almost like the battery was bad, releasing the starter button and trying again would have the engine crank over a couple of more times and then usually die again. On the third try the bike would start (after a bit of complaining)

The Troubleshooting: I'll try to keep this simple/short
-Checked battery cables
-Replaced the battery (sitting voltage was something like 12.3v, battery was 3+ years old)
-Tightened cable on starter
-Checked relay (under the seat)
-Checked starter solenoid
-Checked all cables (button to relay, etc)
-Replaced relay (Service Manual states that when you short 2 pins, you should get the battery voltage on the 3rd pin, I was only getting 90% of the battery voltage, the new relay did exactly the same thing... thanks Kawasaki...)
-Replaced starter solenoid (just because I was running out of potential sources of the problem)
-Checked the starter
-Replaced the starter (less fun than it sounds)
-Cleaned the starter button

It was at this point I was stumped, the problem was so intermittent it was frustrating to troubleshoot and several times I thought I found the issue to only have it crop back up 2-3 months later... Until the issue was happening regularly one night and I wanted to prove the point that you don't need any electronics (no ECU, no PCV, no ignition, lights, etc, etc) to simply crank the bike over, which to re-iterate, is what would stop working (of course the bike won't fire up without the ECU, but I just wanted it to crank).

So, I unhooked practically everything except the 2 cables from the battery, the relay/solenoid and of course, the bike cranked like it was going out of style. I hooked up my various electronics, specifically, the PCV, ignition module, auto-tune, heated gear lead, trickle charger lead to the common ground on the bike. At this point I tried to start the bike and low and behold the starter just died.

Now... I've installed many car stereos & car phones and I know the best ground is to clean metal on the frame and a common ground (google ground loop oscillation if you don't believe me), so naturally I used a wire brush and cleaned this ground before I started. I also had tried slightly longer bolts and using a washer to make sure I had great contact and made sure that everything had a good ground...

So, I had an extra piece of heavy gauge wire from my replacement starter and I hooked it up to the battery's negative terminal, ran it out of the battery housing and connected all of my aftermarket parts using a simple nut and bolt. For the last 4 months I have not even had a hint of the starter dieing.

Sounds like you cleaned up your old ground where all your electronics were attached but that didn't work...so you grounded everything to the battery and now it does work? What does that mean? Seems to me the battery - post should do the same thing as the frame so if everything was clean and bolted down tight and the battery was obviously grounded......?

Where was the old ground that you cleaned up? Was it the battery - cable screw to the frame outside the battery box on the right?

The old ground that I used was indeed where the negative battery cable connects to the frame just outside of the battery box, I made sure to keep the original cables as close to the frame as possible and made sure that bolt was tight.

I agree, that there should be no difference between grounding to this location of the frame and directly to the battery post which is why I never tried it before.

Well, if it works, it works. Maybe if you had the OEM cables closest to the frame, they were grounding just fine but after a few more were laid over the top, that caused resistance. That's the only thing I can think of. If there was a PC grounded there but it was not a good conection because of the theoretical resistance, that would prevent the bike from starting and maybe cause some issues while running. I have my Autitune, quikshifter and the battery grounded there. I hope I don't run into the same problems but if I do, I will know how to fix it. Glad you got it sorted.

Hey Rook, actually that's sort of how I stumbled upon the "fix" the starting circuitry is actually very basic (battery -> button -> relay -> solenoid -> starter -> battery). The main problem wasn't that the bike didn't fire up, but that it stopped cranking over and I wanted to prove the point that no electronics are required to crank the bike (spin the engine) so as long as there was a good ground from the battery to the frame it should work.

I had found several postings over the internet with people describing the same problem that I had, so hopefully this saves someone some frustration.