Motorbike (kawasaki el 250) not starting. Has been 18 months since last start, have recharged battery, fuel working, sounds like no spark. I need to know if to remove petrol tank (and how if nessesary), then how to remove and check spark plugs. Thankyou.

Hi and welcome to FixYa,

Initially and in response to your queries, a couple of ideas to consider:

• to remove tank, initially remove the seat;
• the tank has a single bolt under the seat, rear of the tank;
• set petc0ck (fuel tap) to OFF;
• pull hoses;
• remove tank;
• drain old, stale fuel by inverting tank;
• allow to air dry then blow away sand, rust particles, dirt with the use of a can of compressed air;
• remove petcock to clean fuel filter;
• with the tank removed, the sparkplugs could be removed;
• remove sparkplug caps;
• unscrew sparkplugs using the long sparkplug socket;
• clean/replace plugs (NGK CR8HSA or ND U24FSR-U);
• set gap at 0.6 ~ 0.7 mm (0.024 ~ 0.028 in);
• tighten to 14N-m (1.4kg-m / 10.0ft-lb).

To remove the fuel tank, remove the seat (there are two bolts that hold the rear part of it to the frame. Then remove the single bolt at the rear of the fuel tank. Raise the tank just enough so that you can slide the fuel lines off the petcock - and slide the tank back, and off.
The problem you are most likely going to encounter are plugged up carburetors. It only takes a few months of sitting for the gasoline to evaporate and leave behind a thick, gooey varnish. This being the case, you will need to remove the carbs, completely disassemble them and soak all the metal parts in carburetor cleaner (don't put any plastic or rubber parts in the carb cleaner, they'll be ruined). Upon reassembly, blow everything out with compressed air. This is a big job, so I hope you're lucky and it won't be needed.
Remember, the three required ingredients for combustion are: fuel, compression, and a spark (at the right time).