Fuel Management

dnktng said:
Anyone try to run out of gas? I did. Carried a 1 gallon can of gas to bail myself out. Here are my results:

1. Gas gauge goes about 2-3 needles below E and STOPS. Needle will not go lower, and definately will not go to the zero position as displayed with key off.
2. Was able to get ~40 miles after needle stopped moving.
3. Got 297.1 miles on that tank.
4. Filled 4.871 gallons. Usually fill 4.0 to 4.3 gallons, so I ran an extra .5 gallons out before fill up.
5. 61 mpg. This is above my normal 55-57 mpg in summer.
6. I felt engine stutter going up an incline and filled up at next gas station, so I didn't run it till it died..... but I tried & learned enough.
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This is good information. It will save me some stress in the future. Thanks Dan!
 
Jimbo said:
I don't know why manufacturers quit putting fuel petcocks on bikes
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It has to do with the fuel pump that is mounted in the tank. The older ones gravity fed to the carb bowl but now the pump is in the tank and is pressure fed to injectors.

Brad
 
I believe most modern cars have an idiot light that comes on when there is 30-50 miles of gas left.
I do know that fuel pumps are cooled by the gas and in cars there are some tall ones that can actualy
surface from the fuel lever and get hot, despite all the splashing going on in there. I know I worry too much about this sort of thing
but I think once the gage hits red, its time for a westerner to look for fuel.
 
Mebbe so. If I know where the gas stations are (and with my Street Pilot 2720, I pretty well do know where they are), I'm not too worried about getting down below the red.
 
I gladly gave up the petcock (with zero complaint) in exchange for fuel injection and an actual fuel gauge. I had one situation where I was crossing a street right when the main fuel level dried up leaving me with a stalled bike in the middle of an intersection and oncoming traffic bearing down on me. :eek1:


Jimbo said:
I don't know why manufacturers quit putting fuel petcocks on bikes. I really liked that fact that if I totally spaced managing my gas, I could notice the engine sputter and switch to the reserve tank. Then I KNEW it was time to get gas. My '83 Suzuki has a fuel petcock. The 2009 BMW and the 2011 Yamaha don't. Does it really save them that much money in making a bike?? :confused:
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Rmcapozzi said:
I gladly gave up the petcock (with zero complaint) in exchange for fuel injection and an actual fuel gauge.
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ABSOLUTELY. They work better. And with a fuel injection system you won't hydrolock your engine when you have a leaky float valve.
 
junglejim said:
with a fuel injection system you won't hydrolock your engine when you have a leaky float valve.
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I never had that happen, but it did fairly regularly. Definitely another plus for fuel injection.
 
No arguments from me...I have a second manual fuel shutoff valve on my Connie cause I had a leaky float once. You can bend a rod even if the engine doesnt fire.
Its a bit of a pain to make sure the NT is full of non-ethanol stabilized fuel at the end of the season but doable. Liquid ethanol corrodes aluminum over long periods of
storage and I dont know what the NT fuel pump is made out of. All I know is I take every bit of that stuff out of my Connie cause I have seen the damage done by ethanol
after phase separation has occured.
 
Coyote Chris said:
No arguments from me...I have a second manual fuel shutoff valve on my Connie cause I had a leaky float once. You can bend a rod even if the engine doesnt fire.
Its a bit of a pain to make sure the NT is full of non-ethanol stabilized fuel at the end of the season but doable. Liquid ethanol corrodes aluminum over long periods of
storage and I dont know what the NT fuel pump is made out of. All I know is I take every bit of that stuff out of my Connie cause I have seen the damage done by ethanol
after phase separation has occured.
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For me there is no end of the season. In fact, there never has been, even when I lived where winter temps often went well into double-digit negative Fahrenheit degrees. These days the worst I have to deal with might be a week of downtime.
 
My season is year-round in Eastern Colorado. I sometimes ride to work on Sundays in single-digit temps (F, not C) and have done that a few times in minus F temps. Of course, work's only a mile away.
 
Here, the 40 to 100 inches of snow kind of put a damper on things. But the real danger in Spokane is black ice.
I have never lived in a place with a problem this big. A little shade on a big hill on a 36 degree day where the nighttime temp
was 25 and you could easily end up having a bad day.....
snowpile.jpg

blizard007.jpg


Of course, we dont get much sun either....
Highnoon.jpg
 
Oh, we have fun....but that year I had to shovel my roof four times and I could walk up a snow bank to get to the top of my garage!
John1.jpg
 
I thought this thread was about fuel management?

I filled up yesterday with 216 miles on the odometer and the "needle" was below empty. It took 4.01 gallons. 54 miles/gallon. I had 1.2 gallons left, so 270 miles on that tank was within reach.
 
vzshadow said:
I thought this thread was about fuel management?

I filled up yesterday with 216 miles on the odometer and the "needle" was below empty. It took 4.01 gallons. 54 miles/gallon. I had 1.2 gallons left, so 270 miles on that tank was within reach.
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That was pretty much what I have been seeing but things are not linear. I took the bike down to almost the E line and put in 1/2 gallon.....the gage came up to 1/3 full.
 
I think a lot of you are fooling yourselves about fuel range and that mythical last gallon you cant find...Some of that last gallon is in the uppermost portion of the gas tank that you never get gas into.
Gotta be between a quart to half gallon on top that never gets filled
 
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