Runnin’ On Empty
You can see that flashing, hollow bar right in the center of this shot.
The benefit of being very familiar with your motorcycle is obvious. You know where everything is and you know what to expect. Still, there are some things that only come into play occasionally and so perhaps you’re not as familiar with them as you are with the bike in general.
I went for a ride yesterday with members of the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) and this was one of those times.
I was on the V-Strom and unlike my other bikes, the V-Strom has a gas gauge and no reserve. Because this bike has a larger tank and gets better gas mileage than my friends’ bikes I generally find myself filling up before I would actually need to. I’ve never run out of gas on this bike. Which means that I have never found the true limit to how far it can go on a tank of gas.
Taking off yesterday I thought I had plenty of gas. The gauge is in bars; five bars is full. I didn’t look at it closely but was figuring just from how much I’d ridden it lately that I had four bars. It wasn’t until it was too late to do anything about it that I noticed I was at three bars. That made me a little uncomfortable but I still figured I had plenty.
Our route was to be out U.S. 285 up to Pine Junction, south to Deckers, and then back along the Platte, up by the Rampart Range, and down to Sedalia. Then home. Not that long a ride.
So there I was at three bars and to my dismay, I dropped to two bars right away. Oh gosh, I’ve got a whole lot less gas than I thought I did.
OK, now here’s what you need to understand about this gas gauge. The five bars do not represent equal amounts of gas. I generally will get 100 miles before the first bar disappears and I’m running on four bars. Then the next three go away fairly quickly and then the fifth bar is closer to the first in mileage. I was talking about it once to my friend, Kevin, who sold me the bike, and I can’t remember the figure he threw out but basically he said you have a whole lot of miles left when you go to one bar.
Another thing to understand is that switching between the odometer and the trip meter on this bike is a pain in the butt. And it’s one or the other, as opposed to my other bikes where you see both at the same time. So after riding this bike for more than six years I still don’t have a good feel for how many miles each bar represents.
Anyway, at two bars I was a bit concerned but not a lot. And then it went down to one bar really quickly. Uh oh, I don’t like this.
Now, what happens when you go to one bar is, I would guess, intended to make you nervous and persuade you to fill up as soon as you can. First a flashing gas pump icon appears next to that one bar but then you go a few miles further and the solid black bar changes to a hollow red flashing bar, as shown in the photo above. Now I’m really getting uncomfortable.
The saving grace in all this is my experience the first time this happened. I was out with the OFMC and we had spent the night in Meeker. I had arrived there via a different route than the other guys and unbeknownst to me, they had gassed up upon arriving in town. I had not. We headed out of town in the morning and as we neared Rangely I saw I was down to two bars. Just shy of town we turned south on CO 139 over Douglas Pass down to Loma. And very soon after that I went to one bar and it started flashing red. Oh crap.
It’s about 70 miles from Rangely to Loma with no gas in between. I sweated that ride. But I got there. So that told me I could get at least 70 miles on one bar. So there we were yesterday up in Deckers, and I knew it was less than 70 to home. But I was still nervous. Still, I was with other guys and I carry a siphon hose on each of my bikes so I figured I’d be fine.
We reached I-25 at Castle Pines Parkway and split up and then I only needed to go another 10-12 miles–with no ready assistance at hand. With each mile I felt more and more relaxed and rolled happily into our driveway. As I said, it’s really good to be familiar with your bike.
Biker Quote for Today
You know you’re a biker if you’ve spent more on your motorcycle than your education.
Tags: running low on gas
