{"id":11992,"date":"2024-02-12T12:23:09","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T19:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=11992"},"modified":"2024-02-11T12:24:02","modified_gmt":"2024-02-11T19:24:02","slug":"running-out-of-gas-on-a-motorcycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/running-out-of-gas-on-a-motorcycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Running Out Of Gas On A Motorcycle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_11994\" style=\"width: 507px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ReservePetcock.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11994\" src=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ReservePetcock.jpg\" vspace=\"7\" alt=\"\" width=\"497\" height=\"343\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11994\" srcset=\"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ReservePetcock.jpg 497w, https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/ReservePetcock-300x207.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11994\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong><em>Having Reserve on a motorcycle does you no  good if you don&#8217;t set the petcock (upper left) back to Main once you fill the tank.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Have you ever run out of gas on your bike? Does the sun rise in the east?<\/p>\n<p>I sure have. Probably the first time was early on and I was taking a young lady I had an interest in for a ride. We were just out cruising when the engine died. I figured I just needed to go to Reserve but when I reached for the petcock I found that it was already in the Reserve position and I had forgotten to turn it back the last time I filled up. Oops. Fortunately I knew there was a station about a mile away and we walked up there, rented (that&#8217;s how it worked back then&#8211;rent was the price of the can in case you didn&#8217;t bring it back) a gas can and filled it, then walked back to the bike. She didn&#8217;t complain but she and I never became a couple.<\/p>\n<p>Years later when I was married and my Concours was new my wife and I went for a ride with the local Concours Owners Group chapter. Most everyone filled up in Florence but I figured I had plenty of gas to get home. Wrong. We were coming up CO 83, just south of Franktown, when we sputtered to a stop. Fortunately we were right in front of a farm house and when we knocked they said yes they had a gas tank to supply their farm equipment and yes, they would sell us some gas. Lucky us.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this is leading to my main focus here, that I&#8217;ve been reading a thread on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advrider.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adventure Rider<\/a> where the question is &#8220;When was the last time you ran out of gas? Tell your story.&#8221; Here are a few other people&#8217;s stories.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I ran out on the way home from work on my NX650 years ago. No cell service\u2026 Within 5 minutes a state trooper came by, a wildlife trooper, pickup truck hauling a quad, had extra gas. He gave me enough gas to make it the eight miles home, but not before running my license. I was grateful and a little miffed at the same time.<\/li>\n<li>My last time was on a two-up day ride with my wife. We were having a great time just knocking around forest roads and backwoods byways at speeds that allowed us to actually have a conversation. Well, my Scramster only holds 3.3 gallons of fuel and I rode it until the trip meter read 176 miles, as we did our best to make it to a gas station that was 176.5 miles away.<\/li>\n<li>In 2015 I was on my XR650L in Baja. I was deep offroad and completely lost. All the deep sand had used up my gas reserves. I poured in my last gallon of extra gas rode for 35 miles then found pavement. Took a guess on which way to go so made a left turn and started riding. After roughly 10 miles I could see a town I kept riding and when I arrived at the town the engine started sputtering I pulled a wheelie to get the remaining gas to the rear of the Clarke tank. It ran for about a mile then sputtered again but this time could see a Pem Mex station. I pulled another wheelie and rode towards the station, as I stopped at the pump the engine died. I couldn&#8217;t believe how lucky I was.<\/li>\n<li>A cautionary tale; forgot to put gas in my Triyumph Bonneville T100 and ran out of gas near home. I had read that you could shake gas over to the left side, and so i tried to do that. I straddled the bike and laid it all the way to the left hanging the weight of the bike on my left arm and shaking it. Without realizing it I severely strained and damaged my left shoulder and had to go to first care for pain pills and muscle relaxers. Don&#8217;t do that. It didn&#8217;t even work and I could have really messed my shoulder up. As it turned out I recovered without any more medical intervention, but I will never try that again.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019m on my CRF230L which does not have a gauge. Was headed to Rutland State Park on I190 when it started sputtering at 120mi. Switched to reserve. Got off the highway, was looking for a gas station on my way to the park when I ran out of gas after 30 miles on reserve. Pushed my bike 3.1 miles to the nearest gas station on a busy road. No one stopped and asked if I needed help.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;ve probably run out other times but just don&#8217;t remember, but not recently. I had a fuel-line issue with Reserve on my CB750 a couple years ago while riding with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/RockyMountainMotorcycleRidersClub\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">RMMRC<\/a> and Roy pulled out a can of gas he carries everywhere. He told me you can get these leak-proof cans are available at the army surplus store so I bought one. Not a bad thing to have at hand.<\/p>\n<h3>Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n<p>My first love, my motorcycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever run out of gas on your bike? Does the sun rise in the east? I sure have. Probably the first time was early on and I was taking a young lady I had an interest in for a ride. We were just out cruising when the engine died. I figured I just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324],"tags":[637],"class_list":["post-11992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycle-problems","tag-running-out-of-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11995,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11992\/revisions\/11995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}