{"id":8376,"date":"2017-10-05T11:37:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T17:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=8376"},"modified":"2017-10-03T15:38:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T21:38:47","slug":"running-out-of-gas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/running-out-of-gas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Running Out Of Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"motorcycle<\/a>

Stopping beside the road is not always your desire.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

I read an article some while ago that said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nobody runs out of gas any more, not with dash lights and other geegaws reminding you to stop and fill up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Obviously, they weren’t talking about motorcycles.<\/p>\n

Most motorcycles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even have gas gauges. What they do have is a petcock that you turn to Reserve when the bike starts to sputter. Then you know you had better find a gas station fairly soon. Presumably you know how much fuel your reserve holds, you know how many miles you get to a gallon, and that tells you approximately how far you can get on what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got left.<\/p>\n

My Kawasaki Concours does have a gas gauge, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in a minority. And even that is only a half-way measure because it still has reserve and once you flip that petcock the gauge just registers Empty and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re judging your range as you would on any other bike.<\/p>\n

I have run out of gas. More than once, on both the Honda and the Kawi. And you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll rarely meet a rider who hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t also run out, at least on occasion.<\/p>\n

Now, riding with the OFMC I have never run out, for the simple reason that all my bikes have bigger gas tanks than any of the other guys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bikes. They need to gas up long before I do so as long as I do the same I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m golden. And I carry a long plastic surgical tube so that if need be we can siphon gas from my tank to one of theirs, though that has never been necessary.<\/p>\n

That fact is largely due to John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experience on one of our early trips. He and Bill and I were blasting north through Wyoming on I-25, heading for Deadwood, SD, and I was in the lead. I noticed they had dropped back so I slowed down and after awhile I pulled over. The customary thing in this situation is to wait, with the assumption that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be along soon. If they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come along soon you head back to see what the hold-up is.<\/p>\n

So I sat there a while, too long, and turned back. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gone far and there they were, going the direction I was now coming from, so I turned around again. We all pulled off and they filled me in.<\/p>\n

John had run out of gas and hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thought to flip to reserve, so he coasted to a stop. Bill pulled over to offer aid. They quickly deduced the problem, but even after John switched to reserve the bike wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t start because the fuel line had been drained dry and he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get any gas to the carburetor. Most motorcycles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have fuel pumps, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply a gravity flow system.<\/p>\n

So they tried jump starting. We were on flat land and Bill pushed and pushed and pushed while John tried to get the thing going. Finally, about the time Bill was ready to die from his work-out the bike did start, and after he trudged his way back to his own bike they were finally on their way again.<\/p>\n

Ever since then John is a total fanatic about getting gas long before he even reaches reserve. He also instructed his son, Johnathon, in this approach so a few years later, on another trip, when the bike Johnathon was on started sputtering he had no idea what was happening because he had never gone to reserve before.<\/p>\n

Me, I hit reserve regularly. The only problem is when you forget to switch the petcock back to the regular tank when you gas up. Then, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not paying attention to how many miles you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ridden, when the bike starts to sputter, guess what? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re out of gas. Trust me on this, I know.<\/p>\n

Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n

You’re a biker wannabe if you spend more time shining your bike than riding it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read an article some while ago that said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nobody runs out of gas any more, not with dash lights and other geegaws reminding you to stop and fill up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Obviously, they weren’t talking about motorcycles. Most motorcycles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even have gas gauges. What they do have is a petcock that you turn to Reserve […]<\/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":[875],"class_list":["post-8376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycle-problems","tag-run-out-of-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376","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=8376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8378,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376\/revisions\/8378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}