Range anxiety

[RickSkye]

So, even on my africa twin, with 24.8l I still suffer from range anxiety. Most i ever got into tank was 23.22 with 43 miles to go on display. (Thinks that was generous) I was just about peeing myself.
Just for the craic, thought I would post and see how close to empty others had got.
Expect better than my 1.58 litres.
Current ave 54.25 mpg,

 

[The Don]

after the bad experience I had on the Varadero when I run out completely and had to push it, I never ever even get close to being "close to empty"

 

[Mikey]

Range anxiety!!!! Try riding to Oban when your fuel gauge goes AWOL after 80 miles

 

[Rubberchicken]

How close to empty, does this answer your question?

That was about a 2 mile hike, there and back again.

 

[Rubberchicken]

That was with the GS. Classic case of oh bugger it's already on reserve.

Another time with the old Dominator when it still had the "13" liter (12.5 really!) tank, I'd been on the vapours for a while and it finally wheezed out as I was waiting across the road from the petrol station for oncoming traffic to clear. So had to push the 20m to the pump. That's about as close as I can get it.

Also, if you take a (right hand side) motorway offramp a bit quickish on a BMW K1100LT with a nearly empty tank, turns out the fuel sloshes to the right and the pump runs dry. Having that 300 kg behemoth go *SNNNOOORRRRKKK* full engine braking in the middle of a quickish corner was a bit of a trouser moment.

 

[Rubberchicken]

And finally: Not exactly empty, but when you have water in the tank it sits on the bottom, so it runs just fine except when you switch to reserve you suddenly have two float bowls with about a 50% water mixture in them.

Flushed them by the side of the road a few times and when it turned out the mixture wasn't improving I put them back on and went for it.

Turns out that, yes, an old aircooled boxer will in fact run on roughly 50% water. Not exactly well, no, as in I had to keep it over 3000 rpm or it would stall and it would never run on both pots at once so the balance was a bit off, but enough to make it the mile or so through Amsterdam on a sunny saturday afternoon to get to the nearest petrol station. I only had to take one shortcut over a bicycle path, too. It was the one directly in front of the main police station, but oh well.

 

[Rubberchicken]

Okay one more I just remembered.

The rental bike in New Zealand was a DR650 with the 13 liter fuel tank. Should've been plenty of range to get from Christchurch to Arthur's Pass, IF it had indeed been full like the rental shop said it was and muggins here forgot to check.

Having to switch to reserve when you're still 30-odd miles out wasn't fun, there's a whole lot of nothing in those mountains...

There's a reason I like the PD tank on the GS. 35 liters...

 

[austin]

I pulled into Charnock Richard services on my Transalp 650 thinking I’ll just splash and dash, as I changed down on the slip road the engine died and wouldn’t get going again even just dropping the clutch. Empty. Gauge had long since packed in so was doing it the old way - fill up after a safe 200 miles. But my son had borrowed the bike for the weekend and clearly thrashed all the way home as it only had 170 miles on the trip. He later confessed to holding it at 90+ from Oxfordshire to Lancashire. Same bike, I once got 19.5 litres into it - supposedly a 17 litre tank. I actually complained to the cashier at the petrol station saying it was impossible to put that much in that tank. They took my name and address and wrote to me a few days later saying they had checked the calibration of that pump later that day and it was fine.

BMW GSA I ran it down to 1 mile remaining on the countdown to get to a cheaper petrol station. I put 33.1 litres into a 33 litre tank.

Last one, slightly different. Full tank on the GSA, long descent out of Yellowstone National Park, so at altitude and this gradient went on for miles. Remaining range went up to something mental like 750 miles. Mix will have been lean due to altitude and a nil to partial throttle for 20+ miles meant the bike really wasn’t using fuel.

 

[DaveS]

I remember at one of the national meets in Ullapool. I got a puncture a few days before on my GS 1150. I did a tubeless plug repair and decided to risk it travelling up. Big mistake, it kept leaking, as a result as soon as I’d got there on the Friday I decided to head home on the Saturday morning. As I left Ullapool with less than half a tank, I decided not to fill up on the way out as the petrol station was busy, next big mistake. So I was then heading home with a slow puncture and no petrol through Scotland!
I just about made it to a filling station and I was so relieved. My trip home then compromised of regular fuel and pump up stops until I got home some 600 miles later.

 

[nick949]

Range anxiety? What's that?