| Author | Message | ||
     Slimshaky |
The gas mileage that I'm getting out of my 2003 Blast is not great, and I'm wondering if this is expected. After my last fill up, I got 62 miles before the bike stalled out on me due to lack of fuel, and it took 1.5 gallons to fill it back up. I'm not great at noticing the symptoms of fuel running out and pulling the clutch, so I came really close to dumping the bike when it came to a sudden halt. I'm going to be filling up early and often from now on. Here's some background. I am still a novice when it comes to motorcycles, so I would not be surprised if I have some fault in the issue. Another fact worth mentioning is that I take a lot of short trips traveling at 25 or 35 mph. In addition, when i fill the tank, i stop once i can no longer see the black piece in the center of the tank (maybe i need to fill more). Is the gas mileage low considering my riding patterns? Am I filling the gas tank up high enough? Should I need to switch to reserve after 1.5 gallons? | ||
| Missionbolts |
Slimshaky, I always use the trip odometer to gauge how many miles I've put on a full tank. As in, I never fill the tank less than all the to the top, and I always reset the trip odometer. So I'm always able to check my mileage, whenever I feel like doing the math If I ride fast a lot, my mileage drops as low as 48 MPG. And if I do a long cruise at very slow speeds, I've been getting around 75 MPG. Most of the time, I see about 53 MPG. I never use the regular fuel valve position, I just put the tank on reserve and keep an eye on both my riding style & miles racked-up If you're not using reserve, then you're cutting your range short by a lot, for no good reason. I tend to start thinking of refilling at about 110 miles. I think I once got 150 miles without running out of gas For the best MPG, stay under 65MPH and don't open the throttle up more than halfway. When I'm trying to go as far as I can on a tank, I like to cruise at 60 on highways, then go a bit under the speed limit everywhere else I've found that a good indication of what gear to be in is to match gears to speeds. Around 50MPH, I'm in 5th. 40MPH = 4th, 30MPH = 3rd. On flat ground, I'll go slower than that in each gear, and the exhaust sounds better that way 62 miles on 1.5 gallons. Because it's 'miles per one gallon', you divide both numbers by 1.5 to get miles per gallon. 1.5 divided by 1.5 equals one. 62 divided by 1.5 equals 41.3 So you're getting 41.3 MPG, if your numbers are dead on accurate. That's not very far away from what I'm getting, so you would have to look at just how aggressively you are riding, the condition of your air filter, tire pressures, cleanliness of the jets & passages inside your carb and jet sizes if necessary If the air filter is good and the inside of the carb is spotless clean, then I'd think your bike is tuned for maximum power and your riding it very fast all the time. Your numbers sound ok in that case The more you look into it, the more variables you'll learn about. I've run bikes into reserve while on the main position lots of times. Most of the time, I switch to reserve without stopping the bike or pulling over. The moment the carb stops getting fuel from the tank, the engine will not quit or run different. This is because at that moment, the float bowl on the carb will still be full. As the bowl begins to run down, the engine will still be able to run, but it will begin losing power at high throttle openings. At steady cruising with the throttle held still, your first warning is the bike will begin slowing down a little bit. When you give it more gas, it will slow down faster. Best thing to do at that point is to reduce throttle until the engine runs smoothly and just change the tank valve to reserve without any delay. You should be mindful of which way the valve moves without needing to look at what your doing. On these Buell Blasts, you use your left hand to switch the valve while holding the throttle steady and keeping the bike heading the right way with just your right hand. Move your left knee out a few inches, slide your left hand down the lower edge of the tank until you bump into the valve, place your left thumb on the rear of the valve and use your forefinger to pull the valve lever forwards, up and then all the way to the rear until it stops. At that point, get your left hand back on the handlebars & reset your knee back on the tank. If the bike was beginning to stall, just give it a second for the reserve to get the carb going again & just ride it out When I fill my tank, I go to the bottom of the filler neck, right under the gas cap. This will be about one and a half inches. If I remember right, these tanks hold 2.5 gallons. Most of the time, I'm putting in 1.5~1.8 gallons because I don't like getting so close to 150 miles | ||
| Slimshaky |
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I feel a bit better now about my gas mileage, and I think that there is room for me to put additional gas in. I've always been conservative about that due to the warning label. | ||
| Missionbolts |
I removed that label, then one day overfilled the tank. Had fuel dumping out the breather hose as I rode off. I figure about 5 miles or so it must've stopped wasting my money That would have been about 1/2" from the top of the fill hole. I was about to ride out into the national forest and wanted as many miles in my tank as possible | ||
| Ahampton128 |
My 2005 Blast with a Vance & Hines exhaust averaged 68.7 MPG with about 125 miles between fill-ups. From Feb 2013 until Oct 2017 I put 12,011 miles on the little thumper. | ||
| Gearheaderiko |
68 mpg is very good and you might be a little lean. If you overfill a non modified California bike you will shut it down because of the epa equipment. |
