Some of you may know, by bike was laid up for a week or so waiting on parts. I've been getting way too friendly with the electrical system on this bike while doing some instrument panel work and in the process accidentally fried some components. Well, by pouring over the schematics, and testing various circuits with my DMM and oscilloscope, I eventually narrowed the problem down to three possible components. So I bought all three and had them shipped - that took about a week. Good thing I bought all of them, because the part that I was 95% sure was the culprit, it was not - it was the other one. Of course, the replacement component that corrected the problem was the most expensive one, but my bike fires like it should and is running better than ever.

Until .... I was pulling around the turn into my street. The bike started sputtering and then died. [&:] So I just pulled in the clutch and drift down my hill and into my driveway. The bike starts up again, OK. Hmmm ....

I can see gas through the translucent IMS tank, and can see down the into it from the cap, so I think that maybe it's not that. Were my electrical problems more serious maybe and something else failed as a result? The IMS tank does not have much of a reserve at all, only about 200 ml or so. So I figure I'll risk it and try and get to the gas station 3 mi down the road. I set out and the bike is running fine. About a mile down the road, it dies again. [:@] This time, it has the tell-tail sputtering / lean running of going empty on fuel. My heart lifts a little, could it be just low fuel? I turn the petcock to reserve, crank it up, and away we go to get gas. No further problems. At the station, I put in 3.1 gallons - the IMS tank is only 3.2 gallons so it was definitely running on fumes.

I guess I'm just a little paranoid after my bike was down for a week and I'm jumping at shadows

 

Man..I hate it when that happens..but it's a big relief when you discover that you're only out of gas..

 

I had a similar problem yesterday except I thought it was something in the carb gone haywire as I did the mods myself. Turning around a cart corral in the parking lot at work it sputtered so I clutched it and revved it and it caught and as soon as I let the clutch out it died. At 5mph the rear tire just stopped instead of keeping the motor running and I toppled off to the left. Caught the bike just inches off the ground but the way I was standing I couldn't do anything with it so I just set it down, however the handguard (stock) squashed flat and the clutch lever pinched my middle finger. Nice purple spot on the fingernail now. And the culprit was.........................forgot to turn the petcock to on from off. Needless to say I'll be leaving the gas on now.

 

Ahh, the good old running out of gas!

I remember the first time that happened to me. I was riding my brand new 1968 Honda CB350. I had just put 600 miles on it and was ready to start "enjoying it" I knew that the bike ran out of gas at so many miles, so I checked to odometer and had plenty of gas left. So I started running the gears, hitting redline on a regular basis and just having fun. After an especially spirited run through the gears, I slowed for a corner, then the bike fell flat on it's face as I rolled on the throttle and sputtered to a stop. "Oh no, I've destroyed my bike!" were the first thoughts to run through my head. Then I opened the gas tank and noticed the level of gas was way low. I switched to reserve and it fired right up and ran perfectly. Guess all the wide open throttle used a bit more gas than I anticipated!

Motorcycles are great training devices!