One way to find out is to fill the tank and go for a ride on the parkways and check your MPG then. It will tell you if the miles per gallon are off. If it's just the city driving causing the bad mileage , this would verify that then.

If your bike has a 3.3 gallon tank , and at that rate you are getting 20.1 MPG which considering city driving, never really getting into top gear, stop and go, more use of the enricher etc. it could be about all you'll get. If it has the 4.5 gallon tank which I think it does, that's a bit different scenario then.

These are the comparisons for the gearing between the "R"&"C" and the other sporties...

R & C. = Gear Ratio (overall) 1st 9.454 2nd 6.500 3rd 5.040 4th 4.152 5th 3.517

Others = Gear Ratio (overall) 1st 10.944 2nd 7.524 3rd 5.834 4th 4.806 5th 4.071


The MPG figures as advertised are Carb. 52 hwy / 45 city . These figures are usually never obtained in real life situations and will again depend on idle time , stop and go, speed in gears , shift points, and other factors also. Your MPG will probably get better as the engine loosens up too.

 

Don't forget there is only 220 miles on the bike.

My first 300-400 were hell on gas. Its gotten significantly better as the miles go up.

He might just have a really tight motor.

 

Thanks for all the replies.

This is a 3.3 gallon tank BTW. So yeah, I'm averaging about 20 mpg. That'd be great for my truck but not what I was hoping for on my bike!

I just filled it up yesterday morning. I'm going to keep a extra-sensitive eye on things for this tank and see what happens. If it does it again I'll definitely make a trip into service and see what's going on. Given my schedule right now it might be a couple of weeks before I get there though, which would give thing more time to break in, just in case that's the problem.

bobcowan - you say you had a petcock problem. Before you had it fixed, was the tank actually empty when it claimed to be?

I'll keep everyone posted.

 

My Road King was the same after the 97" up grade, I would hit reserve at 80 miles the first few tanks, after that it just got better. I now get around 140 before reserve. I'm sure your bike is ok. Just break it in Hard and it will be just fine.

 

I had a 2004 1200r and I didn't switch over to reserve until about 110 miles.

Are you sure that you still don't have reserve at 60 miles?

Even then it sounds like something is not right. Is it possible that your reserve is messed up and maybe you have close to two gallons still in reserve?

Just a wild guess trying to help?

 

Pull a plug and see what the coloring is.

Normal plug should look like this: It's coming wait a sec.


This is a very rich running plug: