I know there have been plenty of questions like this before, but has anyone happened to find a fuel guage that works on the sportster besides the one called an odo/trip meter?

 

Nope

 

Back on the farm we used a "dip stick" with notches carved on it.

 

A good stick will do if you can't find one use the eyeball method

 

There's always the real old school method of shaking the bike and listening for how much sloshing there is the tank. Or you can try praying that you don't run out before you hit the next gas station.

 

i noticed when my tank gets to a point where its almost completely empty, the engine noise reverbrates through it and creates this weird hollow revving sound.

 

Odometer/Petcock system! Given all the reports from the fuel idiot light......I like my Petcock!!

 

The finger method;

1. Straighten your right middle finger (without gloves, unless you are really cool and have fingerless gloves).

2. Insert straight finger directely into the gas tank, after removing the gas cap. This part is important or it may cause a false reading.

3. remove straight finger from gas tank.

4. Insert straight finger into mouth. I have tried other orifices and it just didn't work.

5. If there is a distinct taste of gas, do not stop at the gas station.

6. If finger is dry, (ensure you don't mistake spit for gas), you need gas.

This method has never failed me.

 

Has anyone ever tried this: Kuryakyn The Informer LED Fuel-Battery Gauge

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http://www.motorcycle-superstore.com...00C-Parts.aspx

 

I looked into this before buying the new tank on the 883. I really wanted a gas guage for two reasons: Running out of fuel on a fuel injected system is a Very Bad Thing, and my wife gets nervous when running low.

That Kuryakyn guage replaces a stock HD guage and is not a stand alone system, so you need to have the HD fuel sender to use it. Plus, after the Kuryakyn footpegs I bought disintegrated in about 2K miles or less, I'm done with buying Kuryakyn stuff.

The problem is that there is no sender. My dresser has a conventional float sender in it.A Sportster tank doesn't, and doesn't have any way to add one on. If you go with one of the quick-bob tanks with a fake gas cap on the left, you could possibly rig up a sender unit under the cap and use the Kuryakyn guage or mount some other type of guage, but my wife likes the peanut style, not the quick bob.

Another option is to get a capacitive fuel level sender and mount it in the tank somehow. Aircraft use these things, and some hot rod tanks. The fuel level changes the capacitance in the sender, and if I recall, electronics then change that to a voltage level that the guage can use. They are very cool to calibrate: Drain tank, push empty button, add 1/4 tank fuel, push 1/4 button, add another 1/4 tank, push 1/2 button, etc., then interface the fuel guage side and it will be perfect. The problem is getting the thing mounted in the tank with the wire coming out to the control unit. And, of course, finding a place for the control unit which isn't big but still big enough to be a PITA to mount. Then you still need a guage mounted somewhere.

I considered experimenting with this: The new peanut tank we have (and the last one, too, for that matter) has a vent tube that runs from under the cap down to the bottom of the tank. This one ends at the right rear of the tank. We don't use this vent and it is capped off. If I put a small wire up in that tube, it might change capacitance value against the tank with a change in fuel level. I could then build a circuit to read that change and give a variable voltage like the store-bought units. It was just a theory and I never expored it further. Instead, we just went with the 3.5-ish gallon tank which will have about as much range as my 5 gallon tank so we'll have to fill up anyway.