Hi All,

I've been recently trying to pretend my 05 XL883L is a touring bike and I've found the most frustrating thing to be my lack of a gas gauge. Does anyone know of any aftermarket parts (HD or not) that would reliably let me know how much fuel I have left. My model is carbed, so it has a reserve tank, but I'm finding that at highway speeds I don't like going much about 80 miles without a fill up. This is probably my one biggest sore spot with this bike.

Thanks in advance!

Mike

 

This is the only gas gauge I know for a Sporty other than the Tripodometer:

It's kit from Lick's cycle that mounts to the outside of the tank as a site gauge.

Oh, and you shouldn't worry about flipping to reserve or re-fueling until around 130 miles or so.

 

Thanks for the reply, I've never seen anything like that before, but its definitely a neat idea. I've had to flip to reserve a couple times just after hitting 100 miles. Maybe I'm running a little rich...

 

Do you know what your MPG is? You should be able to get 120 from the peanut tank out on the road. While this isn't the longest range, I like to stop every 90 minutes or so to stretch.

 

I'll have to check out the MPG, I'll be putting about a thousand miles on her in a couple days.

 

There is a HD gauge that attaches to your brake fluid resovoir and another one that replaces your gas cap - both are digital and very expensive - if you do a search on these forums you`ll find pics.

 

I was looking at the one for the break fluid res. online today, its only for 07 and up (I have a 2005). Not sure on the gas cap ones, I saw a couple variations of this at the HD store, but didn't look into what they went for. I'll have to check those out - they were on sale for 100 bucks, which seemed a little high for a couple LEDs stuck in a cap. I'll be going to another HD store tomorrow to pick up some parts, I'll have to pick their brains a bit.

 

you can get one of these installed...

 

The brake cap/led job is for the fuel injected bikes only I think, as its got parts that mount inside the gas tank.

Its much better to just use the trip meter, bikes with gas gauges are somewhat modern....

The tripmeter cant go wrong, figure out the range till reserve in average riding and look for gas when it gets close.

In the past, when I took long trips on bikes with smaller gas tanks, I removed the petcock and extended the normal tube a bit (with a piece of fuel line) so the bike went on reserve at about 1/2 a tank of gas (90 miles).
That gave me the choice of going back, or getting to the next stop, and made sure I never ran out of gas on that bike.

In some places in the US, and at odd hours, it may be far between gas stops.

Brett

 

You mention the one that replaces the gas cap. Do they work on Sportsters? I was told they replace one of the caps on the bigger tanks and are not to be removed if you want an accurate reading. Just wondering.