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You have a gas smell or fuel spilling out of your cap?

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Old 07-18-2018, 10:04 AM
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Default You have a gas smell or fuel spilling out of your cap?

In this heat you may be experiencing fuel smell or gas spilling out from under your cap after a fill up...

You should check your vent tube by blowing through it... disconnect the rubber hose connection from under your dash panel and make sure it is easy to blow through. If it is, then you or the bike's previous owner have probably been over tightening your fuel cap. In my case I bought an out of lease police bike and this started happening to me this summer. A new gas cap fixed the problem.
 
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Old 07-18-2018, 10:17 AM
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Going to disagree a little with you on this. At least for what I know on a non CA canaster bike.

The vent hose in the top front of the tank goes I to a vertical held check valve that has resistance but does go one way out. That resistance is to prevent raw liquid fuel from surging fwd in tank.

Something wrong with a 2014 gas cap being bad...

It vents vapor under a slight pressure build up. The one way vent in and to also let fuel pump work correctly is the vent one way in cap.

There is some non vent generic caps out there and some people stupidly remove the vent hose check valve. The get raw gas coming out vent hose. Stinks up garage and can be a fire danger.
 

Last edited by Jackie Paper; 07-18-2018 at 10:19 AM.
  #3  
Old 07-18-2018, 10:38 AM
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This occurs when people fill the tank too full also as there’s no need to fill every last ounce of space you can. When the tank, fuel, and airspace heat up, it all has to expand and the liquid and vapor will go wherever it can.
 
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Old 07-19-2018, 11:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Cygnusx51
This occurs when people fill the tank too full also as there’s no need to fill every last ounce of space you can. When the tank, fuel, and airspace heat up, it all has to expand and the liquid and vapor will go wherever it can.
And when the cap is sealing properly the vapor (resulting pressure) goes out the vent tube. I have never had this problem in 56 years of riding and I fill the tank the same way I always have. Overtightening the gas cap compresses the o-ring that is supposed to seal the cap until it will no longer will seal the cap... this could even be the result of ethanol on the o-ring shrinking or hardening the o-ring. All I know is that you use one click and stop and if you buy a used bike you have no idea how the PO tightened the cap but I have heard gas caps get clicked 2 or 3 times regularly.

A new cap allowed me to fill the tank the way I always have... and that is just below the inner hole in the tank structure... not above it... which is full to me... and I never over clicked my cap once that became a 'feature' of HD caps.
 
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Old 07-19-2018, 01:13 PM
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Originally Posted by cwsharp
And when the cap is sealing properly the vapor (resulting pressure) goes out the vent tube.
Correct, and some fuel may go out the tube also when overfilled and people have reported this happening when overfilling the tank. I wasn’t arguing with your little PSA, just throwing out another cause for some that may be smelling gas when they fill up and go home and park the bike. From your explanation about how you fill the tank, it seems you aren’t overfilling it, that’s why you haven’t experienced this in 56 years.

There’s many ways to skin a cat just like there isn’t one concrete reason why someone may be smelling gas around their bike.
 

Last edited by Cygnusx51; 07-19-2018 at 01:15 PM.
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