Was opportunity to push the tank range, I discovered when the Low Fuel illuminates the Guzzi dashboard displays “Miles In Reserve” - I imagined that would be how many miles are left in the tank (like other bikes). Ooooh no, Guzzi simply displays how many miles since the warning light came on. How handy…
So, here we are, a Guzzi picture - Guzzi doing what they ought, doing miles - Routes Des Grandes Alpes, France
Tony
a couple more
a lot of hairpins down to that road ahead
and on the Med coast, parked up outside the refreshment service point (OK, the bar) was a … what ??
Not sure if it’s really possible to make an accurate miles remaining indication for a bike, with the fuel sloshing around etc.
I find the miles since reserve useful as a reminder and log , especially if I miss when the light comes on.
What tank range are you getting? I actually ran out on mine (2 valve) last year at 246 miles, in France. I reckon 30 miles on reserve is the limit and 20-25 miles for safety, and range varies from 210 to 250 Â depending on what I am doing
Bit of a puzzle in France with the Convert, had fitted the KPH speedo for the trip and doing the usual LH tap on main, then RH on main, then LH on reserve and finally RH on reserve. The tank is recently cleaned and all filters good so it was a surprise for the bike to start coughing after 5 k on final reserve and the fuel light did not come on, (it works). Just got to the filling station by weaving to slosh the remaining fuel around. Topped up to the brim it took 18.5 litres, this is meant to be a 25 litre tank! Any ideas? Chen reckons the taps can be screwed too far in.
Puzzled of Hampshire.
I had a vaguely similar prob years ago, switched both to reserve when main ran out, nothing! Blasted plastic tubes in the taps  that set the reserve level had shrunk so were loose at the bottom, letting ALL the petrol out on the main  setting! Had to fone the RAC
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Depends on the projected mpg, my  X10 does miles remaining BUT it varies according to throttle use, go faster, number decreases,  slow down, number goes up again.
The Clio car does miles remaining until petrol pump symbol comes on then the miles to next fill up display just becomes a row of dashes, meaning, get petrol NOW.Â
 X10 has 2L left when pump symbol starts appearing, tried it once and the fill up amount was exactly right for max. capacity minus 2 litres, don’t really want to do that again tho, a bit too anxiety inducing!Â
From my experience, all the new bikes do the ‘countup’ rather than ‘countdown’ when the fuel light comes on. I think the KTM1190/1290 Adventure and the GS WC show ‘miles to empty’ too but certainly the KTM one is wildly inaccurate.
The big tank Stelvio fuel light comes on when you still have 90 miles left before running out! It’s hard to get used to a warning that allows you to carry on for an hour at motorway speeds
It seems to be a universal issue with motorcycles. We can’t trust them to provide something as simple as an accurate fuel gauge but we are quite happy to put our life in their hands with cornering ABS, TC, anti-wheelie control etc!
Perhaps we as users deserve what we get. My 955i Tiger had the benefit of three fuel warning systems; Trip, fuel gauge (yes, a proper one) and a low fuel warning light. It didn’t stop me running completely dry on THREE occasions, mind you
The V7C low fuel light comes on & a count starts. Don’t know what it counts - feet, meters, fractions of a second - no idea. Go up a hill, the light goes out & the count re-starts.I do know that I have 60-80k left 'cause I’ve run it out on purpose. With the V7S, the low fuel light comes on when there’s about 6 litres left - that’s pretty useless - I haven’t found a count yet, if there is one. I manage the fuel by re-setting the odometer at each refill. I prefer the mechanical fuel taps on carbed bikes. You know then exactly where you stand. With the Enfields it is much simpler - switch to reserve, there’s a litre left - 80-90k. The extra litre in the luggage is another 80-90k. More than adequate. With the thirstier bikes, I don’t bother carrying extra, more than 1 litre is too much trouble. With the unreliable/unfathomable system, just don’t miss opportunities to fill up.
Hard to be precise, sorry, my memory is not so great. I was filling up the 1200 8V before illuminating the reserve, at about 200/210 miles, but I find consumption varied a lot. Riding 2 up with panniers & topbox loaded with ton of gear I was getting about 50 mpg (UK galls), but earlier trip solo and no luggage I was getting 10-20% more despite higher speeds/.
That time I noticed the Miles to Go figure I think I’d covered about 220 miles when filling up - but might have been a few more - and squeezed in either 19 or 22 litres - I had covered about 8 mi since reserve counter: at the time this was just another daily fill-up and I didn’t pay much attention. It was only later readingthe owners handbook for something else that I noticed the “Miles” figure was not a count-down to empty but is a count-up from going on reserve - I recall at th etime I was mightily surprised to see that “Miles” figure increasing not decreasing, now I know why!!
Rode in to work (perhaps ‘hooned’ is the term at 5am on empty roads ) and, for a change, I set the dash to read ‘trip’ rather than my default ‘mpg (ave)’. I didn’t spare the horses and to my surprise, when I did flip over to ‘mpg (ave)’ it was reading 52.2mpg! It usually dips below this when I’m riding with economy in mind.
It just goes to show the mpg readouts are about as reliable as a GS final drive…or dare I say it an 8V cam follower . No surprise there but I wish it was consistently unreliable to the same degree, rather than sometimes pretty close to the truth and other times more like a Blair war-cry.
Given the right conditions, I do get rather excited when using the revs on my 8V
At risk of mentioning the Piaggio again dunno about other systems but my X10’s average mpg count needs a fair few miles to ‘calibrate’, if I reset the trip to zero it has to do it all over again so for the first few tens of miles it looks pretty poor and erratic. As more miles are added tho it settles down at the higher numbers. There are two trips ‘A’ & ‘B’, I use ‘A’ to get a count of miles for each actual trip, but keep ‘B’ continuously running, not zero it so the average mpg readings are more realistic ~ hopefully! However it resets itself after each 999 miles or at least the odomoter wraps around to zero at 1,000 so not sure yet what effect that has on the mpg display part (not been watching it too closely)
I’d like that, a mile countdown, instead of all this mental maths – however all is not lost…
I found out both by reading the manual (!) and empirical testing that the 1200 has reserve fuel capacity of 1 US gallon - therefore the range (counted up on odometer after Reserve) on the 1 US gallon in reserve is essentially the same figure as th eAverage MPG being displayed - which is miles-per-US-gallon.
I found the 1200 Sport gives similar fuel consumption thrashing over Alpine passes solo and bimbling along with wifey on back. Little or no difference. What does make a significant difference (10 mpg) is cold starts and riding along with full luggage v. no luggage
) and, for a change, I set the dash to read ‘trip’ rather than my default ‘mpg (ave)’. I didn’t spare the horses and to my surprise, when I did flip over to ‘mpg (ave)’ it was reading 52.2mpg! It usually dips below this when I’m riding with economy in mind.
dunno about other systems but my X10’s average mpg count needs a fair few miles to ‘calibrate’, if I reset the trip to zero it has to do it all over again so for the first few tens of miles it looks pretty poor and erratic. As more miles are added tho it settles down at the higher numbers. There are two trips ‘A’ & ‘B’, I use ‘A’ to get a count of miles for each actual trip, but keep ‘B’ continuously running, not zero it so the average mpg readings are more realistic ~ hopefully! However it resets itself after each 999 miles or at least the odomoter wraps around to zero at 1,000 so not sure yet what effect that has on the mpg display part (not been watching it too closely)