Well the last few days I've been a bit worried that my fuel gauge doesn't seem to work properly, as it had been going down quite quickly towards empty, and I'd only done about 100 miles! Got to 115 today and the light came on, so I went to fill it up to check the light was coming on when it should. Popped it on the centre stand (is that the best way to fill this bike, or is it the side stand?), and got 16.4 liters in it, so if the reserve is the stated 4.5liters it should be, then my reserve light and fuel gauge is pretty much spot on!
This however led to another issue, I appear to have only got 32mpg! My riding for the last tank has been entirely around town, not really any hard acceleration, but there have been a few traffic light drag starts
As my old Ninja 900 would do about 44mpg in the same circumstances, I'm guessing that this does appear to be quite high usage?
The bike doesn't smell of petrol when running, and seems to run well enough for what it's worth! I did check my tyre pressures for the first time today and found them to be about 5psi each below what they should be, so got those filled up to 36/41. Also readjusted my tickover, it'd been seeming like it was going to stall a bit when pulling away in the very cold so I'd upped the idle a bit to help, (up to about 1250), got it back down now to about 1150 (which sounds a bit low by ear, but is the top end of what the Haynes manual recommends).
I think what I'm going to do to make sure that the mpg issue wasn't because of me not filling it all the way last time, is I'll keep an eye on this tank, if it's roughly the same then I know I've got an issue! My bike is stock engine wise, bar a slipon exhaust, and from what I've read they run a bit lean anyway as stock so I shouldn't really be running rich! I also weigh about 10.5 stone leathered up, so it's not because I'm weighing the beasty down - the engine doesn't notice the difference between me and a mate on it, just feels like it wants to lift more with a friend
