Fuel Guage useless?
 

Picked up my new Tenere yesterday (:laughing7:), got through two tanks of fuel so far - or so the fuel guage would have me believe....

the owners manual says when there is one segment (of six) left on the display to 'refill as soon as possible'. So this morning after 30 miles of ridng with only one segment left i refilled - and only managed to get 15L in my 22L tank. This afternoon following another 170 miles my guage said i was empty again so i refilled (already suspicious by this point) to find that i could only squeeze 13L in the tank - i had not far off half a tank left!

as you might have guessed, my question is - is it just my fuel guage which is crap or are they all like that? a shame if they are all bad as it occupies quite a bit of space on the display and if i end up using my trip meter to guage the fuel then its a right waste of space.

Same here! I already got used to it, but you're right, it's kinda strange how it works. And according to the manual there's even 23lt in the tank, so using your tripmeter you can go about 500km's before refueling! Greetz, Hans.

I noticed that the fuel meter is very conservative, but then, there isn't a reserve option on the fuel tank. As I understand from the manual, once you hit the bottom of the fuel gauge, the trip meter starts counting up. Now 30% reserve is a little on the high side, many bikes run from 10% to about 25%, but is not ridiculous, given that the Tenere is an "adventure" bike.

A rough calculation suggests that the tank (full to empty) is good for about 300miles depending on how you are riding. Realistically, with a range like that, I would be looking for fuel somewhere about 200miles, which, spookily enough, is about the bottom of the fuel gauge. This allows for a certain amount of "shopping around" if the fuel in the area is scarce or particularly expensive.

A lot depends on the rider, but I have always filled up the tank completely, and then ridden to the odometer, rather than the fuel gauge.

Regards

Si

same here, I use the odometer.

Yep (hi new to forum btw), also noticed this and it is kind of annoying. As everyone else I drive on odometer and refill before I hit 400km or the odo flips to the "km left" mode.

Molgan, :hello: and :welcome: to :660:

add yourself to the Tenere poll mate! http://www.xt660.com/showthread.php?t=7082

That sucks balls, I'd be hacked off with that!

Ty, and done. :deathmetal[1]: <-- the amount of smileys in this forum is astonishing. =)

fair enough - they're all crap! on My XTR i always rode to the odometer too so i'll carry on doing that, thanks for the reply folks :smoke:

My XTR 08 was much the same (obviously without a guage) but the f-trip cut in after about 10 liters had been used.

I had the same experience when I first got the bike. I had 1 bar left and could only get 13 litres in. The next time I went onto 1 bar I filled further up the nozzle and got 15 litres in. On a long run I let it go on the last bar for about 25 miles and then the bar and the icon started flashing (odometer read 230 miles but I had been giving it some on the motorway) - I think at this point you have 7 litres reserve. When I pulled into the garage to fill up I got 16 litres in! So if you let it run until the guage starts flashing I estimate that you have about 80+ miles to go.

sounds good - thanks for the info.

I plan to strap a fuel can to the back of the bike and ride till it splutters out - i'll post the results.

gas gauge
 

According to the manual, page 3 - 12, "Fuel reserve amount (when the fuel level warning light comes on): 6.7 litres, 1.47 imp gallon", so there's nothing wrong with your fuel gauge. It just seems like Yamaha being a bit conservative. Personally, I'd like to re-calibrate it so the last bar flashes with 2 or 3 litres left, I think that would be more realistic. As it is, you could probably do about 70 miles on reserve, with an annoying light flashing at you!

Ah...

I guess i should have read more than one paragraph of the owners manual then. Suitably embarrassed now, but at least i know my guage is right!

my question is - is it just my fuel guage which is crap or are they all like that? a shame if they are all bad as it occupies quite a bit of space on the display and if i end up using my trip meter to guage the fuel then its a right waste of space.[/quote]

In my experience all fuel gauges on bikes are crap:incon_aargh[1]: I always ride to the odometer.:icon_thumleft:

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/2668/hpim1618kp0.jpg

i am Tony, 48 y old and live in Belgium and here is a foto of my bike.

the feul level warning was blinking for 75 Km so i did a refeul and put 19 liters in the tank with a total of 470 Km. that makes me happy .

tony

You've got some cool looking luggage on your bike! :headbang:

Well, another Tony! Hi there, I'm from Antwerp and my tenere is to be delivered in 2 weeks. Whats the make of the luggage (zijkoffers) as I ordered the Yamaha topcase. And is that a Yamaha tankbag?

hoi

The luggage is from Hepko-Becker, the tank bag is from Hein Gericke.
The luggage carrier was used on a Triumph Bonnevile but with a little bit of welding we made it to fit on the tenere.
good luck with your new tenere

One problem with bikes in general and especially with the Tenere's oversize and odd shaped tank is that it is almost impossible to physically place a guage inside the tank that can read the fuel level from the top to the bottom.

If you think about it, when full the level starts dropping from the area around the filler cap. When half full it is somewhere at the level of the internal hump below the filler cap and when low it is down in the lower flanks. To measure all these areas would take a very special guage/sender.

This goes some way to explain why the guage does not move for the first 70 miles or so then drops rapidly until the reserve. To put an accurate guage inside would probably include either more that one sender unit or a very complicated one that would shove the price through the roof.

Just my 2 cents worth of dribbling..

I could have wrote that myself!

The flashing bit is telling you you've 7litres of fuel left, if you ride frugal, then you'll get 80 miles out of that, seams a bit daft to lash with that kind of distance.

The fuel gauge is all over the place, dead straight long roads (Sweden in my case!) and I managed 230 miles before the flash, other times on twisty bouncy roads (Romania) and I was flashing at 120 miles. I tend to ride on the trip now, head for fuel at 200 miles.

I can regularly get about 200 - 220 miles before the fuel gauge goes blinking and then only get about 16 litres in, so my calcs will give about 300 miles on a tankfull. But then I do ride like an old git (as I am!)
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During my trip in Scandinavia, I've kept track of my fuel usage. Except for the autobahn blast in Germany, I figured out that when the blink began, that meant I still had half of the already-run-mileage left. For example, when the blink began and my trip meter said 330km - I call it the blink km or "F" in my equation (more on this later) - I would still have 165km to go. I figured this out by recording how much fuel I put in each time, the total km I've ridden with that tank, at what km the blink began, and some simple math. The trip meter and the "F-trip" readings are readily available, I just had to do two simple math calculations: 1) Tripmeter minus F-trip=how many km I've ridden when the blink began exactly, 2) multiply the result of 1) by the factor I've derived. They are simple enough that all of us should be able to do that in our head while riding, which is important. Of course, if one decides to ride easy before the blink, then ride like a bad a** after the blink, then the theory will go out of the window. So based on my records, I constantly saw 0.48 to 0.52 times F km left. I usually started looking for gas when I passed the 0.4 F during my trip, because the variations of my riding style were limited. However, I made a mistake one time, when I turned on the heated grips after the blink began but I was still carrying the theory of 0.4 times F, I ran out of gas at 0.3 times the blink km. Very luckily, I was only 400m away from the gas station. If you are interested and have the patience in trying this method on your respective Teneres, I recommend you to do some record keeping like I did, and don't take my 0.4 to 0.6 factor as given, because each of us rides differently on different roads with different style. Once you have a range of factors that you are comfortable with, you may apply to it then.