Ran out of gas today... which way is reserve?

I'm a new rider on a '93 CBR600 F2. I've never filled a tank before, so
here's my story.

So I ran out of gas today about 0.5 miles from home. No biggie. Tank
looked like it had gas in it... I guess it wasn't enough. Walked back home,
pedaled the pushy over to the gas station to get a container and some gas,
pedaled the pushy back to the moto, rode the moto back, rode another pushy
back out to get the first pushy and gas can, and now all is well.

Since my bike has different fairings from stock, I don't know whether
reserve is up or down on the petcock. I tried switching it the other way
and then trying to start the bike after it lost power, but it didn't make a
difference. Maybe I was on reserve the whole time... The honda service
manual is, as usual, completely useless. An owner's manual would be so much
more useful since I'm a new rider.

Anyone know how to tell whether reserve is switched up or down, or know off
the top of their head?

 

Def the post of the week !!

 

Why would the fairing make any difference if the petcock itself is
bolted to the bottom of the gas tank?

The main supply is probably straight up and down and the reserve
setting is probably sideways, pointing forwards.

 

Does that model have an electric fuel pump? I can't tell from looking
at the fuel tank diagram on www.partsfish.com which model is gravity
flow and which has an electric pump.

A motorbike with an electric fuel pump may have the fuel pump relay
controlled by the engine electronic control unit (ignitor box) and when
the fuel pump runs out of gas, you may have to do a lot of cranking the
starter to fill up the carbs. Every time you stop pushing the starter
button, the fuel pump quits because it's not getting a "run" signal
from the ECU. This confuses newbies that have added fuel to the gas
tank, only to find the engine doesn't immediately start.

(The engineers at Yamaha cleverly engineered a five second electronic
timer to run the fuel pump and fill up the float bowls but other
motorbikes lack that handy feature.)

 

From looking at a couple of pictures (link below), it appears that the
positions are "Off", "On", "Res", with "Off" located a 9 O'clock, "On"
located at 6 O'clock, and "Res" located at 12 O'clock.

links to large pictures:
http://static.sportbikez.net/bikepics/1128135800.jpg

A google image search might turn up better pictures, but I'm not
interested enough to spend more time on this. HTH

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

Hey man thanks... I didn't think of looking up pics like these. I'll give
it a try.

 

I'm guessing you know the answer to this one already, but it's because the
directions are labeled on the fairing.

 

Interesting. I don't know whether it has an electric fuel pump or not, but
I do know that when I got gas and filled it up, I cranked it for about 5 or
6 cranks and it popped right up. A few more cranks than usual, but nothing
too long. Thanks for the input though, I'll check it out.

 

Typically not. Most 3-position petcocks that I've seen (on/off/reserve,
and on/prime/reserve are the variants that I've run into) have the
off/prime position at a right angle to the on and reserve positions.
This makes sense given the typical setup of the on and reserve settings.

IME, the petcock itself is a solid disk of metal, with a hole bored
through it _off-center_! There are then two holes in the tank fitting
and some arrangement that leads into a single hose-barb at the other
end. The reason for two holes in the tank fitting is because a "tower"
sits inside the tank, and this tower has two separate sides (each
corresponding to one of the fitting holes), and it has a hole/opening on
each side. The "on" side has its hole higher up in the tank than the
"reserve" side does. That's what the reserve is: the gas lower down in
the tank.

Back to the positions of the valve: on and reserve are parallel to each
other because there's only one path through the disk. The difference is
which side of the in-tank "tower" is supplying the fuel, and that
difference is made by "switching" the side of the disk that the hole is
on...accomplished by rotating the disk 180 degrees. The off position is
simply a position where the body of the disk blocks the flow of fuel
through the fitting.

I hope this explanation made sense. Anyway, it's a pretty elegant
solution to the design problem, IMO. Simple, robust, and quite
effective. fwiw

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

I hope this explanation made sense. Anyway, it's a pretty elegant

Perfect sense. Thanks.

Why do they call it a "prime" setting?