Thursday, April 7, 2016

Joining The Reserves

I finally got all of my ducks in a row and fired up the bike. I only ran it for 30-40 seconds. The pump seems to work well now. I was surprised to see the amount of gas that flowed from the idle bleed line. I had it running into a can and it pumped a quart, or so, into it. I thought it was no big deal, and I'm sure it is normal. Normal for a standard installation, that is. As we know, this is far from normal. I soon realized that there was a big problem. Let's back up a few years. When I added the pump, I also added a three way valve. On, off and reserve. It has worked flawlessly. When I run out in thee main tank, I would reach down and switch to reserve. Easy Peasy. Now it is very evident that this will not work anymore. Why, you may ask. The culprit is the idle bleed line. When I switch to reserve, the pump will draw from the reserve tank as it always did. However, and this is a big however, the idle bleed line will still flow the excess gasoline into the main tank. I estimate this will take 2 or three minutes and then my reserve tank will be sucked dry. Now, I could then, switch back to the main tank but this seems ponderous and Mickey Mouse. So, what I did was re engineer the fuel lines. The three way valve went into the parts stash. I ran a line from the main tank to the fuel pump suction side. I teed into that line and ran another hose from the tee to the reserve tank. In between the tee and the reserve tank, I installed a small, electric fuel pump and an electric shut off valve. When I run out of gas, I just flip a switch, the valve opens and the fuel from the reserve tank is pumped into the main tank. After 5 minutes, or so, I can switch it off. That's it. Nothing else to do but to look for a gas station.

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