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Johnj wrote:I always get 30 - 35 mph and I don;t care!

It's not so much that I am trying to save a buck, but limited range on any bike sucks if you try to ride distance.

High_Side wrote:

Johnj wrote:I always get 30 - 35 mph and I don;t care!

It's not so much that I am trying to save a buck, but limited range on any bike sucks if you try to ride distance.

Yeah agreed. It's a real pain in the a$$ to have to constantly stop for gas. It's nice to have a 200+ mile rage. The only one that has that out of my bikes is the BMW.

You say the bike is old. What about how well it has been maintained and has power fallen off too? I'd perform a compression check and check spark plug color. It may be tuned rich and just wasting gas.

Both my wicked ZX-9Rs are maintained, tuned with the exact same carb and airflow setups and get nearly identical MPG readings.

e1_zx-9r wrote:You say the bike is old. What about how well it has been maintained and has power fallen off too? I'd perform a compression check and check spark plug color. It may be tuned rich and just wasting gas.

Both my wicked ZX-9Rs are maintained, tuned with the exact same carb and airflow setups and get nearly identical MPG readings.

That's just how they run... If you ride them aggressively they get poor mileage. It comes from having a single carb for the two cylinders I think. The one carb has to be pretty decent size so it can feed them both, and puts in more fuel.

The worst I ever got was 32 MPG on my old '80 Yamaha XS 1100, on a trip where the throttle was open - a lot. The best was on my 84 Yamaha FJ 600 while on a long ride (700+ miles in one day) while crossing multiple high-altitude mountain passes. For some strange reason, the thing seemed to like altitude. I averaged 68 MPG for the day, and that was 20 MPG higher than normal! My little Honda CX 500 I have now gets right at 48 MPG, and it doesn't seem to matter how much or how little I use the throttle. Since my truck only gets about 16-18 MPG, I'm not gonna complain!

Considering that older shaft driven bikes get less MPG compared to chain driven bikes it seems about right in line. The shaft drive adds weight, same goes for saddlebags. Keep in mind that one carburetor is doing the fueling for both cylinders as well.

Proper tire pressures, a decent windshield, cleaned carburetors and better/ cleaned air filter can help increase mileage. Some people I've known got 42 MPG with their old Volusias doing a constant 75 MPH and then drop down into the 30s while in town or constantly vary their speed on the highway.

On my Vulcan I managed to get 56 MPG after installing a K&N air filter, carb synch and clean and a change in final gear ratio by swapping out different sized sprockets (can't do that on shaft bikes but maintenance makes up for it IMO). The windshield helped with the aerodynamics as well, especially at speeds of 70 - 80 (constant) in 6th gear. It would go down when the air pressure was lower than optimum and with loaded saddlebags and dirty air filters.

I get about 50 on my 05C50. Lot less lately though. I've been kinda er... heavy handed aint quite extreme enough for it.


Beating the poor girl with a switch is closer.


I think she's into S&M though, she just begs for more.

Hey zeligman I have an 02 vs 800 and that mileage seems about right I have been posting on intruderalert.com and a lot of people on there are saying they get about 100 miles out of a full tank of gas. So far I have been letting mine get up to 120 miles and the other day I stopped at 130 miles without going to reserve so I have been getting better than average. That's around 40mpg