Baja John weighs in on fuel range…

Baja John and Joe Gresh (perpetrator of The Burnout That Changed The World) in the Grand Tetons

I received this nice note from Baja John this afternoon…

Joe,

I wanted to let you know that I ran the RX3 out of gas today.  I didn’t baby the bike during this tank of gas.  I did 73 miles of dirt, about 60 miles of highway, and the rest on city streets.  Well, I guess I babied the bike a little bit since I didn’t do a burnout (Note from Joe B:   That last comment was targeted at Joe Gresh; you’ll have to read 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM to get the whole story).

At 247.5 miles I pulled up to an intersection.  When I started to accelerate, the engine briefly lost power and then caught again.  That was the first indication of low fuel.  I tried accelerating hard again, and the same thing happened.  As long as I accelerated very gradually, the bike ran smoothly.  Finally, about 2.5 miles later, the bike starting chugging.  I managed to get almost another mile down the road before it quit at 250.9 miles.  I had gas with me, so I put a gallon in, and the bike fired right up.

My Tourfella aluminum luggage was on the bike.  Since I did a camping trip with my cousin last week (hence the 73 miles of dirt riding), they are still loaded with all of my camping gear, tools, spare tubes and pump, first aid, etc.  I weighed them after they were loaded to ensure that the side bags had balanced loads. The two sidebags weighed about 30 lbs each with all of the stuff in them, and the trunk weighed about 26 lbs with its load.  

John

That’s very interesting.   I’ve never run my tank dry to check the bike’s range, and this is a great input.   John had several things working against his optimizing the range of his RX3 on a full tank:

• John doesn’t completely fill the bike; he always leaves a little space below the fuel filler neck.
• John doesn’t put the bike on its centerstand when filling the tank (he could squeeze a little more in there if he did.
• John was carrying close to 90 lbs of additional stuff in his luggage.
• John did 70+ miles in the dirt (where fuel economy is always significantly lower), and 100+ miles on city streets (where fuel economy is not as good as steady highway driving).
• John is what we call a full-figured rider (he tips the scales at about 250 lbs).
• The Tourfella bags stick out into the airstream more, and as such, they will reduce the RX3’s fuel economy and range a little bit.

Even with all of the above, my good buddy Baja John still managed to get 250 miles out of a tank of fuel.  I think that’s pretty good.  When I get back from Yosemite this week, I’m going to run the same test on my bike to see how far I can go on a tank of gas.  I’ll get I can get at least 300 miles out of it (maybe even a little more).  I’ll keep you folks posted on this, and John, thanks for your note.