The title says it all…we had a great motorcycle ride up to Oak Glen here in southern California, and we surprised ourselves with amazing fuel efficiency.
I mentioned in a post last week that I took one of our older bikes out for a quick 60-mile ride, but I didn’t tell you what I saw for fuel economy. My ride yielded 76 mpg, and I’m no welterweight (that’s a nice way of saying that I appreciate the finer things in life, like McDonald’s, Burger King, and, well, you get the idea). I rode the bike hard and I still saw 76 mpg. Steve, Tony, and I wondered what these motorcycles could do under the right circumstances with more, ah, streamlined riders…and that’s what this post is all about.
I have a connection with California State Polytechnic University, so I asked around to see if I could find a couple of lighter guys for a factory ride on these great new bikes. Wow, the response was overwhelming! A shot at being a test rider for a new motorcycle company…it was a dream gig, and we picked a couple of great guys to help us see just how efficient these bikes can be.
Here’s a photo of Peter and Joel, our newly-commissioned test riders, early on a Saturday morning. These young fellows are both mechanical engineering students at Cal Poly Pomona.
Peter is an experienced motorcyclist…his usual ride is a big Honda XL dual sport…
Joel is also no stranger to motorcycling, with lots of seat time on a CBR 600 and several other bikes. His current ride is a Yamaha Virago…
We first had our guys ride on southern California surface streets through some fairly populated areas. We asked Peter and Joel to ride easily, doing what they could to optimize fuel economy. You know the drill…easy throttle roll ons, steady speeds, and all the other things we do when we want to save gasoline.
Here’s a shot of Joel topping off his CSC motorcycle with 89-octane Valero gasoline…
Steve and I followed the guys in Steve’s truck as Joel and Peter had an easy run along Baseline Avenue. Baseline takes its name from the fact that it parallels the base of the San Gabriel mountains. It’s a nice ride. We rolled along through La Verne, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rialto, San Bernardino, and Highlands. We dropped south a bit to pick up the road that would take us out through Yucaipa on our way to Oak Glen.
Those bikes look pretty good tooling along Baseline, don’t they?
The ride was relaxed, but southern California being what it is, we caught quite a few stop lights before we topped off again for our first mileage check. I was blown away by the results, and my first thought was that I made a mistake. We had traveled 35.2 miles, and Peter’s bike used a skimpy 0.360 gallons! I used an old fashioned circular slide rule, and I came up with about 97 miles per gallon. Joel’s bike was an older configuration that did not have the current carb (as did Peter’s bike), and his bike still did 90 miles per gallon. Peter and Joel checked my numbers on a calculator, and the magic number for Peter’s bike was a whopping 97.77 miles per gallon! We were feeling pretty good about this. Even with a fair amount of stop-and-go traffic, the bikes showed amazing fuel efficiency. Peter and Joel were extremely intrigued by my circular slide rule, too. When I went to engineering school (just a few months after Moses led his people across the Red Sea), we didn’t have calculators or Excel spreadsheets; we did it all with slide rules. Peter and Joel are of a different generation. It was an interesting moment.
Peter and Joel were eager to wring the bikes out, and after seeing the results described above, Steve told the guys to ride the bikes the way they normally would. So, here we go…two young engineering students on two of the newest motorcycles on the planet, with the company President’s blessing to ride ’em like they stole ’em. Oh, this was getting interesting.
Our guys continued along this great road toward Oak Glen. We were out of the condos, stop lights, traffic, and suburban sprawl…and the road was beautiful. This ride has always been one of my favorites.
As the road continued to climb we came to a historic bridge northeast of San Bernardino, and we stopped to grab a few photos. Steve wanted to hear what Peter and Joel had to say about the California Scooters.
A cool shot of Steve, Peter, Joel, and a couple of great-looking motorcycles near the source of the Santa Ana River…
We followed Joel and Peter along these great roads, climbing into the foothills to Oak Glen. This was our turn-around point. Steve treated us to a great lunch and I grabbed another shot of the guys as we started our ride back to the plant.
We passed interesting places on our way up to Oak Glen, and the guys mentioned at lunch that it would be a good idea to stop for photos on the way down. It was a great ride. Joel and Peter were having fun, testing the bikes’ handling limits and doing the kinds of things young guys do on motorcycles. Joel dragged his pegs a few times in the corners. One of the cool things about a bike with a small engine (in addition to incredible fuel economy) is you get to explore all of its capabilities without the insane speeds a bigger bike would see. It was a lot of fun.
One of the places we stopped for photos was this cool old country store…
The country store made for a great photo shoot, but the folks hanging around the place really made it interesting. The bikes drew a crowd as soon as Peter and Joel parked. Everyone admired the motorcycles, they had a lot of questions, and it was a lot of fun. It was the same experience I had on my ride a week ago (see my earlier blog, Rock Star on a Ride). We handed out a bunch of business cards and invited people to the factory. It was a cool experience.
Here’s a place with Paul Bunyan, the Statue of Liberty, and a big chicken…I’ll bet the guy who owns this property is an interesting character.
We passed Art’s great shop (Doug Douglas Motorcycles) in San Bernardino. Art, Danny, Daniel, and Jeremy are good friends, and good friends of the California Scooter Company. Art sells Triumphs and Royal Enfields, which are both great bikes. Here’s Peter checking out the engine on a Royal Enfield in Art’s shop…
We stopped to look at an unrestored Edsel (yep, an actual Edsel)…
We rolled back to La Verne and stopped one last time for gas. We wanted to see what the bikes did with these lighter guys on board under much more, umm, spirited riding conditions. The verdict…just over 80 miles per gallon! That compared favorably with my 76 mpg last week (I’m a much heavier rider, so I expected my mileage results to be a bit lower).
I think it’s fair to say that if you ride a California Scooter hard, you’re going to see something in the range of 75 to more than 80 miles per gallon, depending on your size and weight. If you want to go for top fuel economy and you are a lighter rider, well, we saw 98 mpg under less than ideal conditions (stop-and-go traffic, lots of hills, a new motorcycle with just a few miles on it, etc.). On a flat road where you can run at steady speeds without stopping, I think 100 mpg is entirely possible. You might be attracted to our motorcycles for their style, quality, and overall fun…and we’d like you to know that getting up to 100 mpg is part of the deal, too!
surprised at what the bike returned. I did a few top end runs, I wound the bike out through the gears to see what it felt like throughout the rpm range, I charged up into the hills, I rode in 5:00 p.m. Friday rush hour traffic along Route 66, and I played Ricky Racer through the twisties. In short, I probably did everything possible to hurt fuel efficiency, and I was blown away at how efficiently this little cycle sipped the go juice. We’re doing a couple of tests to assess fuel efficiency in the next couple of weeks, so I won’t publicize my results, but I will tell you the miles per gallon is substantially better than what we’ve been publishing.
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