biggxx

2003, purely stock. Commuting, 34 mpg unless I'm being rowdy. Charging around in the twisties, 32 mpg. A bit less in the winter. Highway, I usually cruise at 70-85, 37-39 mpg. The best is when I'm backroads touring with friends, who most often do speedlimit+10. That gets me 39-40 mpg consistently, it's the moderate speeds and long stretches without stoplights, I think. 'Course there's all kinds of variables. In the winter they sell MTBE gas here, that brings it down by ?? percent. And it's 10% ethanol all the time now, that hurts too. I get over 40 mpg if I put premium in, but I usually run regular unless A) it's really hot weather; or I want the extra power. The manual says 87 is fine, but I think the knock sensor is limiting max power, especially when it's hot out. So I end up twisting the throttle further and my mileage goes down. When I'm touring, the low fuel warning comes on at around 170 miles when I use regular, but not until 190 or so miles with premium. I bought my bike in August 2005 as a close-out, zero miles. I assumed that the mileage would get better as the bike broke in, but with 17K miles so far, I haven't seen any significant improvement yet.

I just went out the garage to experiment. When I read what you wrote, I thought maybe the starter button had somehow been jammed in a little bit, enough to disable the headlight. But the headlight doesn't turn off until the button has been pressed in a few millimeters, then the starter kicks on in just another millimeter or so. So my problem wasn't caused by a jammed starter button. But next time I'll know to check the right-side switchgear, because when I had the starter button partly pushed in, the headlights did just what they did when I was on the trip. So it probably was related to the right switchgear, the headlight relay, or the wires/plugs in between. Thanks for the tip. I'm thinking that I should investigate this weekend, instead of taking the chance that the headlight will decide to blink out again while I'm in a tight corner on a dark night! Both high and low beams go away so no backup! Years ago, the headlights completely failed on my old Kawasaki because the fuse blew. It was a dark and rainy night - but luck was with me, it happened at the LAST streetlight on the way out of town - I was about to head up the twisty mountain road back to our camp!

TY. I'll look at that because that is when the lights went out, when I was switching the high beam on for broader lighting pattern at highway entrance ramp. click. nothing. uh-oh. It happened to me on a recent trip. My XX is still pretty darn new - a 2003 bought as a close-out with zero miles in 2005 - it only has 17000 miles on it. This was the first time it acted up. I don't know what if anything I did to cause it. We pulled into our dinner stop and the guy riding in front of me said "y'know, your headlight is out." I was surprised, but we'd ridden a lot of bumpy back roads that day so I figured the lowbeam bulb filament was broken. Tried the highbeam, nothing. (nor did the blue highbeam indicator go on.) I checked the fuse, it was OK; swapped in the spare fuse anyway - no joy. Someone did suggest the switch but I wasn't in the mood to disassemble that at the restaurant, 400 miles from home. After we ordered, and were waiting for our dinner, I went back out to the parking lot. For some reason I decided to trace the switch wire harness into the fairing. Reasoning that it plugged into the electronic instrument board, I reached up under the instruments (hard to do with big hands) and traced the wires up to where they plugged in. I wiggled the plug a bit while pushing it toward the board. Surprisingly, this seemed to do the trick - and the headlights have been working ever since - all the way home, and for several weeks of commuting and multi-hundred mile weekend day trips. I'm not unhappy that the problem went away, but I wonder if/when it will happen again. It may be that the plug was just a tad loose and I fixed the problem... I dunno. Oh, the turn signals worked fine while the headlight was out - I would have noticed sooner if they weren't working.