[Milage]

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.

[headlights out]

FWIW, this same thing happened to Brandon from Illinois (Red '01 Bird - can't recall his forum name!) last weekend on a trip to the Smokies. He had no high or low-beam, although they would intermittently come on from time to time. We checked the wiring and fuses (all seemed A-ok) and eventually fired up a lap-top to search the forum.

I had remembered that there IS a relay that kills the headlight circuit when the starter is thumbed on most modern Hondas (the XX included), and between that and what he found in the searches, we narrowed it down to a loose wire in the RIGHT switchgear. Went back to the bike and bingo!; that was it! Basically a wire had come loose inside the housing, such that the headlight relay was keeping the headlight circuit turned off, even when the starter wasn't being activated. Touching the wire back to the proper point had the headlights come back on. Now getting the wire to STAY there was another story (we didn't have a soldering gun), but at least we knew how to fix it when tools became available!

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!

[headlights out]

The problem could also be in the left hand switch (bright/dim).

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.