Ran out of fuel again.

[Anorak_ian]

My bike ran out of fuel again. on the way to the bulldog bash.

I spent quite a while chugging in the hard shoulder, but she got me off the motorway to a gas station.

One thing that struck me as odd, was she doesn't draw air into the fuel system. It's almost as if it needs the gravity working on the fuel to make it work. When re fuelled she goes like a good un, no chugging the air out or anything else like, right back to normal. I'm quite impressed, as I have heard in the past, and always thought it was a real pain running out of diesel.

Anyone else come across this or is it normal

[Crazymanneil]

Not all that familiar with your engine but does it have a fuel lift pump? As well as the actual high pressure injection pump that does the injection, most are fed by a lift pump that carries fuel from the tank to and spill the excess back to the tank via the return line. This lift pump can be mechanical and can be built into the injection pump as in the Bosch VE and so on. Could be that this is not working on yours and you are lucky to get away with gravity until the level falls below a certain amount? Fits the symptoms just.

Or has it got one of them valve things like others on here do that cuts the thing off to stop it drawing air in and thus being a pig to start after?

N

[Anorak_ian]

Hi Neil, it has a new lift pump although off eBay.
The return pipe to the fuel tank has plenty of diesel comming out.

It had a valve thing to stop air getting in but I took it to bits, it turned out it should have had a solonoid on the end of it

[Sphere]

How big is your tank? Might be good to know, I plan to mount some emergency fuel container since I don't have a reserve setting

[Anorak_ian]

It's one of the old 1980's (small) Harley sportster tanks, which someone told me it was a 2 gallon, well he must of meant US gallons (this threw all my mpg calculations out by miles) anyhow it turns out to be 7.35 litres.

Yes I had a reserve tube on my fuel tap / filter but some one told me not to use it for some reason, needless to say it's going back on when I get the chance.

[Anorak_ian]

Oh I forgot to say, I used the Google map to the place where she ran out and chugged to the fuel station, it was ten miles

[sbrumby]

Check the filter, I had the same thing hapen on the diesel Yam, Which has the same engine as yours. If there is any restriction on the fuel out the lift pump will just cavitate, but on a full tank there is more pressure. If you run out it definately wont go another 10 miles.