Can't break 40 MPG, should I be concerned?

[wswartzwel]

We burn used oil in our shop heater in the winter time... At over $300/Mo for natural gas. it paid for itself in a couple years..

[markjenn]

To encourage conservation, I'd prefer that we simply raise the price of fuel with taxes and let economics take care of things rather than issue "mandates".

I don't have a problem with high fuel taxes because right now the cost of fuels in the US does not reflect the economic burden to clean up the CO2 and mitigate the damage that global warming will have long-term, and to fund the military to keep supplies open and keep governments in power that are friendly to our energy needs. Fuel taxes are clean, simple, and relatively non-bureaucratic. They directly affect people's vehicle buying habits and encourage conservation first. If there is one thing I truly love about Europe is how much smaller and more efficient the cars are over there, and how much motorcycling is a vital part of the transportation picture.

But higher gas taxes are the political third-rail in today's political climate. Didn't the Republicans float a trial ballon for awhile to do a temporary rollback in fuel taxes to "benefit hard-working Americans" who need cheaper fuel to keep their Tahoes and Suburbans humming?

Here in WA state, we're voting on yet another 0.6% hike in the extremely-regressive sales tax (which puts us well over 10%) just to fund short-term emergency transportation infrastructure needs, and doing almost nothing to fix some major problems like our floating bridges that run a 5% risk of sinking each and every year. But no politician has the courage to suggest that we hike the gas tax which is directly related to transportation funding - instead they're going after a hike in the already astronomical sales tax. Ridiculous.

- Mark

[wswartzwel]

One of the problems I see with that is large pockets, can still pollute all they want, and in the case of Corporations.. pass the added expense on to others.. it does not curb pollution. and is a burden to rural areas that need more energy for transportation even if being conservative.

[Eisernkreuz]

Brilliant, Mark, solving the country's problems by taxing the people more. Put a nice little band-aid on that severed artery! I think the last thing the government needs is more of our money.

How about instead of taxing people more, we get oil companies out of bed with our government, so we can develop real alternative energy sources without having the oil lobby block every new technology with their influence?
Maybe we can curb the waste on state and local levels, which are notoriously ineffective and inefficient, at least in California. The crap our city council or UC Regents get away with is ridiculous.

[markjenn]

Originally Posted by Eisernkreuz

Brilliant, Mark, solving the country's problems by taxing the people more. Put a nice little band-aid on that severed artery! I think the last thing the government needs is more of our money.

How about instead of taxing people more, we get oil companies out of bed with our government, so we can develop real alternative energy sources without having the oil lobby block every new technology with their influence?
Maybe we can curb the waste on state and local levels, which are notoriously ineffective and inefficient, at least in California. The crap our city council or UC Regents get away with is ridiculous.

Just your typical anti-government, anti-tax, consipracy theory, politicians-are-hiding-the-100mpg-carb rant. I suspect you believe we didn't go to the moon in 1969 too.

Governments waste money. Fact of life. Certainly we should try and reduce it, but waste will always be there. Saying we can't inact pro-conservation policies until governments stop wasting money puts us in gridlock. And BTW, one man's "waste" is always anothers "vital project".

And some of that extra gas tax money could go to "develop real alternative energy sources", either directly through research incentives or indirectly by making alternatives more competitive. Probably the main reason we can't develop alternatives right now is because gas is just ridiculously cheap - cheaper today in constant dollars than it has been in any time in history.

- Mark

[pmc847]

I think Miran has a very valid point. When ever our fed gov gets it's fingers in the pie it mucks things up. When is the last time you saw a tax on something really go for what they said it would go for? Tobacco for smoking related health issues and education? Gas tax for transportation? Alcohol tax for whatever? They start out with good intentions and then before you know it they become addicted to the tax revenue and pet project get funded. How about subsidies. It seems that subsidies end up lasting forever. If a product or technology is so great, ethanol and stem cell research comes to mind, then why does the gov need to subsidies? If it's so great then industries would jump on it to develop it to get the patents and control. It also seems to me that when the gov hands out grants and subsidies what they get back is what they ask for and not necessarily the truth. And, what happens to any discoveries or patents that are discovered? Shouldn't the gov get those patents because they funded the development/research? But they don't. Someone else gets the prize and we, the tax payer, get the bill.

Look at the current House and Senate approval rating, 11%. Doesn't that tell you something about the bang up job they are doing? Their track records speaks for itself, they can't be trusted to do what is ethical, moral or even legal. And who is to blame? We are for letting it get out of hand and not taking an active role in government.

Do you want to talk about pork? Do you want to talk about accepting bribes from lobbyist? By the way, lobbies aren't the problem it's the senators and congressmen who have conditioned the lobbies that if they give they will receive. Yep, there's a new sheriff in town, since the election of 11/06, and nothing has changes, in fact things are probably worse.

I really didn't want this to get to this point, political talk always gets out of hand. I just wanted to know if anyone else had experience the same results with E10 as I have. Come to think of it, isn't it interesting that if my results are somewhat accurate then it goes to show that government is backing the wrong horse again. The gov claims E10 saves oil and reduces pollution, not. Plus the development of ethanol has increase the cost of food. Yep, let the gov tax and control.

Mark,

You have some very valid point to ponder but I don't think gov control is the answer.

The sooner we burn all the fossil fuel the sooner someone will come up with a viable replacement.

Just my thoughts.

Philip

[Eisernkreuz]

I just wish the CA legislature would get rid of that 1976 nuclear bill that prohibits building new nuclear plants until the feds figure out a long-term waste storage plan. In '06, two power plants in CA made 32,000 GWh while all the gas power plants (about 300, IIRC) made 108,000 GWh. But you can't get nuclear past the hippies and soccer moms today.

[RBMann]

Originally Posted by Eisernkreuz

prohibits building new nuclear plants until the feds figure out a long-term waste storage plan.

And the half-life is?

RB

[markjenn]

I view the risks of nuclear power about like the risks of nuclear weapons.

In the short-term, the risk per year of an accident is fairly low, but anyone who thinks the governments of the world can have 10K warheads, on average 50x more powerful than Hiroshima, on hair-trigger alert pointing at each other and not have an accident, madman, George Bush, or whatever pull that trigger over periods of hundreds and thousands of years doesn't know very much about statistics.

With our relatively short lifetimes, the human race is just not well equipped to judge risk for such low-frequency but incredily-high-catastrophic-consequence events. It's Russian Roulette for the human race with a 500-chamber gun.

We had the nuclear industry assure us over tens of years that it is "safe" but TMI and Chernobyl are proof that the industry and the government agencies running the show are not to be trusted.

I take a long view and am inherently distrustful of technological solutions that don't address how fragile our human instuitutions and governments are. If we sow the seeds of our destruction, time will cause them to sprout eventually no matter how deep we bury them.

- Mark

[throttlemeister]

I guess you won't get into an 800 passenger Airbus A380 either.

Nuclear power is safe and you cannot compare a 1950's technology (and safety) powerplant like Chernobyl with what we can do now here in the west. It is also the cleanest power too at the moment that can deliver the amount of energy we need. I would rather have a nuclear plant in my backyard than a coal or oil burning plant in the same city.

[markjenn]

Originally Posted by throttlemeister

I guess you won't get into an 800 passenger Airbus A380 either.

Be reasonable. The consequences of an Airbus 380 falling out of the sky are 500-or-so people dead. The consequences of a major nuclear accident could be hundreds of thousands dead within a week or two, millions within years. Not to mention huge areas of the world rendered permanently uninhabitable.

As to the argument that today's technology is safer, probably yes. But as I discussed, the security of governments and instiutions in the world is probably less safe. And if the track record of the industry is two major accidents (and countless smaller ones) in 50-odd years of service, what does this say about how many accidents we can expect in 1000 or 10K years? And how do you really know how safe a new modern safer design is? What track record do we have? Because the engineers have engineered it to be safe? Well, that's what they told us with the 1st generation of technology. Why do we trust them more now? The instuitions are essentially unchanged. The economic factors are the same. What has changed to let us assume a better result now?

Sure, I too would much rather have a nuclear plant next to me rather than a coal-fired plant (or any fossil-fuel plant for that matter). Any day of the week. But that's because you and I would make this decision selfishly, based on the probable risks and benefits during the time we thought we and our families would live there. We're willing to load the 500 chamber Russian Roulette piston and fire off six or ten rounds if our quality of life would be appreciably better for the time we'd live there.

Society has a larger responsibility to safeguard the human race as a whole entity, not selfishly do what is opportune for a generation or two. This speaks to what I said earlier - each of us as individuals is not well-prepared to make the tradeoffs between the short-term and long-term impacts of a technology when the consequeces are so radical. If each of us in the human race maximizes our current lot right now, we're absolutely doomed to be extinct in a relatively short period of time. We have to accept larger responsibilities to have a long-term sustainable future.

- Mark

[Raven]

Talk about ranting consipracy theorys!!!

Lighten up and take your soap box some where else!!

[hawkeyejohn14]

uhm.... sorry just peeked in and saw the thread was hijacked....back to whatever y'all call this....

[AZ-Twin]

Originally Posted by squall_line

I rarely go above 80 MPH on my commute, and spend most of my time around 4200 RPM on 35 and 55 MPH country roads, ~55 miles round trip daily. Long trips to/from Chicago on backroads also made it to about 39 MPG, but no higher.

What mileage should I be getting? Is 40 MPG a pipedream?

Granted, I can't seem to get decent mileage in ANY vehicle I've ever owned, so maybe it's a driving style issue, but I wanted to pick the brains of the forum before I resigned mysef to anything.

Have you considered taking the bike to a shop that can "sniff" the exhaust and look at the mixture. I would imagine something simple like a faulty sensor could cause a mixture problem that may affect your mileage.

I know when I re Jetted my Suzuki for altitude here in southern AZ, I noticed an immediate difference in mileage, and the bike ran better. We are talking about a small metering difference.

Does the bike perform the way it should, or do you think it should run a little stronger.

HTH

Have a good day.

[squall_line]

As far as "protecting our progeny", as the thread hijackers worry... I'm not really worried what happens with a nuke plant 1000 years from now, and anyone that IS worried should have their head examined. Can anyone remind me what we were using to power the computers in our homes back in 1007 A.D.? To think that fission plants as we know them now would be considered anything but "dark age technology" by 3007 A.D. paints a pretty dismal view of the power of human creativity and innovation.

But, back to MY original problem...

One thing that leads me to believe it might be running a little richer than normal is that it has a Staintune exhaust on it, and no cat. However, the system was already installed when I bought the bike, so while I have the original exhaust laying around to look at, I have NO idea if the cat elimination was done properly, and I haven't had the time to check to see where the O2 sensor got moved to. I'm assuming that an improper cat elimination can cause mixture issues.

Not sure if there are any shops around here that can sniff exhausts. I have a feeling such shops would be less prevalent in a state without emissions testing (like IA) than in one with, but I've never checked.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'll make an effort to check the exhaust today before I forget about it.

FWIW, when I babied the throttle, short-shifted, and ran below 4k for a full tank recently, I got about 41 or 42 MPG. It was the least exciting 180 miles of riding I've had on an S, though. Just made the concept of the bike seem pretty pointless.

[throttlemeister]

I have a Staintune exhaust too. The bike was running lean, as they all do. I systematically got 32mpg and only if I tried really hard I could get close to 40mpg.

Then I got a chip from Robert Foster for my specific setup. It runs a lot richer now. It also pulls much harder and overall runs much better. I now have to try really hard to get under 38mpg on the street.

Strange? Not really. These bikes can run so lean, you have to twist and and turn the throttle to get the performance you want/expect causing the fuel economy to go down the drain. Proper fueling allows you to run the same speeds and acceleration without having to turn the happy knob as much so you actually improve economy. So you are basically making more effective use of the fuel.

I am sure Robert Foster (aka boxercup here) can explain much better than I can. You need a good chip to sort your bike out and Robert's chips are the bestest.