Spaceteach
New Member
Thanks for the correction Jay. Apparently I'm losing my math skills as fast as my memory.
Bob
Bob
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When my bike was new, I could predict to within 5-10 miles of empty.
Now, it's a crap shoot. You can't have them fix a problem under warranty if you can't duplicate the problem.
Not that I would, but I wonder if you can lemon law a bike? Lol
When my bike was new, I could predict to within 5-10 miles of empty.
Now, it's a crap shoot. You can't have them fix a problem under warranty if you can't duplicate the problem.
Not that I would, but I wonder if you can lemon law a bike? Lol
The present abundance of personal injury attorneys and the vain attempt to make everyting idiot proof and harmless leads them to replace the simple, reliable and inexpensive reserve valve with a costly piece of electronic gadgetry that still doesn't work all that well.
I am a programmer of industrial controls and small microprocessors, and i am here to tell you it would have cost Honda not one cent or yen or whatever to make this gas gauge "linear' - so that each bar reports very nearly the same amount of gas in the tank (when the bike is sitting level). The electronic instrument panel is microprocessor controlled, so it is just a matter of the proper software. But it will NEVER show the same mileage per bar, because this bike more than any other I have owned gets RADICALLY poorer gas mileage when running slow in the lower gears than when cruising in top gear.
But that is not my complaint. As many others here have said, you get used to the nonlinearity, which was common before the days of electronic instrument panels for the reasons mentioned here - odd size and shape of the tank.
NO, my complaint is about the action of the bottom bar. For all of the other bars, when the bar above goes out you ride for some distance (typically a bit more than 50 miles for the upper ones and a bit less for the lower ones), and then that bar goes out. But then you get to the second bar. After you ride through the second bar any sensible person would expect that you ride some further distance on the bottom bar before it goes out to expose the little red blinky light. That is how it SHOULD have been programmed. But instead, as soon as the second bar goes out the last bar goes out too and suddenly you are in the reserve. You have gone instantly from two bars showing to none. THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG and it is nothing more than a programming error. It would cost maybe an hour at most and probably more like five minutes of the programmer's time to make it right, and not a penny more for hardware or hardware changes. SHAME on Honda for letting this slip through.(BY the way - not sure but I think the redlight is back there blinking all the time - it is only hidden by the bottom bar. There is a good cost saving reason for doing this, but that affects the discussion above not at all.)
That being said, yes I always use one of the trip counters as a backup gas gauge. (I figure that is why they gave you two of them.) But still if they have to save money somewhere, I would MUCH prefer to just have the old manual reserve valve and no gas gauge at all. If it fails after 30 years or so you just order a repair kit for $5 or maybe even a whole new valve for $25 and put it on yourself. I make this electronic stuff for a living and can almost guarantee you that this expensive electronic dashboard WILL be one of the first parts of a well maintained motorcycle to fail and when it does you will not fix it yourself with a $25 part. If it follows the usual pattern of electronic components, it will last long enough that by the time it fails the components inside will no longer be available and of course Honda will not stockpile any inventory against that possibility occurring when these machines are 10-20-or 30 years old. The sensor itself can be replaced, but inside the dashboard there are no user or even factory servicable parts. When any part of it quits (and it surely will) you replace the whole works - speedometer, gas guage, trip meters, clock, LCD display -- and it will cost $hundreds if you can even get the replacement assembly by then. So if you are planning to keep this bike over the long haul it is probably not a bad idea to just buy a spare dashboard from the junk yard in a few years when these start showing up there.
My theory is that a few unskilled riders over the years (maybe only a few more than have been struck by lightning while riding) have had accidents involving getting distracted while fiddling around with the reserve valve because they didn't take the time to learn to find it by feel and learn which way is reserve and which way is off BEFORE they ran out of gas going down the road. The present abundance of personal injury attorneys and the vain attempt to make everyting idiot proof and harmless leads them to replace the simple, reliable and inexpensive reserve valve with a costly piece of electronic gadgetry that still doesn't work all that well.
Your pessimism about the instruments panel's reliability surprises me. My experience with automotive and motorcycle electronics has been very positive over the years. What other brand motorcycle instruments have you I had that were so bad you can predict their imminent failure with such certainty? I don't plan to stock pile gauges, expecting them to break.
Greg
The electronics unit could be re-programmed? Hmmm.... is there a firmware update for this item?
so you are probably better off programming your brain to accept the non-linear readings than to program the electronics
Or, you could brick a couple of $264 Combination meters trying to figure it out.
Remember: The pioneer is the guy with the arrow in his chest.
PS not stocking up a parts that may fail years or decades down the road.
Everybody has their own spares stocking strategy. I choose to stock "doomsday spares" for all my stuff in a couple of 40 ft. cargo containers lined with heavy duty shelves.. When I got out of airhead BMW's I made good money selling off some high value spares that I had purchased "right" and tucked away. On my current BMW, I keep critical spares boxed and ready to ship so that I can call my wife and tell her to "ship box number so-and-so next day to Timbucktu". I haven't had to do that yet for personal need, but I have bailed a couple of less well prepared friends out by shipping spares to get them going. Once a friend called and asked if I had a drive belt for a Polaris Ranger because the factory wanted two weeks to get one to him. "Yup. Got one. Send me yours when it comes in." I may well put back a combination meter in a few years when used spares become inexpensively available.
Remember the old low fuel lights that started to glow when therm-mister would warm as the fuel no longer cooled the sensor
I'm going to take a stab at this.
In the old CB750, I ran till it ran out and just simply switched to reserve using a petcock or just filled it every 100 miles to be safe. Obviously, with the NC700X there is no such thing. From what I keep reading, the general consensus is once you hit the 200 mark, pretty much safe to say fill it. I will say that if you think your fuel gauge is off, report it to the dealer immediately and get it in. Now, I am not sure how the fuel gauge works on the NC, but I am assuming the float is attached to an electric fuel pump inside the tank. On a trailblazer, I know when the fuel gauge starts acting up (showing mis-readings) it's a good indication that the unit is failing, following a fuel pump failure. Not to say that this is the case with the NC, as I said I have no idea how it's setup just taking an educated guess.