Personal best mpg!

[davidc83]

Never thought of looking there, thanks. While there were no studies I could find, significant data was posted by several suggesting that mpg peaks at around 80 to 85 degrees. Exactly what I was thinking with very limited data. It appears that the increase is linear from about 40 degrees to 85 degrees, with a considerably steeper line below 40. Very interesting.

For the first time in 6 months I checked my tire pressures (bad owner). To my embarrassment, they were 8 psi low. That makes me think tire pressure on a motorcycle is a fairly trivial component of efficiency as my last two tanks were 79/78 mph, a personal best per the title. I certainly notice low pressures in car efficiency.

Anyone anecdotally documented lower mpg on under inflated tires?

On my OEM Dunlops, I could notice lowered handling performance with just 4 psi under inflated. I'm only on my second set of tires, but could not tell the difference with another brand. That's a bit concerning on a couple levels.

8psi low isn't really that low: remember the pressures listed is for max pressure at max weight (460lbs-weight of rider, pinion, and any luggage).

 

[Toccopola]

mpg

i live in mississippi and ride the trace a good bit. speed limit is 50mph, my bike a 700ncx is a 14 manual with just under 15k, madstad windscreen and rear box. my best is 96mpg. riding the 4 lane to and from work at 65-74mph it gets 60-50mpg. my weight is 180

 

[Fred Harper]

Speed is the enemy of milage. Best is 68, worst 52.

 

[SilverRocket]

I have seen 72 mpg on my gauge, coming up PCH through Malibu into Camarillo farmland. I think it would have stayed around there had I not started to run into stop lights as I got closer to the 101 freeway. The speed limits on PCH go from 45-55 and I wasn't in a hurry.

On the freeway home, where I'm doing about 73-78mph in the fast lane just to keep from getting run over, my MPG drops to about 58-60MPG.

 

[alloo66]

68 MPG, don't remember what I did or where I drove to.

 

[New Commuter700]

I dipped below 75 average mpg with the last couple of tanks. I have been working longer hours lately and have a tendency to ride a little more aggressively after a long day like quick starts and running a bit faster on the freeway. What's interesting is this shows that idling in rush hour traffic may not be as bad as riding faster.

My best mpg was 82.87 way back when I was still breaking it in at under 2000 miles. My best so far this year is 84.04 but with the caveat that the next tank was 66.83. This shows that a 'best' mpg has to be looked at in the context of the two fill ups on either side.

 

[Janus]

The first time I broke 80mpg was early March, loads of rain and cold weather. Mixed highway and city riding. I was commuting to about 40 miles each way. I decided to start going the speed limit (60), and not pass people who were going tolerably under the limit. I regularly got snarled in Tacoma traffic and would be limited to rolling 10-20mph on good days. Lots of time to practice clutch control.

My personal best is 82.53mpg over 225 miles.

My personal worst was 53.7mpg over 139 miles. Riding two-up, fully loaded for a weekend at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. Flying through the mountains of southern Oregon, trying to make it to our play when we left three hours late. If you twist her hard enough, she'll push 80+ up those hills. Janus would not recommend this behavior.

We made it on time. For the most part I was getting mid-low 60s on the trip down, even with the uh... additional windspeed.

My lifetime average is 70.53 over 31,392 miles using 448.2 gallons, plus about 10 gallons unrecorded.

 

[SilverRocket]

I don't know if the first gen models have this feature, but there's a Trip B tripmeter that I reset with each chain lube that also has the MPG for that segment, which is usually about 3 fill-ups.

 

[dduelin]

I don't know if the first gen models have this feature, but there's a Trip B tripmeter that I reset with each chain lube that also has the MPG for that segment, which is usually about 3 fill-ups.

I found over the thousands of miles I tracked my fuel use on Fuelly is that actual calculation of distance / fuel is that the bike consistently out performs the average MPG reading, usually by about 2 mpg.

 

[670cc]

I found over the thousands of miles I tracked my fuel use on Fuelly is that actual calculation of distance / fuel is that the bike consistently out performs the average MPG reading, usually by about 2 mpg.

Agreed. Using the vehicle’s onboard trip computer for fuel economy often gives you optimistic results. My motorcycles do not have an mpg readout, but my Honda truck generally reports about 2 MPG higher than it really is. That's close to a 10 percent error sometimes. I believe that it reads high intentionally, by design. Therefore manual calculations at fill up, over many tanks or at least a full tank, is all that really matters to me. Even then, if you really wanted accuracy, you’d need to check and account for the odometer error percentage, which I don’t bother with.

Anyway, my NC700X personal best was manually calculated at 94.5 mpg over 292 miles. I’m no longer able to repeat that because I’ve added too many accessories that increase wind drag. I’ve ran at least 2 tanks beyond 300 miles, adding 3.55 gallons at fill up, although that mpg was below personal best.

 

[Jt105]

My car’s mpg reading is overly optimistic (it shows better mpg than doing the math myself).

My NC700X is pessimistic. It reports worse numbers. I actually get about 2 mpg better doing the math myself.

JT

 

[Grey1one]

The best I've ever done was a ride through the Sierras where I calculated the use at 84.6 mpg.
That's all high altitude (peaks near 9K feet), low ( 35-55 ) speed riding.
Down in the valleys on the highways running 65-70 mph I'm usually in the mid 60s.