Some petrol saving tips
Posted by Howard Trott on Saturday, November 18, 2017 Under: Motorcycle Petrol Saving Tips
One of the simplest things to do and something that is often overlooked is to ensure your tyre pressures are correct and in line with the manufacturers guidelines. As a positive consequence this also improves the bikes handling characteristics and makes you feel happier and more comfortable on the bike.
Ensuring your bike is regularly serviced and well maintained can make quite a difference to the economic properties of the motorcycle. A poorly set up machine will certainly use more fuel.
Smooth careful application of the throttle especially when moving away from a stationary position improves economy dramatically. Try to avoid traffic light races, a motorcycle is considerably lighter than a car and can easily get up to road speed with minimal effort and strain compared to a car. You will find that just a quarter turn on the throttle will happily keep acceleration of your motorcycle ahead of other traffic. Try to avoid aggressive throttle action, it uses far more fuel.
Try to avoid labouring the engine at low revs and adversely avoid the top third of the rev range. Both extremes use far more fuel.
Look further to anticipate what other traffic is doing. This way you could avoid usage of the brakes and allow the just engine braking to reduce the speed of the bike. With careful planning and timing you can often avoid coming to a stop altogether and just gently keep the bike rolling. However, be aware that this gives little or no information to following traffic and mindful of our limited visibility compared to a car we need to be careful that the vehicle behind doesn't run into the back of us. A light caress of the rear brake pedal may be required at times to inform other road users that we are slowing down.
Keep to speed limits. Unsurprisingly this will not only save fuel, but also keep your licence nice and clean.
Those lovely panniers may look great on the bike, but they increase both weight and drag and will require more fuel to keep the bike travelling at speed. If you carry very little in them consider wearing a rucksack instead.
When travelling at higher speeds consider how you are sitting on the bike. Motorcycles are tested in wind tunnels with riders on them to work out the best airflow. If you are sitting up out of this airflow or your arms and legs are sticking out you are creating a drag on this which will use more fuel. By tucking in a little you reduce drag and often find that the wind noise is reduced thus saving your hearing and allowing you to arrive at your designation less drained.
In : Motorcycle Petrol Saving Tips
Tags: motorcycle petrol saving tips motorcycle riding