Is it bad to ride on the reserve fuel setting on the frame petcockall the time? When i have about 1 to 1.5 gallons left In the tank, the bike chugs and struggles and eventually dies on me but seems to be fine when riding on reserve all the time.
Are you sure you don't have the reserve and main hoses around the wrong way? What year bike is it. Everything else being right it makes no difference to run on reserve all the time other than you don't have any reserve when you run out of petrol.
It's a 99. Yes I've double and triple checked I have the hoses routed correctly. And thanks, I will probly just do that. Having it chug and die on the highway is a bit terrifying lol
Riding on reserve all the time is not going to hurt anything, but you may accidentally run yourself out of gas completely and get stuck on the side of the road. What you describe sounds like normal behavior to me, though. The bike gets starved of fuel when you have about a gallon or so left, then you switch to reserve and ride to a gas station or something. That's exactly what the reserve function was designed to do.
+1 to qc... sounds like when you're riding with the petcock switched to ON and you feel the bike start to cut out like that, it's doing what it's supposed to do. I taught myself to reach down behind my knee when that happens while riding and flip to Reserve. Then make sure to fill the tank up soon (and switch back to ON).
In regards to the questions about the correct routing of the fuel lines... the routing diagrams on the parts sites and the shop manuals are wrong believe it or not. There are corrected diagrams on this forum, on the GSTwins wiki, and on the "Suzuki GS500" facebook group.
...not sure if you knew that or not but I just figured I'd throw it out there for clarity lol. :cheers:
I appreciate everyone's input. I checked the hose routing and everything seems to be routed right but this bike keeps dying on me still, even though I now ride on reserve. Hitting highway speeds for about 15 miles, give or take a few, it still struggles to find power then just dies on me.. happened today again but at least it didn't take long to start back up and get going again any ideas? I think I may just take it back to the guy that rebuilt my carbs for me.. thinking he forgot something
@Nebersold,
Now what you describe is sounding a bit like vacuum build up in the tank. You prolly need to give more proper detail. It seems like you are now saying that even with a full tank and even on reserve that the bike will cut out after 15 miles on the highway, but it starts up again? When it stops next time open the tank cap and listen carefully to see if it's sucking any air in when you open it, could be a clogged tank cap vent. It's not difficult to take it apart do it slowly so you can figure out how to put it back together, there's some springs and a ball bearing. Clean it up, if it's clogged it could give you the symptoms you are mentioning.
Also if it's happening in both Reserve and On, try Prime. You could have a bad vacuum line to the petcock which isn't opening it fully, leading to restricted flow. Prime holds the petcock open, so it'll bypass that - although don't leave it on when not riding. Otherwise it's probably starvation further downstream and someone else will be better help than me.