What should the GS idle at with the choke all the way on? Mine idles at 4k RPM, which makes me think that the bike is running too rich. Not only that, I've noticed some liquid (I'm guessing gas) on the tip of my exhaust pipe after doing some riding, and I just got 34 miles on 2 gallons of gas (I used the same method to fill up both times at the same exact pump). I know that my aftermarket exhaust will lower my MPG a bit, but getting about 17 MPG is just a tad too low, don't you think?

4k with full choke warm sounds good to me. Liquid at the tip of a (cold) exhaust is usually condensed water. (Gas burns into water vapor and carbon dioxide.)

But with your mileage something is wrong. I doubt that a GS motor can even burn this much gas and still run decently.

Is it possible that it's not burning the gas at all and there's a gas leak somewhere? But then, I don't see any pools of gas under my bike or anything, so I'm at a loss. And my riding style is fairly conservative (cruise at 4-5k, rarely go over 7k, although mostly city). Plus strangely, my bike is able to start up in 50 degree temperature in the morning without any choke and still idle pretty stable at around 900RPM. I always thought the GS was supposed to be cold-blooded, so  .

Is that mileage a one time incident? Because if it is, I'd suspect some measuring error first. (It is, for example, possible that zeroing the trip meter was not accurate.)

yeah 30 something miles on two gallons is aweful.  If you don't see a physical leak and that was a one time measurement there has to be some kind of error.  The liquid on the pipe could and probably is water, if it was gas you would have major problems and if that much was going through the exhaust you would def have a really rough running and probably backfireing with flame.

Quote from: pingpong on December 20, 2006, 12:54:43 AM
What should the GS idle at with the choke all the way on? Mine idles at 4k RPM, which makes me think that the bike is running too rich.

4k is normal with the choke on.  It IS running rich, with the choke on, that's the point.

I think mine will idle closer to 5k rpm if warm and running with full choke.