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New Roadster steel tanks

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I bought my new tank from Andover Norton already pressure tested so I haven't ever put any fuel in it until now. As it's been to the paint sprayers and spent a long time in a box I thought I should test it and flush it on the floor before I did the final fit. I only put in about a gallon and all was fine with no leaks, but I noticed that the fuel I carefully poured in seemed to stay in the right side. After a good shake about I sloshed it over to the left side and put it back level on the ground...... It stayed in the left side! After evening the fuel out again, when it came to time to drain it out, I levelled the tank and took the bung out of the left side fuel cock hole and all the fuel drained from the left side but not the right! Of course once the tank is full it will balance out over the central saddle hump but surely this will play havock for the fuel feed once the level goes down, and with the main/reserve setup? Has anyone else noticed this? I can resolve it by opening both fuel taps of course but then I wont have a reserve. (I'm quite sure theres nothing in the tank blocking it by the way)

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Perfectly normal...it won't enter the other side until it's high enough to go over the hump.  When you fill it properly you'll see the level rise quickly. Then it will stop rising as the fuel cascades over the top tube recess, and when the other side is full it will rise slowly. The industry made a virtue out of necessity by describing this as a reserve system when saddle tanks first appeared and bikes suddenly needed two fuel taps.

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.. it acts as an extra reserve as you can lie the bike over and get access to a few more pints if you have a standard tap on one side witha riser (usually the right) and a reserve tap on the other.

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I found that the side with the standard tap with riser holds a significant amount of fuel that I cannot get to the reserve side by leaning the bike over. I prefer the look of the Roadster and therefore put up with the frequent pit stops, but was frustrated when I 'ran out of fuel' one day but could see quite a lot left on the standard side.

I removed the riser from the standard tap (so now have two reserve taps) and now run with just the right hand tap open, and use the left hand side as reserve. Obviously you need to avoid fuel starvation, but one tap supplies fuel at a sufficient rate for my riding. I ran fuel out of one tap into a container to see the supply rate, and don't think that I could possibly use it faster than that which I saw.

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Good to know it's not only mine. I had visions that i might have blocked passageways with gobs of tank sealer or something. I think I'll do what Richard has done in this case and run with two reserve taps, that makes sense. I don't remember ever having this issue with the fiberglass tank but I do remember having to fill up every hour. Thanks for all you replies. Hopefully I could be actually riding it soon - for the first time since 1990 and whilst the weather is still fine..... Its been a long rebuild! 

 


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