Hey fellow riders I have been reading alot that some of you will not ever run on reserve, or always fill up before you hit reserve. Word to the wise I almost always run my bike till it spits and backfires(bike talking to me that its out of gas) and run reserve for about 10-15 miles. If not then I will run it on reserve for about 50miles after I fill up. Now reason for this is because if you have tiny particles sitting in the bottom of your tank it will suck them out. So if you never hit reserve and then the one time you have to on a long trip or whatever then you might just get stuck on the side of the road. All those particles over the years have just clogged your filter and jets. So do you and your BABY a favor and run it on reserve every now and then. You and your bike will aprreciate it.

I ALWAYS hit reserve! LOL

Is it possible to swith over to only reserve?

There is not true reserve ... it's all the same tank.

The petcock has two tubes inside the tank, one of which is lower that the other. On normal, the gas is drawn through the higher tube. When you run out of gas, the level of the fuel inside the tank is lower than the upper tube. When you switch to reserve, it draws fuel from the lower tube.

Doc

If I do not have someone up my tailpipe ...I let her run out then go to reserve to keep the bottom clear as others have suggested....Coug

If you want to flush out the "reserve" feeder tube, you could move the petcock valve to the reserve position at any time...
Never using the "reserve fuel" from the tank, I usually turn the valve to the reserve position when I'm driving around town... (That's when I figure I'm going to be sloshing the fuel around the most...)
Also, because of the rubber gaskets in the petcock... I've learned from my old "650 Special"... (and certain parts of this old body I'm in...) If you don't exercise things, they tend to stiffen up and not work when you need them to!

Thanks for the suggestion. I am one of those guys that usually fills up just before I hit reserve. I'll give it a little exercise today and see what happens.

By the way, on reserve means about 1 gallon remaining, right?

And another question for a newbie, which is the "arrow" or "pointer" end of the valve handle? The fat side or the skinny side? It could go either way if you think about a hood ornament.

Fat side is the pointer...kinda "bass ackwards"

JHouse wrote:
And another question for a newbie, which is the "arrow" or "pointer" end of the valve handle? The fat side or the skinny side? It could go either way if you think about a hood ornament.

The pointed end is the pointer.