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Forgive my lengthy dialogue in advance. After so many years on this planet, I find people like to read about the trials of others in order to make their own plights more bearable. so here goes.. Friday: so I took off on my Brand-new-to-me, 1997 RSTD which is my very first ever motorcyle. I was tired of being my wife's bit#@$ch as she has a Harley. So I went through the motorcycle course and absorbed as much as my ol' brain would take. I was having a great time right up to the point my engine started to sputter. No problem I thought. Just switch to the Reserve level in the tank. Except there was no reserve level. Bone dry. How? Was I motoring around with the fuel lever mistakenly in the Reserve position? Of course the wife is laughing hysterically at me now, which makes my ego shrink immensely. Nope. The long part of the lever was pointing down to the 'on' position. Maybe the person I bought it from told me wrong. Maybe the long part of the lever is not the indicator, maybe it is the short part and I truly was driving around in the 'reserve' position all this time..... Saturday: My Clymer on the RSTD showed up in the mail and showed the fuel lever operating modes. Yup, I truly was driving with the lever in the correct position. Then why no Reserve? Sunday: Curiosity got the best of me. My fuel indicator light never came on either. So time to find out what is going on. Off goes the speedometer cover and two pin trip button connector and the 18 pin meter connector get opened up. Interestingly the Clymer refers to it as a 12 pin connector... HHhmmmmm... Fuel lamp has continuity. Fuel sender connector is reachable just by taking the seat off. No continuity towards fuel sender, wiring towards the meter connector does have continuity. Wiring good. Off goes the meter, just cause I am curious now, and to clean up the previous 65,000 miles of dirt underneath it. Off goes the fuel tank after siphoning my tank refill into the gas can from Friday's refill. Almost ready to pull off the sender but I thought I better wait until Monday (today) to find out if my local dealer has the part in stock. I stare at the fuel valve assembly. I just have to find out why I had no reserve. Off it comes. As I pull the assembly away from the tank, I notice a short stubby piece of plastic on one input port and nothing in the other input port. Blowing through the output port confirms that with the lever in the 'on' position, the gas was being selected via the port with nothing in it. Which is why it was sucked dry. Shaking the tank revealed that there was definitely something loose in it. After an hour or so, I had finally manipulated the 'little plastic pipe extension' over to the other side of the tank so it could be grabbed with my finger tool from the fill hole. I put the piece of plastic back into the port and pushed hard to get it to seat all the way down. A friction fitting between plastic and metal!! I was astonished, but at least the mystery of why there was no reserve had been revealed. My clymer manual shows that these two extensions should have been metal protrusions and not something that was inserted. Is this normal. Has anybody else experienced the loss of their reserve? Before ordering the fuel sender, does the low-fuel indicator light on the meter actually work correctly? Stay safe!!
