Today was Julie’s first ride in over 9 weeks following a muscle tear. My normal routine is to ride the Purple Girl first cause she’s easy, but I wanted the option of heated gear so I took Sheila, my BMW R1200R. She’s a sweet ride and has cool features like keyless ignition. <cue doom music>
I noticed that I had an alert, but my gps was charging from being out of use, so I couldn’t see what it was. Jaron noticed that my headlight was out.
We had a nice ride and stopped at Panera when Julie got the hungries. My fuel light had just come on before that, so we stopped at a Wawa on our way out.
Julie could not get her gas tank open and noticed a key battery warning. I opened up the key and saw that it was a common coin battery size and went inside to see if they had one (no). As I came back out, I thought, surely past Julie prepared for this. Sure enough, I had a new coin battery in with my manual. Score!
Now the low key battery warning was gone, but we still could not get the tank open. Tried turning it on & off, moving forward a few feet, etc. The sun sets at 4:40 and it was after 3:00 when we’d stopped, and with Julie’s headlight out we were anxious to get the last hour home before dark.
So the solution in this situation is to remove the ring around the gas tank opening with torx bits. Neither of us had any tools on us and there was not a store that would have them nearby. We both checked under our seats.
I maintain that BMW is the only bike that has left me on the side of the road. My first G650GS had a weird issue with the kickstand that required 3 trips to the shop, the last of which was in a tow truck during rush hour from Sterling, VA to Laurel, MD.
Well, I had 39 miles to E and it was 36 miles to home, so I said let’s try to get home. If I run out of gas, then we’ll be closer to home and Jaron can go get tools and gas. So Jaron asked google for the most fuel efficient route and got one that was 38 miles. We discussed whether the longer but more fuel efficient route would be better than the shortest route, and put our faith in google.
I rode 53 mph and served as my own revlimiter, keeping it under 3,000 rpm. My cruise control was out of sync with Jaron’s so we agreed it would be better for me to lead so I was not speeding up & slowing down a tick every few minutes. It was a slow and boring ride home. Every 5-10 minutes Jaron would tell me how far we were from home, and I would reply with how many miles I had until empty.
At one point when it became clear that we were going to make it, I mentioned that this was not the closest I’d ever cut it. Jaron goes: right, because you’ve taken it all the way to zero. 🤣 While that’s true, I also made a round trip to my dad’s on one tank in my truck and had like 9 mi to E by the time I got home. I also had to walk my first bike the last 100 ft to a gas station once in CA.
We made it home. I celebrated by revving my engine. We found the right torx bit and made sure the tank would open. The bike thought it still had 17 miles’ worth of gas, and we did not have any 89 at home, so I went to the closest gas station 1 mi away and filled ‘er up using the torx bit solution. (I was prepared to put 87 in it to get from home to the gas station and was glad I didn’t need to.) I ordered a spare T25 w/ a handle to keep in the case with my manual. I also gave myself 3 more spare batteries in that kit. I’m going to try it a few more times before taking it in to the shop, bc the bike obv recognizes the key or else it wouldn’t start.
When I got home, I looked up my gas tank capacity: 4.8 gal.
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