Ending Mileage: 28,079
With new tires,and the maintenance and repairs 99% complete it was time to give the bike a longer test run to discover any remaining issues, and to start breaking in the tires.
The 70 mile trip primarily consisted of the following:
- Rush hour traffic (stopped for about 10 minutes trying to get onto a highway) on the way out
- 40-50 MPH twisty back roads on the way out
- 60 and 70 MPH Freeway driving on the way back.
- Some 25-35 MPH city driving on both ends
The bike did great! The only problem that I encountered was a lack of lubrication in the speedometer and tachometer cables. The tach, especially, was bouncing around above 5000 RPM.
While I was idling in stopped traffic the bike did slowly warm almost to the top of the normal range, but it never overheated. If I were to do much of this kind of riding I think I’d upgrade to an electric fan. When the bike was moving the temp gauge pretty much stayed at the transition between the thin and wide white bars. In other words, right where it should be.
Curious about fuel economy I fueled up near the start of this trip, and again at the end. I burned about 1.3 gallons over 67 miles, or 51 MPG. Not bad!