270 Miles on My Ryker Yesterday!
Ok, not a Guinness Book entry. But 270 miles of some of the most beautiful and fun riding available. I rode up 321 through the Cherokee National Park, Watauga Lake, Boone NC, etc. Mountainous, and lots of windy curves. It is the 1st chance I've had to put the new Ryker Sway Bar upgrade through it's paces on an extended ride like this with continual twisty roads. This is the kind of riding it takes to really get used to a suspension change and see how much improvement it actually makes. It was a BLAST!
I also did a mileage test. Not extremely scientific but a good run. I am very careful to fill to the very top. This really helps to give an accurate MPG estimate. I went 174 miles on just less than 4.8 gallons. I rounded up the gallons. But not enough to significantly affect the end result. And these are GPS miles. Not odometer miles (which can be a bit less accurate). This comes out to 36.25 MPG average. Not too bad for riding farely hard in the mountains. Though about 90 miles of the total ride were on relatively level highway. A good mix, I'd say.
I was a bit surprised that I got 174 miles and I still had 1 fuel bar left. I was actually hoping to get that last bar gone to see how much fuel it would take to get back to full. Then I would know how much fuel was left when I lost the last bar. But in that neighborhood, once you go west out of Boone (where I got fuel at the west end of town). You can end up going a long way before you find fuel again. I'm not too smart, but I decided not to push it any further than I did.
I run premium fuel in my Ryker. Non-ethanol whenever I can. I believe this gives me better fuel mileage, though I have not tested this theory on the Ryker like I did on my Spyder.
I do seem to be getting better mileage as the engine breaks in. I was getting right at 30 MPG in the beginning.
