We received a call on Sunday evening from a customer who had filled his Honda VTR1000 with diesel – definitely not a good combination! Our chap was despatched to find the customer had ridden several miles before breaking down off the A3. Clearly his main concern was whether he would need to have the motorbike recovered and delivered to a dealer the following day.
The actual outcome was a successful roadside drain and restart enabling the man to ride home as originally planned. In order to achieve this, our technician removed all of the contaminated fuel from the bike’s tank. He then removed the tank itself so as to enable good access to the carburettors and spark plugs. Having cleaned the plugs he flushed then filled the carb’s with fresh petrol and reassembled the components. The bike then started on the first push of the button.
It’s quite unusual for motorcycles to be mis fuelled but the good news is that should you find yourself in this situation a roadside drain has as a high a success rate as it does with motor cars