Re: low fuel light - '95 r1100r

[Pete Naylor <pete@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the input, everyone.  I suppose I'll just ignore BMW's 5.5 US 
gallon fuel capacity claim - at least now I know for sure that at 5.15 
gallons, I'm going to run out ;)

I went ahead and checked the fuel warning light bulb - swapped it with a 
known good one from the oil pressure warning light.  The bulb is fine.  So 
the problem lies either in the wiring or at the sender.  I'm going to wait 
until I've run the fuel down a bit before I do any more testing in that 
regard.  I did test the resistance across the sender output and found it 
to be an open circuit - but perhaps that's expected when the tank is full.

There was a question about speedo light bulbs.  As it happens I had my
speedo lighting out too, and recently fixed it.  There are two bulbs
lighting the speedo, so if you lost all speedo lighting at the same time
it's likely that there's a wiring problem rather than both bulbs being
burned out.  Changing the bulbs themselves is a bit of a hassle.  On my
R1100R I had to remove all the plastic from around the panel, then remove
the trip meter reset wheel (requires a really tiny phillips screwdriver)
and finally remove the speedometer itself.  Then you can just pull the
bulbs from the back of the speedometer - they're mounted in some little
rubber plugs.  As I said, if all speedometer lighting failed at the same
time, it is more likely to be a wiring problem - that's what it was for
me.  I found that where the two positive leads from the back of the bulbs
joined and became one (way down in the harness), the joint had broken
apart - I had to resolder it and rewrap that part of the harness.

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End of oilheads-digest V1 #232
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