1996 Yamaha XJR 1200 Logo
Posted on Jul 03, 2011
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My xjr1200 fuel petcock reserve is not working. when the tap is on it runs the tank dry without the reserve kicking in to action.

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David Parker

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  • Expert 333 Answers
  • Posted on Jul 04, 2011
David Parker
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When the tap is in the down position it will only use fuel up to the reserve and you will need to turn the tap up to put it onto the reserve fuel.

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How to switch to reserve

If your tank has a petcock tap it has a reserve if the tap can rotate up towards the tank
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To see what is wrong you will have to drain the tank and take off the fuel tank outlet(filter assembly). What you should see is a tube sticking up with a fuel filter over it. The tube allows the fuel to enter the carburetor down to that level , when the fuel petcock is in the ON position. When you switch to RESERVE the rest of the fuel flows down through a hole at the base of the fuel petcock. If the tube is missing from the fuel tank outlet(filter assembly) or/and the actual fuel petcock switch (sometimes a separate part )you will not have RESERVE. Another way you have no RESERVE is if you have a leaking four hole washer in your fuel selector. This allows the fuel to flow from RESERVE to ON inside the selector valve(gas leaking in petcock but not escaping outside petcock). "Honda" has all sizes of 4 hole washers available, but , the assembly may not be designed to be taken apart and reassembled. In either case you may end up having to buy an assembly to fix your problem.
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I ran out of gas with my 1998 vt750. It is supposed to have a .9 gallon reserve. I usually run with the valve turned to 'on'. When I turned the valve to 'reserve' it was dry. Is something wrong or am I...

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1996 1400 Acts Like There Is No Reserve

Ok, you have two "straws" on the petcock... one long that goes about an inch or so up into the tank, and a short one near the bottom of the tank.

When you petcock is turn to "on" it pulls from the longer of the two straws..once the fuel gets down below the top of the straw, you have to switch to reserve to get tha last inch or so of fuel.

What has apparently happened is, the longer "on" straw has come up out of the petcock, so now its running straight into the hole the straw used to be in, allowing it to drink every last drop of fuel from the tank when in the "on" position.

You will have to take the petcock off the bottom of the tank... you should see that there is only one straw with a screen still attached to it, if you shake the tank around you might be able to get the detached straw to come to the hole and get it with some tweezers and pull it out.

Once you have it, you need to glue it back into the petcock with some type of glue that gasoline wont break down... blue or black silicone will work, but you will have to allow it to set atleast over night to dry... might try some two part apoxy if you want to speed up the process.
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Petcock

It’s a Main/Reserve fuel valve. Its purpose is to select which of two tubes the fuel pump uses to get fuel from the fuel tank. One of the tubes is at the bottom of the tank; the other is about an inch higher. The normal “On” position gets fuel from the tube with the higher opening. When it runs dry you switch to “Reserve” which gets that last gallon or so from the bottom of the tank. That gives you enough range to make it to the next gas station for a fill-up. ,
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