By
Chuck Hickey

I love my Valkyrie and have managed to get 23,000 miles on her in the last 14 months. I love her, but she has one nagging problem that creates quite a liability when traveling across the long open deserts of the west. Gas mileage, or more specifically, lack of gas mileage. I have heard of folks getting 40 mpg on their bike, but I must be either riding up the hill they are riding down or perhaps I twist the right hand grip a tad too much. Never-the-less, my mileage has fluctuated between a low of 17 mpg to a personal best of 38 (down hill with a tailwind). In order to be more comfortable in night time cruising (where you don’t know if that station is even there, much less open at 11 PM) I have added an auxiliary fuel tank to the rear of my Valkyrie and thereby basically doubling my effective cruising range.

The evolution of my tank fix is a long and painful one which I don’t need to share with you. Suffice it to say that I have tried various racks and mounting systems which were pretty much a total waste of time and dollars. I must also state up front that I never could have completed this task without the help of Phil down at Reno BMW where adding auxiliary fuel cells for long distance riders is an everyday occurrence. Here is what I did.

Starting with the premise that more gas is better I researched several sources for fuel cells and settled on FuelSafe a provider of NHRA approved fuel cells of various sizes and configurations. They can be contacted on the World Wide Web at: http://www.fuelsafe.com. I settled on the 5 gallon drag racing foam filled tank. The foam is to prevent the fuel from sloshing around and potentially messing with the balance and handling of your bike. This cell accomplished two things for me.

1. It kept me under the 11 gal. Maximum allowed by the Iron Butt Association and,

2. It doubled my carrying capacity and by giving me 10 gallons of gas it kept my feeble mathematical ciphering skills working with a nice round number.

Fuel Cell identified, it now came down to how do I get this thing solidly mounted to my beautiful bike? Well - this is the long part of the story that I’ll briefly summarize. Take it from me, if a company’s rack says 6.6 lb. Maximum on their rack - believe them. Go out and find yourself a welder that will work with you. Buy yourself some .065" Square tubing and sit down with your welder and carefully show them what you want to accomplish. I used this tubing and the mounting holes for the Valkyrie sissy bar as my mounting points. The rack is designed to fit the FuelSafe cell snugly and provide enough support for the 30 plus pounds of fuel bouncing around back there. (see picture of rack)  Attaching the cell to the rack turned out to be simple. I used motorcycle tie downs and eyebolts on the rack (see picture)

Having solved the rack problem, I moved on to the delivery issue. My requirements for this system were that the whole contraption be removable from my bike. When I say removable, I mean easily, quickly and preferably unassisted. This was accomplished by using the 4 sissy bar mounting bolts - making the attachment to the rack simple and by installing quick disconnects for the fuel line and electrical wiring. This was relatively easy to do after visiting multiple stores that look at you kind of funny when you request a fuel tight fitting that disconnects. I finally found such a fitting at a neighborhood boat shop. I had assumed that because of the height of the fuel cell (higher than the main tank) that this system would gravity feed my 6 thirsty carburetors and this assumption provided many hours of creative vocabulary, head scratching and gnashing of teeth. Again, the short version is that I installed a fuel pump to get my gas to the front end of my bike. Of course, a fuel pump requires the installation of a fuel regulator (don’t ask me how I discovered this). So - fuel cell to fuel pump to fuel regulator to fuel line to quick disconnect to an inline fuel petcock to…. "T" installed underneath the main tank petcock. This is an area where I’m now considered an expert. I will challenge anyone to a race to remove and re-install a Valkyrie gas tank.

All this done and some relatively simple wiring to get the fuel pump to work on demand and I now have a Valkyrie that will push 300 miles between fill ups if I’m judicious with the throttle, 250 miles cruising around 80 to 85 mph and a consistent 200 miles if I happen to be motivating. This gets me across the Loneliest Road in America at night time and also starts some interesting conversations when I pull into a gas station and pre-pay at the pumps with a $20.00 bill.

This project has taken me a couple of months to get done. I’ve gone through 2 store bought racks and settled on a custom fabricated version. I can now source materials and have identified the pitfalls of this project. I also know that I should have taken the first offer I had of someone doing this and charging me 8 hours of labor plus parts and materials. I would have come out of that deal smelling like a rose. As it is - my wife thinks I now have a permanent air of 89 Octane about me.