What range in terms of fuel should I have?

**Wheelie** · #1 2 Mar 2006

My wife and I are leaving for South Africa in mid of june to travel the following route:

South Africa - Botswana - Zambia - Tanzania - Kenya - (maybe also: Ethiopia - Sudan - Egypt).

We will be riding classic style Vespa PX200E with only 8 liters of fuel capacity (range fully loaded unknown). As a consequence we will need to carry jerry cans for exra fuel. In order to find out how many liters of extra fuel we need to carry we need to figure out the following:

How great a range (kms or miles) should a bike have for the route above? We will choose the shortest route on this stretch and will stick to main roads only (or as far as practically possible).

Once the snow clears around here I will test the fuel consumption of our scoots in different terrain and altitudes, riding fully loaded. I need to figure out how far I should expect to have to ride between available fuel (expectedly and probable worst case scenario).

Any comments regarding range in kms/miles and/or comments about jerry cans, fuel capacity, etc, will be gretly appreciated.

Thanks...

**RichLees** · #2 2 Mar 2006

I'd want 500+km range, but you might get away with 300km. constantly worrying about finding fuel takes some of the fun out of exploring. of course, its also part of the fun and a great way to meet the locals!

northern kenya, western ethiopia and northern sudan will all be pretty tough and you may have to put the bike on a lorry through northern kenya and on the train through northern sudan.

**Wheelie** · #3 4 Mar 2006

great... a 10 liter jerry will do then...

**Chris of Motocross Africa** · #4 18 Jul 2007

Wheelie, how did you find it? How far did you normally have to travel between refils? I'm going around most of Africa on a bike with an 11.5 litre tank. I've added an Acerbis auxhilary 5 litre tank to the front too (attach to the front forks above the mud guard). I have calculated these will give me a range of about 200 miles (300 kms). Did you (or anyone else) find that this should/would be sufficient between fuel stops?