Pingels are easy. Front off, Rear on, middle reserve. No confusion if Up is on, or if Up is off. Much easier to run out gas with the oem petcock imho than the pingel. The oem petcocks are iffy. Gloved hands trying to feel for the embossed arrow? Really. Then trying to remember if the dern thing is supposed to point up or down. (Hardley petcocks operate the opposite way triumph petcocks do, btw)
The Pingel middle position (reserve) is tough to set as you have to think about it. Why? The swing has two stops: On and Off. So when you run out of gas with a Pingel, odds are your fuel tap is either on or off. So either give a half swing on the lever (to reserve) and look for gas or swing the lever to on and cuss yourself. Either way you still have Paris (spit) err reserve. Unless you happen to be an old geezer. The memory of not having run on reserve for 30 miles seems to vanish at times. Couple that with simply swinging the pingel lever through the reserve position provides enough fuel to get several miles down the road, where, you think, aha! Gotta go to reserve. Big time grins again. Wind is back in your face, you have what, at least an easy 30 miles to get gas. Until you run out. Then the light comes on and another notch appears on your whittle stick as yet another senior moment is recorded. Two times Cinnamon Girl set me down in fields of mosquitoes. I’ll get to the bottom of this! So I bought a one gallon fuel tin, filled it with ½ gallon then set it in the saddlebag. Rode CG until I hit reserve, then recorded the odo reading and rode CG until she ran out on reserve. Why the test of reserve fuel levels? To answer the question, “Did I run out of fuel due to CG’s pingel reserve being skinny?” After all, Vera Lynn had a pingel for years. CG’s was a new addition. I think that greybeard has already validated the geezer syndrome. Being as the fuel is always shut off, I doubt that I had left it on reserve overnight as saxtron mentioned. I digress,…
The pingel fuel tap positions seem logical. Reserve being a non natural position, i.e. not a click to be felt, nor a stop to encounter. Sure the Pingel lever is horizontal which happens to be the reserve position on the oem petcock. Once you get past the lever swinging horizontally, the Pingel simplicity becomes apparent.
