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I may be going completely mad (in which case please tell me) but today I ran out of Petrol and the reserve didn't help

I went out for a ride, with the switch saying 'on' started fine... about 5 miles down the road I could smell petrol... and shortly after it died, I switched to reserve and tried to fire the old girl up (this failed miserably) luckily I was not far from a friend with a petrol can. put some in worked fine no petrol smell, filled up the tank at a petrol station and rode home again no petrol smell.

So my questions are:
1. The 'on' position shouldn't take fuel from the reserve should it?
2. why would it smell of petrol when i got to the end of the tank?

extra facts:
bike has only been steadily running and ridden for a week or so.
there was a still a few litres of old petrol in there somewhere at the time (mixed with new petrol).

the seals in the tap can dry out and leak so that fuel gets through wherever its set...

take the tap apart and check it.

if its shot, change the fuel filter as well as it'll be gunked up with disintegrated o-ring type debris

Thank you very much! I will check this out

My tank stuffed around with me..just couldnt find wth was going on, was dripping! Finally traced it to a tiny hole, pressed gently around the bottom with a toothpick and ended up with 15 holes! Solderlene, liquid solder, sorted that out for good. Zimms rights, probably your tap. Try it with reserve and see. Also fill tank and switch to on, off, res and move tap around.