Working out the fuel consumption of a motorbike

Speaker 1: Hi there.

Speaker 2: How you doing, you alright?

Speaker 1: Yeah, not too bad, what seems to be the problem?

Speaker 2: Well, I had a couple of issues with the fuel consumption on the bike.

Speaker 1: Yeah?

Speaker 2: I'm going through a lot of fuel at the moment.

I fill it up about two, three times a week. It just seems a lot, really.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems a lot.

I'll do a few checks, to see if there's any leaks anywhere.

No, it all seems to be okay.

There's a few tests I can do to see how much fuel you're using.

Speaker 2: Brilliant.

Speaker 1: If you pop over to reception I'll be about an hour with your bike.

Speaker 2: Awesome! Thanks very much, mate.

Speaker 1: Okay, perfect.

Speaker 2: Cheers!

Speaker 1: (TO AUDIENCE) Right, to check whether the bike is using the fuel at the right rate, I need to run a test.

I need to work out how much fuel I've used after a short run out with this bike.

Then, I need to calculate the miles per litre, then convert this to miles per gallon.

Lastly, I'll look up what the miles per gallon should be on the chart, to see if it's an acceptable level of fuel consumption for this bike.

Right, with two litres exactly in the tank, I'll ride the bike at a steady speed.

Then, when I get back, I'll drain the tank to see how much fuel I've used.

Speaker 1: (TO AUDIENCE) Right. It did a nice steady run, so let's see how much fuel it burned.

So I started with two litres of fuel.

Now I've got 0.25 litres left, which means I used 1.75 litres.

Now I need to work out how far I went on a single litre.

So I divide 15 by 1.75, which is 8.5714285.

So that rounds up to 8.6.

So for every litre of fuel, I travelled 8.6 miles.

But we talk about miles per gallon, so I need to convert this figure from litres to gallons.

I know that there are 4.54 litres in a gallon, so I have to multiply the distance travelled on one litre. 8.6 times 4.54, which is 39.044.

I'll round that to the nearest whole number, so that's 39 miles per gallon. Great, I'll let the customer know.

Speaker 2: (TO OTHER PEOPLE) So how's it doing?

Speaker 1: So the bike seems to be getting around 39 miles per gallon.

The manufacturer says it should be doing about 40 miles per gallon.

Speaker 2: Oh right, I didn't realise that.

Well, cheers for looking into it anyway. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: No problem at all. See you later.