Motorbike problems

About a week or so ago, I noticed that the speedometer on my motorbike wasn't working. This didn't bother me too much as my driving is not normally dependent on the bike's speed. I drive along two regular routes: to and from work (mainly along country lanes) and to and from the railway station. Only on the way back from the railway station is there a section when I can open the throttle, and by experience, 90 kph is more than fast enough.

The fuel gauge has never been accurate: when the tank is full, the gauge shows something like 120%, and when the gauge shows empty, I can still drive about another 50 km. So I don't base my refueling decisions on the fuel gauge but rather on kilometers driven: a full tank is good for 165-170 km. As I normally drive 10 km a day, refueling should be once every 17 days, which is slightly over three weeks (I don't drive the bike on Fridays and Saturdays).

It's been a few weeks since I last refueled, so I was thinking that the time had come. But when I checked the odometer, this showed that I had traveled only about 90 km, so there should be plenty of fuel left. I checked again on Sunday - still no need to refuel.

Yesterday, on the way to the railway station (and thus also needing to arrive at a specific time), the engine suddenly stopped. I imagined that the fuel tank was empty, so I pushed the bike to the nearby petrol station and refilled with 6.1 litres petrol (ie a full tank). I rushed off to the train station but saw the train leave just as I was arriving.

So I drove to work and checked the odometer, which was still showing about 90km more than the previous refuelling (I keep a spreadsheet of dates, kilometers and litres in order to work out the average consumption, when I need to refuel, etc). Slowly, I was reaching a sad conclusion: the odometer must have stopped working at or around the same time when the speedometer ceased working. I checked this hypothesis when I drove back to the railway station an hour later: the reading on the odometer hadn't changed.

I didn't think that this was possible: I know that many people who want to sell their cars would be only too pleased to disconnect the odometer so that the mileage shown is not the real mileage.

Anyway, the bike will be collected this evening and taken to the garage for repair. I don't need the bike tomorrow as

It is my daughter's wedding!