How far do you push the fuel range on your motorcycle? Do you steer for the nearest gas pumps or do you ride out the blinking LOW FUEL light for as long as you dare? What’s the farthest you’d ride on a tank of gas?
In the case of Acerbis’ latest project, a three-rider team took a Honda Monkey across Europe, riding 4183.8 km on a single tank of fuel, setting a new Guinness World Record in the process.
The trip started at Acerbis’ hometown of Albino, in Italy, and went across Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The ride ended at Nordkapp in Norway, almost five thousand kilometers after setting out. They averaged about 70 km/h through the trip, focusing on fuel-efficient routes (you wouldn’t want to take a Honda Monkey into the mountains, even if you weren’t trying to save gas).
Obviously, they didn’t do this on the Monkey’s stock 5.6-liter tank! Instead, Acerbis had a team working on this for months, planning a fuel-efficient route and building a 106-liter tank for the trip! Yes, you read that right—that’s a massive bump in fuel capacity, and what’s even crazier is, it sounds like Acerbis could easily put this into production, if they wanted.
According to the write-up from the Italian aftermarket manufacturer, they actually built a mock-up tank out of fiberglass, then used that to build a mold for a plastic tank. Think about it: If they can roto-mold one tank, they can roto-mold dozens, if the demand is there! The aftermarket tank even reportedly meets Euro highway regulations.
Acerbis’ project resulted in a Guinness record for greatest distance ridden on a single tank of fuel for a prototype motorcycle. Chances are, nobody will break it any time soon. But if you want to take a stab at the record yourself? Honda is finally selling the Monkey in the Canadian market…
