petcock problem

[garyheskett All 49 x 3 st.louis]

Hi guys, I'm not good on the computer, took me several minutes to figure out how to post a question,  anyway, here goes.  I went on a trip last week to Colorado from St. Louis. About 10 miles from Durango, the bike just quit like I ran out of gas. I had put in a rebuild petcock kit from Honda about 9 months ago.( bike has 104,000 on it) After checking numerous things, it was determined it wasn't getting fuel. It was Saturday afternoon and the Honda dealer didn't open till Tuesday. To make a long story short, we took the tank, petcock off so many times trying different things that I'm not sure what was done, but I think we reversed the spring in the petcock and plugged the vacuum line and the gas worked fine the rest of the trip. I now have to shut off the petcock when I shut off the bike. I remember reading someone did this but I'm not a mechanic either. I can get the tank off, the petcock apart etc, but I'm not to good on the "inners" of the petcock. My basic question is will the petcock work in "on" and run out and then switch to "reserve"? I ask this because the other day I should have run out (132 Miles) and I went to 156 and it still had not run out. I got gas (4.3 gal) becasue I didn't want to run out completely by myself. I have gotten 150-160 on very rare occasions but I was curious becasue I got 4.3 gallons. I usually have to switch to reserve at 132-133 and get 4.0, 4.1 gallons if I get gas right away. I know I could strap a gallon on the luggage rack and find out for  sure if the petcock works in its normal fashion, but I thought I would ask the question here first, some of you guys know quite a bit. Thanks in advance. A "emergency petcock repair" would be great on the "shop talk" for guys like me that are so dumb on the computer. Thanks again, I rarely post a question, but I read the tech section every day.

[gordonv]

I'm not too sure, but think what you did was disable the vacuum on the petcock, so now it's manual, and like you already stated, you need to turn it off.

I don't think you did anything to the reserve, because that is only a flow path based upon what the petcock is turned to.

I would check that the petcock is turning off, by running down the hwy and turning off the fuel.

[Blackduck]

Sounds like all you did was place the spring on the inside to hold the diaphragm open.
That only disables the vacum operation without affecting the manual operation
Easy to check the valve is working right, turn to OFF and remove the hose from the petcock. If there is fuel flow then there is something wrong, possibly the petcock is not aligned to the selector stem correctly. Easy to check, just remove the stem and see if the flow stops. If this is the case loosen the petcock and turn to line up correctly with the stem.
Cheers Steve