i ran out of gas on my way to my friend's house the other day and i wasnt sure how to switch my reserve on so i had to walk a good 2 miles to the gas station..
so my question is: how do i turn my reserve on? i know where the **** for it is, but it seems like theres a piece missing or do i just need to carry pliers with me everywhere i go?
heres a pic of my reserve **** thingy:

 

Same happened to me. I bought my bike with no **** for the petcock. There should be a plastic **** on there that allows you to switch. I picked one up at a motorcycle wrecking yard. You can also probably fab a **** fairly easily.

For the record, turning the valve all the way counter clockwise is ON, 90 degrees clockwise is OFF and full clockwise is RES.

 

thanks for the reply.. turns out i was running on reserve the whole time, so i guess i was just completely out of gas haha.. i switched it back to just "on", and the bike seems to actually be running a little better..

 

It should also be stamped on the petcock, but yeah running out of fuel in reserve definitely sucks!

 

Depending on how long the bike sat with that gas in it, your most recent fill up is probably better quality fuel. When I first got my bike, it had some old gas in it. It still ran and farted, but some fresh 91 octane made it purr.

I always get in the habit of ensuring the petcock is in "ON" whenever I put fuel in it. That way I never forget and find myself stranded like you did. Usually I check every few days anyways. A friend of mine tried a prank on me and set the **** to RES on me, hoping I'd run it dry...