Fuel Tank Capacity, Fuel Line, and the Stimulus

OK, so your normally well-tuned engine is sputtering a bit. You've done the typical diagnoses (yes, that is plural), but can't figure it out, so you take it to the shop.

The shop calls and reports that they believe they have the solution, but they need your approval in person.

Upon arriving, you see (to your horror) that they have strapped a 25 gallon fuel tank where your sensibly-sized stock one used to be. WTH?

The tech explains that he thinks the problem is that the engine is starving for fuel, so naturally a bigger tank will solve this problem. You're wondering how the bloody heck you are going to actually ride the bike with that humongous tank on there, but you decide to play along for the moment. "OK, let's hear it run," you say.

He starts it up and it idles fine, but when the throttle is seriously opened up, it stumbles and misses just as before. The tech scratches his head, bewildered that he has not solved the "obvious' problem of fuel starvation. He begins to check the fuel lines for kinking and what-not, and that's when you notice the fuel line he used to attach this monster tank to the carburetors is only 1/8" diameter!

You encourage him to find a larger line, which he does and then affixes it in place. He starts the bike up and the engine runs flawlessly, at all rpm's and throttle openings. Then you get curious and ask him if he has your old fuel line sitting about. He does, and he retrieves it for you. You give it the old "blow through" test and find that you can harldy blow any air through it at all. That was the problem all along!

The moral of the story is that a highly-tuned engine (American Capitalist Economy) needs only a modest-sized fuel tank (Government cash reserves), but more importantly requires a low-restriction fuel line (fewer government regulations) to run efficiently. An enormous reservoir (Federal Stimulus) is useless to a highly-tuned engine (Economy, stupid) when it is linked through a tiny fuel line (numerous government restrictions). IN summary, all the American economy needs right now is just a modest boost of cash, but implemented in such a way as to infuse the cash quickly and effectively. If more of our elected officials rode motorcycles, maybe they'd know this?