Is It Stolen?
Here’s a nightmare scenario: you drop $5000 on a bike and a few months later the cops come knocking. It turns out the bike’s stolen, the title’s been forged and you’re left with nothing. This can easily happen if you’re not careful, so be sure the paperwork for the motorcycle is genuine—watch for forgeries and any altered details. Is the bike registered at the house where you’re viewing it? If not, why? Always ask the seller for ID and get a photocopy if possible. Finally, make sure the engine and frame numbers haven’t been altered and match the title. Restamping frame numbers to match a legitimate set of papers is an old trick, but easily identifiable.
Salvage vs. Clean Title
Imagine you’re an immoral man. You crash your bike so badly it gets written off as salvage by the insurance company. What do you do? Cash your check and leave the scrap for the wrecker’s yard or patch it up as best you can and sell it to some newbie on Craigslist?
Written-off, salvage title bikes are generally recorded by insurance firms and they don’t like to see them on the road again. Expect a headache when you try to title the bike because you’ll need receipts for every replacement part that was initially marked as destroyed by the insurance company. Each state has specific laws for titling a salvage bike, and all require a police inspection. Furthermore, if the bike was written off due to damage it could have unforeseen issues such as a bent or cracked frame. Avoid salvage title bikes despite the allure of their low price tags—they’re cheap for a reason.
Chassis
If the bike’s done more than a few thousand miles, you want to check for worn chassis parts. Check the wheels and swingarm for any free play side-to-side. Try and get the front wheel off the ground (with a front stand) and feel the steering for any notches, roughness or free play. Any dings in the swingarm or frame mean the bike’s hit the ground, and hard. If you spot these, negotiate the price.
Consumables
The tires, brake pads and chain will all be given a hard time when you get ahold of your new ride and start enthusiastically ragging it. But you don’t want to be replacing these consumable high-wear items right off the bat. Dropping top dollar on a bike, then having to find the cash for a new rear tire, front pads, a new chain and sprockets is a real downer. Check them all for wear and subtract any replacements from the asking price.
Check the front and rear tires for wear, puncture repairs, and signs of overheating or hard track use (blue edges and balled-up rubber). You can check brake pad thickness by crouching down and looking in the end of the caliper. Also, look at the chain adjusters on the swingarm to see if the wheel is pulled out to its farthest adjustment and see if the rear sprocket teeth are worn or broken.
Engine Checklist
Before you view the bike, ask the owner if the engine can be totally cold when you arrive. Check by feeling the header pipes and engine covers before first starting it. Sometimes a tired engine won’t start without a lot of turning over, and when it does fire up there could be excessive cam chain or valvetrain noise that goes away once up to temperature. If the owner warmed it up just before you arrived, it may start easily. But worn piston rings and a dying battery mean it’ll take forever to fire upespecially on a cold morning.
Start the bike and let it run a little. Expect some white steam from the exhaust, but you don’t want any blue smoke (burning oil). Modern bike engines run very smooth, and the days of rattling camchains and clunky clutch dampers are gone. Listen also for any bad noises from the starter motor area when pushing the button.