Paging TOG...

....and anyone else who can assist.

You may know that I'm currently, ahem, in-between bikes.

I've just been offered a J-reg CBR600F2, in what appears to me to be
bloody good condition. It's got a Micron oval race can on, but the
original can is included, as is the original screen - it's got a
double bubble one on at the moment. Aluminium crash bungs, Taurus
immobiliser, all original plastics (they look pretty much mint!),
35,646 miles on the clock, red/white. It starts first time (was cold
when I started it), sounds healthy enough. Recently done fork seals,
cush rubbers, chain & sprox, tax & MOT until end April 2004. Nearly
new rear tyre, BT-010, front Dunlop on its way out.

The asking price? £1850; seller says he won't negotiate. He bought
it a few months ago, after 8 months off bikes - he's used to
litrebikes, and hates the 600. All decisions subject to a test ride,
of course - he's offered to lend it to me for a week if I want to try
it out (personal acquaintance, lives just down the road from me, well
known and trusted by others I know).

Anything I should know? Bite his hand off or not - I've got the cash
if need be.

 

Darren Robinson wrote

Wave £TOGPRICE% literally under his nose.

Do all the usual buyer type checks first of course.

 

steve auvache wibbled incoherently

Wot the geriatric said. Sellers change their minds about price when wads
are waved under their noses. Shove 1500 quid at him and he'll bite, it's
about what it's worth with that mileage in my opinion, regardless of
what it cost him.

--
Lozzo
ZZR1100D, GPZ500S, CBCBCB750RSRSRS
BOTAFOT#57/70a, BOTAFOF#57, two#49, MIB#22, TCP#7, BONY#9,
ANORAK#9, DIAABTCOD#14, UKRMT5BB, IBW#013, MIRTTH#15a/16,
BotToS#8, GP#2, SBS#10, SH#3, DFV#14, KoBV#3.
Url for ukrm newbies : http://www.ukrm.net/faq/ukrmscbt.html
www.mjkleathers.com

 

When you're riding it find a none too smooth (but straight) road. Lift
yourself up and bounce hard on the seat a few times and if the back end
throws a fit the rear damping is fucked and sooner or later you'll need
to get the shock tidied up... although if you live round here you can
tell the shocks are fucked without the bounce part. (Rear shocks am tres
expensivo, fa fa fa)

Likewise brake hard and see what the front end does, should be ok-ish.
At 35K the bike would benefit from chaning the fork oil anyhow, if it's
really bad it may need a trip to maxton. (less expensive than the rear)

Ride it 2 gears higher than it needs, see if it stutters or just
chugs... chugs is good, stutters could mean the carbs need a twiddle.

It's only a 600 so... before the exhaust gets too hot run the bike,
stick your (gloved) hand over the end of the exhaust and see if it
stalls, if it doesn't there's probably a hole in the exhaust somewhere.

Check the seals on the forks, state of the downpipes... if you've got it
for the week and all looks good you may even want to risk £15 and do an
oil change then run a magnet over what comes out... After all, it'd be
good to change the oil should you buy it.

Bounce it off the redline a few times once properly warmed up, see if it
leaves a nasty blue cloud of exhaust smoke. (piston rings worn, or
worse)

Check all the gears change smoothly.

....almost anything else is cheap to fix.

Then

Check if the wheels, swingarm or headset have any play in them.. Cost
will likely be a set of bearings from the local bearing supplies shop,
however if you find any problems it's a good point to get an extra £50
off.

See how much wear is on the brake pads, chain, mention the front
tyre.... ask for 25 - £50 discount as above.

And if it's all good, it's very unlikely anyone will risk the sale for
£25-50.

I learnt all this from my rebuild, god help me if I start buying used
bikes properly...

 

It's an entirely fair price. Right on the button. As ohers say, wave
less cash at him.

 

Does this only apply to 600cc bikes, then?

 

Not at all, but bigger bikes tend to push more gas out, so it's harder
to hold it back and it may not stall.

 

(The Older Gentleman) burbled:

Cheers. It's not what I had in mind; however, it's one I can afford,
both to buy and to run (assuming it doesn't turn into another GSX550),
and it probably suits my needs as well as, if not better than,
anything else. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, he knows how much
I've got to play with at the moment. He's shown me receipts for all
the stuff he's done to it; he bought it for £1700, and spent just over
£400 on it so I think that the asking price is not unreasonable.

I think I need to think about it some more.

 

Using the patented Mavis Bacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Darren Robinson

Remember that what *he* spent on it is totally irrelevant to how much
*you* should spend on it.

The only relevant question is "How much would someone *else* be prepared
to spend on it?".

 

What he says.

Whatever has been spent on the bike since he bought it is either to keep
it in a roadworthy condition or because he wanted to for aesthetic
porpoises. This doesn't mean it increases the value of the bike in any
way.

--
Lesley
ZXR400SP
"Not bad for a Scouser"
SBS#11[with oak-leaf cluster]
BOTAFOT#101A UKRMHRC#12
BONY#54P BOB#18

Un-cork me to reply

 

There's another: "Do you really want a sports 600?"

Or would you perhaps do better hanging on for a black Bandit 1200 ...?

Just my eight farthings worth.

 

Indeedy. I've spent a few quid on my CB500 since I got it, but that's
'cos I keep crashing / dropping / otherwise abusing it, and need to
replace the bent bits every now and then. I reckon it's worth
considerably less than I paid for it now.

About this time last year, I bought a ZX6R, four years younger and
with a third of the mileage, and also in excellent condition, for
£2500. So whilst £1850 sounds about the right ballpark for the CBR,
there are a lot of them about, and it's coming up to winter, so you
should be able to pick up one that's more of a bargain, I reckon. I'd
say £1600ish would be what I'd pay.

 

Doesn't sound like it's what you're after to be honest...Be honest with
yourself, there are other bikes out there...

JH

 

Well, there's a few considerations. One is the fact that I'll be
getting probably not much more than two grand, if that, for the B6,
and although that *should* be soon we all know what inscos are like.
As well as that, I don't know how much compo I'll get for injuries and
other losses, or when (if?).

Another one is the fact I still owe ~fifteen hundred on the bank loan
I took out to buy the B6 in the first place. I'll probably use the
insurance money from the Bandit to pay that off, then start again -
yes, I know I can do better than a 14% apr bank loan next time; I
accept the fact that I'm no good at saving money, and if I want a nice
shiny bike, I'm going to have to get myself into debt to do so,
although of course I want to limit that debt. Those of you who
disagree with borrowing, that's your decision and I'd appreciate you
not telling me I'm an idiot, I'll live my life my way thank you very
much.

I do have about £1600 salted away at the moment from a small endowment
policy which matured recently; I don't particularly want to blow all
of that on a bike now if I don't have to.

I don't know for certain what bike I want. Practicality is fairly
important, but I don't want a dull bike; reasonably low running costs
too, so a VFR is out on the grounds of service costs, as is any kind
of exotica. I did like the old B6, so I'd imagine a B12 would be up
my street - I've never ridden one, though. In fact, the only bikes
I've ever ridden are the old CG125 (makes Sign of Holy Pushrods), the
ER-5 I passed my test on, a friend's GS650, my old GSX550 (the less
said about that the better), Flook's R6 (for less than a mile, not my
cup of tea at all), a ZZ-R1100 I was lent for a week (not bad, but not
really suited to the shorter journeys and town stuff I do a lot of),
and my B6. Pillion-ability is a must. I like naked bikes better than
faired, purely on personal aesthetic grounds. If all else fails,
another B6 will do for now, but I think it's time to move on, and move
up if possible.

 

I've just this minute been scanning Biketrader for a black unfaired
B12, mainly because I've just found it'll only cost me 350 quid to
insure one fully comp.

A nice 2001 model is running at around 4 grand with under 5k on it.

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/Partner/TimesDefault.asp

is superb for comparing loans. You can get as low as 6% APR at the
moment.

An example was 4k over 2 years at 6% APR, monthly payment of 180 quid
and a total of around 4300 repaid. Not too shabby.

Hope you get back on the road in less time than it's taking me.

 

Problem with these loan comparators is that they give you a 'typical'
APR. Unfortunately, this is hardly ever representative of the rates that
people pay in the real world.

Unless you have a stonkingly good credit rating, then they'll add
several percent on top of that when you get a proper quote.

I found out that little things like paying your car / bike insurance
hits your credit rating (with some loan companies) - I had to spend a
long time pissing about and talking to a lot of different call centres
as they were scoring me down because I'd had 3 credit searches done by 3
insurers in the space of a couple of weeks. (I took out all 3 policies ,
paying monthly, as it happened).

 

True enough, but it's the comparison side of it's that's the good
point. It saves you pissing around going to all the websites etc.

If I was doing it[1] I'd pick the 5 cheapest and get direct quotes
from them for my own circumstances.



[1] I'm lucky that I'll be in a position to pay cash fairly shortly.
It's been a bastard doing the saving though when it would be so easy
just to go and get a loan and have a new bike tomorrow.