Buying a cheap vintage motorcycle

Buying a cheap, old motorcycle is almost always a rollercoaster of an experience for me. It starts with excitement and ends — if it goes well — with a bike in the back and a fair idea of what I've gotten myself into. In between is where the money is won or lost.

The listings

At first I'm excited, digging through the online listings. All the years, makes and engine sizes inspire new feelings and dreams of riding possibilities.

That excitement is worth noticing, because at this stage everything I know about a bike comes from the seller. They wrote the description, they chose the photos, and they picked which angles to leave out. A listing is a starting point for questions, not an answer to them.

Getting there

After reaching out and coordinating comes the time to finally travel to wherever the bike is, and to put together my ride to bring home a treasure if I go through with the purchase.

It's a lot of setup, and that amount of work can push me into buying a motorcycle I might not buy if somehow I saw them all lined up without traveling. Standing in front of one bike at the end of a long drive, I'm not comparing it to other bikes — I'm comparing it to going home empty-handed. Knowing that going in makes it easier to walk away when the bike isn't right.

Checking the bike out

Once I'm there comes the most critical part of a purchase: checking the bike out. It never looks as good in person as in the photos. There's always rust, dents or other damage that jumps out at first real glance.

Then there are the hidden angles the photos don't cover. Sometimes they're intentionally avoided, sometimes it's just a bad photographer. Either way, those hidden views need to be inspected.

Rarely, if ever, is the bottom-up view shown. The part of the bike that faces the ground while riding isn't represented — and that's the part that takes the hits. Getting down low and looking at the underside of the engine and frame is the one look a listing will almost never give you. I sometimes take a flashlight to get a better look at the underside, or at the bike overall.

Questioning the seller

Questioning while the visual inspection goes on is almost as critical. For me, the history of a motorcycle is very important. Where it's been, how it was ridden, why it stopped running and why it's being sold all shape what I should expect once the work starts.

But as if taking in a history and a visual inspection weren't enough, buying an old motorcycle takes a level of character examination of the seller:

• Are they lying?
• Are they not paying attention to details?
• Are they honest on difficult questions?

The bike and the seller get inspected at the same time, and each one checks the other. When what I'm hearing lines up with what I'm seeing, that's worth something. When it doesn't, that's worth more.

The XR500

The XR500 wasn't far — maybe 20 minutes door to door. That close proximity definitely motivated me to make the trip. It's the same pull as a long drive, just smaller: the easier a bike is to go and see, the easier it is to end up owning it.

The motorcycle didn't run, and I was told not to try to start it. I assumed it wouldn't run. A seller saying "don't start it" doesn't say why, so a bike like that gets priced as a bike that needs an engine opened up.

When I was interrogating the seller of my soon-to-be XR500, there was a language barrier. The seller was older and from Mexico, and that extra layer made distinguishing truth from story even more challenging.

When I asked what happened, the seller said "my son," and that was about it. But in the context of our conversation, through the language barrier, I knew his son had taken the bike, ridden it hard, and damaged it somehow. Two words, and the rest came from how he said them and everything else we'd talked about. Even with all that going on, I feel like I got the truth from the seller.

I paid $100. I might have paid $500 or more for it — at $100, I would have bought the bike under most circumstances and conditions.

There were some obvious issues, and a few hidden facts I didn't catch. I'm sure that had I spotted the JB Weld on the case, I would have gotten the full story. But even without the JB Weld coming up, I got the story of how and why the motorcycle was damaged.

JB Weld on an engine case is a patch — it means something cracked or broke through at some point. Seeing it would have been a reason to ask one more question. Not seeing it, "my son" still covered the damage; the patch just never got named.

The lesson

Which leads me to a critical lesson.

Even an honest seller will leave out the things you don't catch.

And they won't feel they're omitting facts or damage, because in their own way they told you. The story of what happened to the bike is the disclosure, as far as they're concerned. Turning that story into a list of what's actually wrong is the buyer's job.

This is why a buyer needs to understand what they're looking at, and needs to know how to ask. And ultimately, if they're unable to uncover something, it's at least partially on them when it's discovered during repair or riding.

How I look a bike over now

Every bike gets the same routine. I always start with the questions, and the inspection runs alongside them.