RE; Buying a used Bike - Dealer or Private?

[DSGMATT]

Hi All, as you know I am looking to buy my first 'Big' Bike asap and have been trawling the web etc. Can anyone share experiences and your view on buying a used bike. Would you feel ok about buying a sub £3K bike privately or would you use a dealer? How good are the warranties that dealers offer (Independant Dealers)? Is it worth the extra >£500 that they market the same bike for?

I would of course HPI a private bike and have a thorough look round - take someone who has experience.

Thoughts please - Not just SV experiences too.

Matt

depends on the price of the bike really. Sub £1500 i would say Private any day of the week but up from their is a big step.


It's Risk vs. Reward.

There are private heaps of junk and dealer heaps of junk but there are also gems which can be found at a very good price both dealer and private.

If your going used Private, have someone with decent mechancial knowledge and question everything your not sure of yourself as it will either teach you or spot something which the person who's checking could have missed, infact do it with a dealer too as some of them are buggers but some are gems too.

Bottom Point - Go with gut instinct as you'll find it will be right providing you have a good bit of common sense about you.

[Biker Biggles]

Id buy cheap privately for a first bike.Get an old curvy SV or similar and ride it for a year or so while you make all the mistakes that happen to new riders.Save the extra money for eventualities.Also it enables you to learn about basic maintenance(mostly simple on the SV)which will be useful for now and for when you can afford a newer bike.
And never pay the asking price.

Personally I'd buy privately every time given a chance whether it's bike/car or whatever, at any value - but I'm very confident in my abilities to spot a shonker.

Having said that, I've bought all my bikes from dealers - but not for any reason other than that they happened to be there and I wanted them at the time. If I'd come across the same bikes privately I'd have bought privately.

If I were you, I'd buy Tiger 55's bike.

Put it this way, Cupar Suzuki have three K6s in the showroom for between £3400 and £3700 and they offered £2300 for mine, which they sold to me and serviced. If I took it there on a dry road they wouldn't even wash it, straight into the showroom, £1000+ profit, bosh.

Sure, a dealer has to make a living, but does it have to be with your money? If your budget is 3k I'd say go private for 2.5 and put 500 quid aside for things to go wrong, which they proabably wont on a 2-3 year old bike that's been looked after.

And remember, a warranty is a legal vehicle that expires just before the mechanical one...

Yeah, private every time, seeing the owner can tell you as much as seeing the bike

I set a limit of 5 grand. If it's below that then buy pivate, above that get it from a dealer with a warranty.

Always HPI the vehicle if private, or ask to see an HPI result if it's a dealer. They all HPI vehicles as a matter of course when they take them in, so there's no need for you to pay a dealer for a check, it's already been done recently.

When buying private, do as others have mentioned and check out the owner as much as you do the bike.

Originally Posted by Tiger 55

Sure, a dealer has to make a living, but does it have to be with your money?

You want dealer back up, a warranty, somewhere to buy spares when you need them in a hurry, a friendly mechanic whose brain you can pick now and then... stop moaning about dealers charging a little more than a private sale. They are there to make money not just friends - if they do make friends it's just an added bonus.

How else do you think their bills get paid so that you've got a dealership to visit.

Originally Posted by Lozzo

I set a limit of 5 grand. If it's below that then buy pivate, above that get it from a dealer with a warranty.

That's a pretty good rule, which I have inadvertently stuck to! Out of my last 4 bikes - 2 have been from the dealer and 2 private. The 2 dealer bikes were both around 5-6k pounds and the private; 1-2k.

Originally Posted by Lozzo

You want dealer back up, a warranty, somewhere to buy spares when you need them in a hurry, a friendly mechanic whose brain you can pick now and then... stop moaning about dealers charging a little more than a private sale. They are there to make money not just friends - if they do make friends it's just an added bonus.

How else do you think their bills get paid so that you've got a dealership to visit.

+1

[Spanner Man]

Good morning all.

On the subject of warranties. Always read the small print on any warranty a dealer offers.
If they provide their own warranty, ask them exactly what they are prepared to cover, & get it in writing.
If the warranty is one of these 'aftermarket' ones, usually underwritten by an insurance company, read the small print carefully. As a lot of these type of warranty have a paltry financial limit per claim, which is not much use if your engine has gone pop! They usually don't cover things such as electrical items too.
I had a customer with an NC30 some years ago. The regulator plug burnt out, setting fire to the wiring, which melted some of the rear bodywork. The warranty didn't cover it because the cause was electrical. She had to fork out a lot of cash to get it sorted.


Cheers.