Who bought w a bike without a test ride?

[mister c]

Done it 3 times now. Twice (both of the SV's) were fine, wrote 1 off, bought another & still love it to bits.
Last time was with the Triumph, had a few problems with it to the point where it nearly got traded for something else. Now that I have spent some money on her I love her to pieces & would buy another Triumph tomorrow.
Major thanks to Bob Sheldon of Staffordshire Triumph for telling me to stick with it, or it would be long gone

Cool. Tanks for the feedback.

I personally haven't ever had a test ride on a bike I bought. Only the only test ride I had I didn't bother buying. it was a SVthou and was horrid.

I asked cos my Dad thinks I should... I been told about a VFR800fi which is fairly local and for a nice price. I'm quite interested but getting a test ride as its private could be a little complicated.

I bought my bike two months before passing my test & had only ever sat on a couple of bikes in my life.
Travelled 2 and half hours to look at it on my own, for about 10 minutes, and had a chat then paid for it and left. Was delivered the week after and luckily I like it. I would definitely want to test ride the next bike I purchase though as I'm likely to follow the crowd and get a sports 600.

Do you mean test ride the actual bike you are buying or test ride the demonstrator of that model?
I test rode the demonstrator and bought mine seconhand [with warranty] without riding it and touch wood I haven't had a lot of problems over the 40k miles apart from silly things like a snapped clutch cable and a dicky ignition barrel.The bike is now ten years old and like any vehicle I expect the silly little unforseen things to happen.

[punyXpress]

Liked the look of ( and reports on ) the SV & when mine came up I was in ( like Flynn ). Loved it & still do.
Triple just the same, but still learning its little foibles after 1500 miles. It's promising though.
Never even sat on them, nor the 7 previous bikes.

[NTECUK]

Couldn't find an sv round hear. So bought one from a dealer they had 4 to chose from 2 curvey 2 pointy.
So was not as much as a lottery as youd think.
Came down to the two curveys chose the cleanest,un moded one even though it had a crack on the faring..
Well happy with it .
Mind you if I do decided to jump to a falco or Sv1000 I will want a go to make sure I can reach the floor with my little Fat legs ......

Bought my last 5 bikes by just doing research on the tinternet. Although I never actually had a test ride on any of them, it took me bloody ages to decide on which bike I wanted and hours of research to reinforce my decision. I was very happy with all of them.

[TamSV]

The first bike I bought as a 17 year old, I didn't even know what it was. I had to go back into the bike shop the day before I collected it to ask them what it was so I could arrange the insurance . I just liked the look of it and it was going to be quicker than my 50cc scooter.

It turned out to be a Yamaha RD125LC, which was just the very thing for the discerning young hooligan of the day.

Bought my first bike because I liked the look of it and it look relatively easy for a noob to look after. It was a Honda NSR125 and I was right - it was easy! Next bike time, I rode the SV round the block (about 300 yards!) and bought it. I'd done my research and knew I wanted a faired SV - providing nothing fell off, I think I'd have bought it whatever!! As it happens, I'm still sure I did OK.

Not only didn't I ride the SV beforehand, I didn't even know what an SV was like when I bought it.
It just looked a bargain and I thought I'd better buy a Bike quick before my Mrs changed her mind.
I only logged onto this site to see what I'd bought.