NEVER judge a book by it's cover.

[chippie]

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I'd got a little friend for the GP.



Been looking for a AN400 for a while now and I won't bore you with the details of how and why
but bid on a k7[2007] on ebay and won the auction with a bid of £1426 a bargain I thought. Had
a full service history and hundreds of pounds worth of receipts mot'd and tax till December.
Looked a bit tatty but nothing a couple of hundred quid wouldn't put right [or so I thought].
Had 29k on the clock and knowing that the Burg should of had a 28k megger service that had
not been done I argued the point with the seller that the service history wasn't complete and
manage to haggle him down to £1300.[big smile at the time].
Before I carry on a couple of things about buying on ebay.
Try to view before you bid[not practical in this instance as it was 100 miles away with 5 yours
left on the auction]Never buy from anyone who lives within 10 minutes of the coast.Never buy
a bike or scoot that's not been garaged.Take your time when viewing, and remember a service
history is only worth the paper it's wrote on.
Money paid time to ride home after a couple of miles of riding felt great but something in the
back of my mind told me things weren't quite right. Two and a half hours later got home piss wet
through parked it in the garage next to a proper scooter and went for a pint.

Spent the next day taking all the plastic off to see what was needed to bring the scoot up to par.
What the fuck have I bought.

Ended up having to completely overhaul the front end.
New disc/pads/piston seals/wheel bearings/repaint forks and wheel.




Rear end.
Overhaul calipers/new pads/piston seals/repaint wheel.



Time to check the transmission and look what I found.



Waiting for clutch belt and rollers now for the frame where's the wire brush and waxoil.
Ah well keeps me out of the pub.

[barryG]

Shame, but basically never ever buy unseen.

[mottza]

Still can be stung even when you but "seen" as my X9 will testify.

Damned bike meant that really paid £1500 for it rather than the £1225 I thought I would.

[chippie]

Shame, but basically never ever buy unseen.

Not really overly concerned the way I look at it I'll end up with a scoot that's
bag on at a price that's still a lot less than others I've seen of this year,that
may of still needed work done on them. Fortunately I can do all the work myself
and actually enjoy it.

[pikey]

Still looks a bargain to me

Ive brought blind on ebay you just have expect to do a bit of work but as long as you can do it yourself its fine

In fact got a bid on a vespa at the moment

[StevenM]

looks well now frank. i pick my k8 up on saturday and a 165 mile trip back.

[poldark]

Having the skills to do the work means you've still got a decent price overall and you now know it's all been done right so can be confident about it.

Noting you've got Avon tyres on, I don't think I've ever heard a good word about them, have you any plans to swap them or use them up first?

[halfabusa]

i bought my 1994 rf600 sports bike back in 2003-2004 off ebay without seeing. it had over 27000 on the clock and it lasted my ownership without any major faults.

i bought my 2003 burgman 650 off ebay back in 2007 with around 15000 miles on the clock and it had no major issues for about 3 years until the day it died completely (although it later turned out to be an inherent production fault with those burgmans)

you can't rule ebay out completely saying all vehicles bought from there will turn out horribly wrong.

I also bought many cars from ebay and some had issues whereas some were little gems. And i usually bought old bangers, not newish cars either. It's pure luck at the end of the day, but obviously seeing the vehicle before buying is a good way of ensuring you're not getting a bucket.

Also, even if you win an auction, if the vehicle turns out to be much worse than described, you can always back off saying it's not as described...

Good thing you got the skills... i'd have sold it on (if i could) if i came across so many issues as i wouldn't be able to fix them myself.

[scorpakid]

spend an extra £50 and swap thAT VIPER SHYTE OFF THE FRONT for a pirelli diablo.... will transform the handling spesh in the wet..... an dont listen to no old bolllorx about mixin tyres...the viper shyte on the rear will be ok...i have same set up and its perfick..!! id change gearbox oil asap too...

[Turisu]

Bought my Tmax unseen from ebay. And I mean really unseen since I didn't even collect it myself. Over 1 year and 7000 miles later she's still going strong, no problems or any major work needed . That being said I did buy a Jetforce from ebay in the early days which turned out to be a heap of cr*p (even by Jetforce standards). I still got a year's riding out of it before it died though and managed to get back half of what paid selling it as a non-runner - on ebay of course.