Do you want to buy a used motorcycle in reasonable price range? Earlier people used to contact friends and acquaintances to get the proper information or look through the classified in the local daily newspaper to get some useful addresses to contact. Nowadays, with the growing use of internet, people can get good options in used motorcycles through accessing various concerned websites. Perhaps due to this reason you are viewing this page rite now...

FIRST THING FIRST

• Resist the temptation to buy the first bike you see. Look at a few of them to get a better idea of the used bike market/options before you buy one.
• Request that the owner not have the bike warmed up when you get there, but tell him/her to make sure that the bike will start. If the owner asks why, tell them that you want to test the bike's ability to start when cold. (It's a lot easier for engines to start when pre-warmed.)
• When you end up buying a bike, make sure you get everything related to the bike: the key and any spares that the seller has, any free/included spare parts, the owner's manual and service manual, etc. Having to go back to the seller to get stuff you should have remembered the first time is a pain. And you may find the seller far less accommodating after you've paid for the thing.

APPEARANCE

• Does the bike look nasty? Cracks and scratches all over the thing? Appearance can be deceiving, but it should give you some indication of the general condition beyond what you can see.
• You don't need to be a mechanic to tell when the person has mangled something on the bike. The bike should also be cosmetically symmetrical. If something looks obviously wrong (the mirrors stick out a different angles, the windscreen is tilted, the turn-signal stalks are ripped off the fairing, etc.), the bike has probably been crashed or fell over hard.

HAS IT BEEN CRASHED?

• Look for deep parallel scratches on engine cases and on plastic (particularly above footpeg-level); a different/non-standard paint job (the owner might have repainted it to hide damage); paint or metal ground off the ends of the handlebars , dents in the gas tank where the handlebars may have smashed into it during a crash; dents and deep/parallel scratches in exhaust pipes; turn-signal stalks bent or ripped off; cracks in plastic bodywork obscured by stickers
• If you get a chance to test ride the bike, get the bike going straight, and take a quick look down at the bars to make sure they're pointed straight -- if they aren't, the front has probably been twisted in a crash.

TEST RIDE

• It's a good idea to do the test ride last, after you've had a chance to go over the whole bike, since you won't want to ride a bike with safety problems. Don't ride the bike until you're satisfied that it's safe to ride.
• Engine/Clutch/Brake Operation: see how it revs, how the clutch feels, how well the brakes work, etc. It's very difficult to detect warped brake rotors unless you can get the bike up to speed, so here's your chance.
• Strangeness... strange wobbles or thumping, having to hold the bars a little bit to one side to get the bike to go straight (a sign of crash damage!), etc... Some shaking is to be expected, but look for shaking that goes up and down with road speed (problems with tires/wheels?), rather than shaking that goes up or down with engine speed.
• Does the bike shift well through the gears? Make sure you go up and down through all of them to make sure they all work. The hardest gear change is 1->2, since the change in gear ratio is the largest. If the bike won't shift well from first to second, the transmission could need some work, and that's pretty major. (Tip: don't be accelerating really hard when you try the 1->2 shift, since that's how it gets damaged in the first place.)