Good practice when registering/titling a new-to-you bike

Springboarding from another ill fated thread, do the due diligence and exploratory stuff FIRST, before investing time, $$$, effort, TIME, $!$!$!, EFFORT..... if there is a bunch of crap, get it ironed out first. Get a proper title, registration or whatever it is the gummint in your section of the planet requires before investing to save heartburn and $$$. :idea: :mrgreen:

Agreed. These days sadly this is a necessary practice. And all items found stolen should be returned to the rightfull owner. In the 1980's a close friend had two fully restored Indian Chiefs stolen from a locked garage. It was such an loss that he has never gotten over & if they were found today it would be a great thing. And no matter who did what to them in the time between they still belong to him & should be returned. Don't want to open a can of worms but in this country we used to hang horse thieves, bike thieves should just be shot...

My Friend has made contact with the orginal owner and they are going to work something out, the police have been contacted and the person that sold the bike to my friend has been charged with theif, there was 2 bikes stolen on the night and the other has now been recovered there was no insurance claim on the bikes as they weren't insured at the time, my friend is a honest person and to a great loss to him money wise he couldn't live with himself knowing it was stolen in the first place, this has happened in the last 3 weeks, the owner and police have praised my friend for his honesty and there will be no charges again him for receiving stolen goods, all good that ends well for the orginal owner, not so good money wise for my friend, but he did what he throught was right.

Ashley

I hope your friend is just out some more money , and not the time/effort /bike / money too.

Good news is he is up good karma!

This has been my practice, but I don't want to do any more of these paper chases. The last one was a '64 BSA Cyclone 500. Had an unsigned title with a name and address. Got lucky with internet people search getting a phone number. The lady that answered said she was the widow of the owner on the title and turned out she had power of attorney and was willing to sign the title. I don't think I'm going to be that lucky again.
When considering buying a basket case with bill of sale only, you might point out to the seller it's only worth the value of parting it out and throwing away the numbered parts.

If scum are prepared to buy Commando parts and dispose of the numbered parts then other scum will be prepared the steal your bike to on-sell it to yet more scum.
It has always been 'Buyer Beware' /aware.
Ta.

Mine had a lost title but they guy was a friend of mine for many years. First thing I did was to get the title in hand before I started putting anything into it.
It just makes sense.
Lucky for me it all worked out and now I have spent a load of cash. I think I did a good thing.

Re: Good practice when registering/titling a new-to-you bike
by ashman » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:26 am
My Friend has made contact with the orginal owner and they are going to work something out, the police have been contacted and the person that sold the bike to my friend has been charged with theif, there was 2 bikes stolen on the night and the other has now been recovered there was no insurance claim on the bikes as they weren't insured at the time, my friend is a honest person and to a great loss to him money wise he couldn't live with himself knowing it was stolen in the first place, this has happened in the last 3 weeks, the owner and police have praised my friend for his honesty and there will be no charges again him for receiving stolen goods, all good that ends well for the orginal owner, not so good money wise for my friend, but he did what he throught was right.
Ashley

Never put your trust in sellers
by ashman » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:01 pm
My friend Mark who brought a project 73 750 Commando just on 2 years ago now, the bike was a mess and in boxes of parts, he brought it on trust without checking the numbers first, it was cheap but not realy for the condition it was in, he has in the last 1 1/2 years rebuilding with every known new parts that it needed, I did the engine, gearbox and primary rebuild, the head was rebuilt by a friend that is a head expert, oversize pistons and rebore, I spent a lot of time on this motor and when he was ready it started for the first time in many years it has been sitting, he also put new Amals and Boyar ignition.Now for the bad news, another friend has just done some home work and now have found out the Norton was stolen a very long time ago (over 20 years ago), my friend Mark has put more than $8,000 into this bike so far, I haven't seen him yet as he has gone back to sea, what a mess, I don't know what my mate is going to do. Ashley

All fixed?

There is more to come for sure, my friend has gone back to sea so won't know more till he gets back in about 6 weeks or more, the bike was in a mess when he got it and not sure it was like that when it was stolen or a goer, everone told him to get it checked before he brought it but he has learned a valuable lesson, yes there are some scum around, its a shame a innocent person that is honest has been caught up in this mess and the worst part about it he knew the person that sold it to him, he just didn't know he was such a scumbag.

Ashley

Well, the question is what can you possibly do? One of my Commandos came with no title, just a bill of sale. It was imported to the UK together with maybe 40 other bikes in one container. I bought it after checking the No at the local DMV equivalent who look up VINs in the Interpol database plus I used the VIN Check database but they claim that their database only covers the last five years (and anyway it only covers insurance claims filed by participating companies). Is there a better way to check VINs in the US?



Tim

I had a guy give me a Hi-Rider that was parked outside for years. He assured me he had the title somewhere, just had to find it. Before I could get to doing anything either way, someone stole it from behind my garage. Then I found out the guy who gave it to me hadn't paid for it in full and had never received a clear title, only one with a lien on it. At this point I decided it was better to let the authorities pursue it. Luckily I had $0 invested, but it's a shame, because someone could be riding it now. Instead, it's probably been broken for parts or is still sitting out in the weather somewhere.