A coworker of mine just bought a car from a site called copart.com. Curiosity got the best of me so I went to the site and found they also auction wrecked bikes. Some of the bikes are pretty much brand new with well under 10k miles on the engine/tranny. My thought is that if for some reason I ever needed to do an engine swap in my bike, would it be worth trying to buy one of the wrecked bikes and pull the engine/tranny out of it? Most of the bikes on there are owned by insurance companies just trying to get some money back out of them. A lot of them also just seem to have some front end damage and from the pics, the engines don't look like they even have a scratch.

What are some of your opinions? Think it's worth the risk to get a practically brand new engine/tranny for well under $1k? How difficult would it be to keep a tag on the bike with non-matching vin on frame/engine?

 

I'd do it and in fact may take a look myself. As long as you have a bill of sale with the engine number on it, I don't see why it would be a problem.

 

Hey i just bid on about ten of them...
Did someone say "Road Trip"!!!!!!! :-)
http://www.copart.com/c2/homeSearch....SEARCH_RESULTS

This bike ^^^^must of just made it down the block!! Wow talk about low miles...Never made 1st check-up....

 

Oh wow! This could be a dangerous site!

 

I've bought wrecked cars/trucks before for parts and/or rebuilds. Bikes... different ball of wax. If you can inspect it before hand, hey knock yourself out. If you can't, it's just going to be a gamble. I've seen car engine blocks with interal crack (fail the machine shop test) from 50mph front end collisions. They had a LOT of padding up front before the engine. Bikes, engines just sitting there. But I'm also assuming any impact great enough to do that, would obliterate the bike. So if they post detailed enough pictures, you might be ok and occasionally get stuck with a lemon. However if you're going to rebuild the whole thing I will say bone up on your states laws regarding bikes that have been "totalled" and how you can get them back on the road and what the title will look like. If it's a salvage/rebuild title (I believe that's the term) the value of the bike (if it follows like cars do) is gonna tank, hard.

 

In a heartbeat. Like others have said, thank you for passing along a new way to part me from my money.

Tim - you and I are going to be in a bidding war on that baby! Lol - jk.

 

Was it easy to get set up and bid? I think I could enjoy this place!

 

They always make it look good. So what's in the fine print when reading the terms and conditions. No one's going to give you a hd for nothing, there is a catch I'm sure.

 

Seems too good to be true...this 2013 has a SE 110 in it. Bike looks pretty much trashed except for the engine. Even if you just cannibalized the good bits to build up your stock motor, it might be worth the few hundred bucks it might go for. What would it cost to get rid of the carcass though?

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Most of these bikes have the small print, "on minimum bid". And then if you look at the buy it now price you can get an idea of close to what it will probably sell for.