Originally Posted by
breakdirt916
no street plate..that's the yellow MA ATV plate
and Kurlon is right about one thing: the sole benefit of an old bike, is you often win used parts on ebay for the original listing price...there's hardly any competition for bidding and I bought a new Hinson clutch basket for less than half of the original price. Replacement connecting rods/bearing kits to rebuild a crank are $25 shipped! That seller will even install it on the crank for $30. $55 for a bottom end rebuild? That's cheaper than the crank bearings & seals! Furthermore, complete engine rebuild gasket kits on ebay for this year bike are $30 shipped or less. It's cheap!
normally, I'd agree with you here Clayton...and yeah, I did learn my lesson...old dirt bikes do indeed suck...
but as for initial bike selection, if you look at my original "what bike should I buy?" thread, 5/7 people told me that bike was this one was the one to get...so I went with the majority ruling.
and as for parting it out, a part-out just isn't what it used to be. Having just parted out my "donor bike", I found that it was grossly inefficient. With the recession keeping the limited play money in people's pockets and the fact that people hardly ride 13 year old bikes anymore, the ebay/craigstlist/forums became a poor place to make your money back. For example, I sold a full FMF Gold midpipe + silencer for $0.99 + s&h. All the plastics sold for $2.00 + s&h, and a factory effex gripper seat for $5 + s&h. If I set a fair bid price (ie. $25 for the seat), they just don't sell unless you keep it listed for several months. And it takes a LONG f'in time to separate out all the parts, take pics, and setup auctions for each item (or collection of items that might sell better as a group). Having done it once before, I'm not sure I have the patience to do it again.
And no offense to the community, but dirt bike buyers are the laziest motherfuckin ebayers in the world! They take forever to pay! One guy even went so far as inactivating his account, just to get out of paying for it, never responded to my emails for 3 weeks, then made a new account and begged me to sell him the item. I told him to go screw and told him he's NOT allowed to bid on any of my auctions ever again. After saying "fine, ok", he sniped my auction and told me he would pay "after he could go to the bank and make a deposit on Tuesday". F THAT! I wasn't sending him shit after he wasted nearly a month of my time, so I made a 2nd chance offer to someone else, got paid immediately, and blocked the first guy from bidding on any more of my auctions. P I T A
And lastly, in favor of fixing instead of parting, a parts bike makes $400 in cash (if you're lucky), but if it runs, it's instantaneously worth $1,000. So if paying $30 to get the crank trued fixes the binding on the crank case (and I already have the crank bearings, new transmission bearings, gaskets, yamabond and crank puller to complete the re-assembly), then BAM! I can enjoy a decked out bike, and can always sell it for $1,000 if I want down the road (which I prob won't, since I know this specific engine inside and out, and ~$250 rebuilds the top end/bottom end/fresh gaskets).
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much thanks for the thread! The crank is binding in the second crankcase I have, so I'm hoping that getting it trued, then re-sealing the cases will fix that (unless they are, in fact, mismatched case halves). And to make sure I don't tweak the crank putting it in, I am waiting on a Tusk crank splitter (to push out the crank) and crank puller (to pull it into the bearing) to seat it properly.
