Bought a new (old) bike...

murphaph

My latest vehicle....



Now to go and collect it!

KTRIC

Oh I love the oldies what year is it , milage , HP and cost ?

murphaph

'91, 50k, think it's 99HP or something like that and it was £1100. 50k miles is nothing for the gear driven cam that is the VFR750. Supposedly one of the most fault free bikes ever made after Honda were embarrased by the huge fallout rate of their previous chain driven cam bikes of the late 80's. I'm stuck with pre 92 bikes for my insurance and I've been lookin for somethin like this for a while. It's convenient for pickup too as the bloke's collectin me from the airport over there.

Krusty_Clown

Looks great, and a great bargain to boot..
Will you pick me up one in similar condition and price when you're done?

Will you have to pay any VRT?

murphaph

Yeah she'll be the 'standard fee' area, about €100 or so. Once a bike is 15 the VRT is always about that I find. That is, when I get around to registering it. She'll not be on the road all that much and I don't need irish plates to have it insured. I wanted to get one in good nick before they start getting too hard to find. For the handful of times I'll have her out I don't feel like paying for a years tax

Edit: Oh and it has braided brake lines and a scottoiler and heated grips fitted along with new tires and DID chain. You can just tell a well looked after bike. All original MoTs and receipts to go with it.

They are hard enough to find here, only 2 on BBG at the moment and both with dealers looking for 3k+. All in this will cost just under 2k including flight, ferry, VRT and tax (last 2 optional lol). I don't know why more people don't buy bikes around Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds/Sheffield. You can get to all these places on a Ryanair 0630 flght via Manchester for ap. €50, including train and that's at short notice. Then it's just a case of the ride back to Holyhead for the 1400 ferries and home in Dubalin by tea time. Easy peasy.

Drax

Lovely bike murphaph.
How did you come across such a beauty? Are there any good sites you could recommend for finding bikes in the Liverpool area? Or any shops even.

Best of luck with it!

murphaph

eBay my good man, eBay. Forget shops or classifieds IMO. Use eBay to your advantage, what other shop lets you see what previous customers thought of their service? The lad I bought this off has 350 dealings on eBay under his belt (including lots of car/bike stuff) and has 100% positive feedback. It's the best assurance that the bloke is on the level that your gonna get.

You always pays your money and takes your chance but heck, it's the same with any private sale here and at least the UK has a rudimentary test (MoT) that bikes must pass so a bike with a recent MoT (like this one) should have fork seals intact, brakes and suspension and emissions should be ok. It's far from a rigorous test but it's more than bikes here have to pass!

murphaph

Picked her up this morning. Back in Dublin by 1400. Lovely ride back even with the sporadic showers. The bike has a lot of poke. He kept it in a garage with heating and carpets! Talk about looking after a bike. ALL original documentation from new. A file came with the bike detailing everything ever done by whom and at what cost. Anal, but reassuring nonetheless! She was pretty clean after the 100 miles from Manchester to Holyhead as I happened to meet another VFR rider at the port and we were taking a good look at the bikes. Same couldn't be said by the time I'd got from Dublin port to D15! Manky dirty and covered in brown spray.

smoc

Thats the best thing about bikes - Even the old ones look savage

KTRIC

smoc wrote:

Thats the best thing about bikes - Even the old ones look savage

Yep totally agree, most bikes keep their cool after a couple of year and in some cases get better with age. Whereas cars just look dated after 3 years.

Savage bike murphaph, most of the early 90's stuff looks ten times better than the newer pocket rockets out there.

murphaph

Cheers lads. She's a great ride, very sure footed and inspires confidence going round bends. It'll be a 'good' bike though and I'll keep her in the old man's place out of the weather! My TDM is higher up which I prefer for commuting in traffic anyway. The only downside is the admin charge CN levy to add bikes to the classic policy, 45 notes every time unless you do a few together or do it at renewal time. The good thing is that you can have basically as many bikes as you like on the policy. Some folks have 20 bikes on it the girl told me. They always go through the rigmarole...."what make model? let me check the premium, oh it's just the admin charge on that". I don't think they refuse any bike over 15, no matter how fast. I always wonder why someone would ride a 93/94/95 bike paying non-classic insurance when they could ride 92 and older for a set €380 a year with breakdown and riding other peoples bikes (even non classic ones) allowed. Despite the new competition, CN still does it for me.

Oh, and it has all braided brake hoses which yer man never mentioned in the aBay ad. Nice firm braking.

KTRIC

I'm collecting a mint 1987 Kawasaki Vulcan 88 (1500cc) hopefully this weekend. The insurance is only 380 and its fully comp.

Why the hell anyone would want a new bike is beyond me, especially when there are such nice examples of classics out there if you look.

galwaytt

Uncanny how this looks like OP's VFR..........still class.

http://www.usedcars.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=346288

KTRIC

galwaytt wrote:

Uncanny how this looks like OP's VFR..........still class.

http://www.usedcars.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=346288

Doesn't look anything like it

Dubit10

murphaph wrote:

Picked her up this morning. Back in Dublin by 1400. Lovely ride back even with the sporadic showers. The bike has a lot of poke. He kept it in a garage with heating and carpets! Talk about looking after a bike. ALL original documentation from new. A file came with the bike detailing everything ever done by whom and at what cost. Anal, but reassuring nonetheless! She was pretty clean after the 100 miles from Manchester to Holyhead as I happened to meet another VFR rider at the port and we were taking a good look at the bikes. Same couldn't be said by the time I'd got from Dublin port to D15! Manky dirty and covered in brown spray.

Ive bought my last few bikes over in England.It's the only way.Cant believe the suckers over here go into a bike shop and hand over crazy money.With ryanair and Stena+petrol it's about 150 euro or so:D Had the same thing with a fireblade i picked up few months back.Rode it 280 miles from bournemouth to Holyhead on motorways and back roads in the rain from time to time.bike looked beautiful.From Dublin to dundrum the thing got manky:(

murphaph

Dubit10 wrote:

Ive bought my last few bikes over in England.It's the only way.Cant believe the suckers over here go into a bike shop and hand over crazy money.With ryanair and Stena+petrol it's about 150 euro or so:D Had the same thing with a fireblade i picked up few months back.Rode it 280 miles from bournemouth to Holyhead on motorways and back roads in the rain from time to time.bike looked beautiful.From Dublin to dundrum the thing got manky:(

Yeah, you can get to Liverpool/Manchester/Sheffield and all points in between by using either Ryanair or Aerlingus's 0630 flight and train and still be back in Holyhead for the 1400 ferry. Because they both leave at the same time to the same airport you always seem to get a ticket for 99c or 9.99 even a few days beforehand. The ferry is always the same £40 or thereabouts for bike + rider so if your seller fills her up for ya you might get away with 100 quid delivered to Dublin.

They seem to take better care of their bikes I think. Of course they have to pass at least a basic MoT which is more than they do here. They can afford to buy a bike and because the insurance is so cheap they don't feel the need to 'get value out of it' and ride it in all weathers so many bikes are garaged for much of the year.