Service history, are you bothered?

wazza300 · 28 May 2015 at 21:58

it depends on the owners? depends whether you get ones that treat it right or thrape the hell out of it,more owners means more chance of it being thrashed or neglected

Sagalout · 30 May 2015 at 09:31

Depends on the bike - something Japanese or German, as long as it looked well looked after it wouldn't bother me.

A Ducati on the other hand...

Draeger · 31 May 2015 at 13:17

Depends on the bike I reckon. Mine has very little in the way of paperwork associated with it. But if you were to search on the two main owners forums I frequent you can go right back to the 'Hi, I'm new' thread when I first got the bike 11 years ago and look right through its entire history there. Everything I've done to it or asked about it, everything that has went wrong and I've fixed is documented there. The bonus is that a prospective buyer can read your posts and get an idea of your depth of knowledge of the bike.

One of the first things I'd be asking a seller is 'Are you on any owners forums at all?' and if you get an enthusiastic 'Yes!!' then you are onto a winner. :cool:

ttaskmaster · 1 Jun 2015 at 13:15

wazza300 said:
it depends on the owners? depends whether you get ones that treat it right or thrape the hell out of it,more owners means more chance of it being thrashed or neglected

Depends more on the bike - Some of them you'd have to go well out of your way to properly abuse them and simply thrashing them around without cleaning them isn't enough to do that, especially if the POs only had it a short while, ie not long enough to get complacent about it.
More likely to suffer damage on modern bikes, but things like old NTVs are usually solid as - A courier I know (but not well enough to call a friend) picked up several NTVs from other couriers, who'd thrashed them silly - All in fine basic order.

millsd44 · 2 Jun 2015 at 12:31

Usually make my own mind up when I meet the owner.

Met a guy recently at a offroad day where we were chatting about an old 250 he has at home for sale. Even though I never seen a bike that he owned, I said to myself that I'd feel comfortable buying a bike from this guy, just because he knew what he was talking about and the fact he was actually into bikes.