Parting out bikes on the side?

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Jediael

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Jul 10, 2009
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Kihei, HI
Hi There!

First of all I should probably say a few things about myself. I have been lurking around here for the last 6 months or so since I got my first max, an '89. :punk: I currently work for a H-D, KTM, Kawa stealer-ship and make next to nothing, but the health insurance is great! (and so are the looks i get from the die hard harley guys when they ask what i ride and i say yamaha :rofl_200: ) I just graduated form college last year and probably picked the worst time in the last 30 years to try and get a high paying, enjoyable, little-effort-needed job but im not too sure those were ever easy to come by :bang head::bang head::bang head:

So I have been thinking a lot lately about trying to part out a few bikes on the side and sell them on ebay. Before just jumping in though, I thought I would put it before you folks to see if you guys have any experience with this sort of thing.

I have been looking into purchasing crashed bikes from insurance auctions and the such, so I think I might have a handle on some of the basic logistics in getting the bikes. I have a business license to use (from my parents old business), so i think i might be able to get around some the red tape in buying salvage title bikes.

Basically I would look for bikes being auctioned in the pacific northwest and then purchase one or two via online auction places such as Copart.com or iaai.com. At this point my dad would go pick up the bike and trailer it back to our home/shop to begin the tear down process. (I would be there to do this, but at the moment I am living on Maui, and i'm not quite ready to leave the sandy shores. :eusa_dance: ) He would then forward me pictures and I would handle all of the ebay/business details. Post Ebay sale, I would just send him an address and away the part would go and in the cash would come!????

I think this might be something worth trying out on a small scale, but I just wanted to put it out there if anyone has some advice. My dad currently owns an orchard ( aka lots of downtime in the snowy winter) and was suprisingly excited about this idea, so i don't feel too bad for making him do all the dirty work. He was a mechanic for a number of years so I'm totally confident to that end as well.

Is there really any money to be made with this stuff on a small scale? I would be open to all types of bikes, but would probably try to do some research on value before bidding on them.

So what do you folks think? any tips, points, objections, or ideas would be gladly welcomed!
 
Hey welcome to the Forum, and thanks for posting. I have NO advice or tips on this one, but I will mention that, in sifting through tons of Ebay pages for Vmax parts, it certainly seems to me that you could get back at least 3-4 times what you put into a salvage bike doing that. Just have a look at OEM vmax sissy bars, for example. Of course, this is based only on the listing prices - I'm not sure that all of these auctions are actually selling - they might be ending with no bidders. I dunno - seems to me that guys who love their bikes are always on the lookout for replacement parts and such. Good luck man
 
There can be money made at this but you have to buy the bikes right. There are a lot of fees with ebay and getting the money (paypal) plus time to box and ship plus the storage of the parts (which depending on your local regulations could include EPA requirements). Ebay buyers usually want the cheapest they can get so any local sales you would have would generally be higher.

I looked at buying one of my friends bikes back from the insurance pool but it sold for $450. That sounds cheap but there wasn't much on the bike salvageable. It ended up being bought by "pinwallcycle" who sells a lot of Vmax stuff on ebay. I am pretty sure they lost their ass on that bike. The engine was broken, frame, front end, rear wheel, pretty much everything was crushed. He hit the truck dead on the center of the front bumper doing well into the triple digits (didn't survive either). But, they didn't know that and bought the bike based on the pictures the site had up.

What I am saying is when you do buy your potential bikes keep that in mind that the good parts are likely to be less then you see. I know it's common for many sportbikes that look crashed to have bad engines. The owners blow them up and can't afford to fix the engine so they shove them out of the back of the truck to get totaled out by insurance.

Good luck!

Sean
 
I had this very conversation not long ago with a fella from VA. Finding and tearing down bikes is the easy part! Cleaning up the parts, storing and organizing can get laborious and consume a lot of time. Are you a people person like I know Sean is? That will help. If you get into multiple brands/models, the complication figure multiplies! Just dealing with the Max itself can be a job but all the other brands too. Ouch! If you look at production numbers, you will find that sportbikes (all makes) are put out in way greater numbers than the Max hence more parts bikes available and consequently, more people looking for replacement parts. If you thought you would live on Max bikes only, you may have trouble finding enough bikes to do a sufficient volume. You are also competing with the existing guys who do a lot of Max parts already on Ebay and independent shops such as Pinwall, Morley, RMS and the like. You are way ahead if you already have a huge space to conduct your business. Check into ebays cycle recyclers. There is one place I love that deals with what I call "pre-conditioned" parts. They are inspected and cleaned and perhaps given the lightest touch up and sell the lesser items way cheap so they don't linger and take up space and bring a return on their initial investment. Hope these few items give you something to chew on. It is better than picking fruit! PATMAX
 
Hey thanks for all the replies!

Sean, PATMAX - thanks for your tips. Sean, I am sorry to hear about your friend. Its terrible to think that things can just happen so instantly like that.

I know exactly what you mean about picking the right bikes and the pictures being deceiving. I was looking at a bike that someone had marked with a neon sharpy pen, and of all the damages indicated, I think I would probably have only seen about 1/2 of it myself. The one nice thing is that the auctions seem to list the bikes in their data base a couple of weeks ahead of time. This buffer might give me a bit of time to try and determine some of the value/demand for each particular model.

At this point we would be doing this on a very small scale, aka only one or maybe two bikes at a time just to get our feet wet. I cant have my help (my dad) getting too burnt out too quickly!

I think that I would be pretty open to trying out a variety of makes or models, but I would love to be able to narrow that down to some extent. The one nice thing about working at the Harley dealership is that I have gained a fair amount to knowledge about the different models and their sales value, something I would have been clueless about otherwise.

I know that there are much larger companies doing this on a grand scale, but even if I could pull in $10 an hour doing this with little to no overhead besides ebay/paypal/advertisement costs I would consider it somewhat of a successful endeavor.
 

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