This morning I messaged a friend of mine who is an avid motorcyclist I was planning on taking the Motorcycle Safety course, getting my license, and looking at beginner bikes. By sheer coincedence, he found someone on a motorcycle messageboard selling a '95 Honda 750 Magna with 28,000 miles. The spiel is the guy is selling it for cheap because the carbs are gummed up and someone quoted him as costing $400 to fix. Since he didn’t drive it much anyway he decided to sell it to save on insurance.
My friend calls ‘dibs’ on this apparently fantabulous deal then turns to me (online) and begins what feels like a high pressure sales spiel. He says I need to get it nownownow! its such a good deal! I say yeah but what about the mechanical work it needs? No problem, he says. He’ll fix it for free! And if I change my mind, he can easily get my money back by selling it to someone else.
Seems like a good deal. Too good to be true. Being that I know very little about bikes, bikes that may be lemons, or friends that will be SO eager to do repairs/maintenance pro bono, I’m skeptical. I do want to a get a bike in the near future, but not on a 500 dollar impulse buy. Since I haven’t even gotten the license or other equipment yet this bike would be sitting in my friend’s garage until I could legally drive it, which could quite possibly end up being a while. There’s also the issue of the money itself- at first I thought the BEST way to do things would be to have HIM buy it, then if i’m still interested later, buy it off him fixed up (even be willing to pay him for the work on it). But he doesn’t even have 500 dollars, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Is your friend desperate for someone to ride with or does he have other friends who ride?
The only reason I can think of for the high pressure tactics that doesn’t involve a scam would be the desire to get you situated so the two of you can ride together.
He’s being like this because he says this kind of deal doesn’t come up much. I guess in his circle, since him and his other friends frequently ‘flip’ bikes (buy them, fix them up, resell them) its unusal for a bike to be inexpensive since its so easy for someone to turn a profit one one if they want
In my experience, any decision that must be made on the spur-of-the-moment is a decision that should not be made. This has been especially true with regards to stuff about which I don’t have a lot of experience.
I commend you in thinking through the process, and in particular, realizing that it might be a bit foolish to have a bike you can’t legally ride. I had a friend who absolutely had to have a Harley even though he A) didn’t have a license, and B) couldn’t afford it. Although I enjoyed riding the bike home from the Harley dealer for him, I still thought it was a colossal waste of time, money, and energy.
I would recommend taking the course first to see if bike riding is really for you. My daughter and her friend took a motorcycle safety course last year. She passed the course and got her motorcycle license, and then made a well thought out decision not to get a motorcycle. She is glad she didn’t plunk down money on a bike.
If you take the course and like it, you will also make friends with the instructors, who may be very happy to put you in touch with people who know bikes and can advise you on what might be a good – or not so good – choice.
I second the suggestion to take the course first. They supply the bike and you can decide if biking is for you before you end up with all the complication of buying a third-hand bike and depending on your buddy to fix it (if I understand the OP correctly.)