My first street legal motorcycle was a 1978 Honda CX500. I drove that for 2 years until it started having electrical problems. It would intermittently lose spark to one cylinder, than to the other, or sometimes it’d run fine. There was no constant problem, so it was impossible to diagnose. It was about this time my brother left for the USAF and sold me his '82 CX500 for $20. So, I just parked the '78 in a shed and that’s where it sat until about 2 years ago. My dad pulled it out to salvage parts off of it. The first gear went out of the '82 so Dad pretty much swapped bottom ends of the engines and made the '82 road worthy again. The front wheel on the '82 is also off of the '78 since my brother flipped the '82 and bent it.
So, that’s the backstory that leads me here. I found a '78 CX500 in the local paper for $50. It’s the same year/make/model of mine. The catch? It has no title. But I do have the title for my first CX500, but there’s not much left of it at this point.
So, what’s the easiest legal way to use my title on the running bike?
The title lists my bike’s VIN. The VIN is on bike’s frame. The only legal way I can think for it to work is pulling all the good parts of the non titled bike and putting them on my bike’s frame. It seems like semantics though. If I take all the parts (except for the one with the VIN) off the unregistered bike and put them on the one part of my bike with the VIN, isn’t it still the old bike? It’d be so much easier to just swap vin plates - though I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
So, anyone have experience with this? Any good way to attack this situation?
The piece with the tag is the bike as far as I know. I’d not switch tags because some vehicles have the VIN in additional places. I don’t know if this is done with motorcycle though.
With firearms, the piece with the serial number is the gun as far as the ATF is concerned, even if it’s just a frame with no other parts installed.
On the Triumph I am working on the VIN is on both the frame and the engine case. The one on the frame is the one that determines the bike though.
I think the easiest way legal way to use the title will indeed be to swap the parts from the running bike to the titled bike. I think I’ve seen a few posts by you saying you work on older cars. Swapping the bike stuff over shouldn’t actually be that much work. I think there are ways you can get a replacement title but I’m not really familiar with them. They would most likely be more involved/expensive than just swapping the parts.
It does seem like semantics but aren’t a lot of laws basically semantics?
Yeah, I have the knowledge and tools to swap engines. But I’ve actually done it one this bike before - it’s not a trivial procedure.
I’m trying to avoid dismantling a perfectly good bike. It just seems silly to to a bunch of work to end up with the exact same final project.
If I were just swapping engines from the new (the one on craigslist) to the old (the one in my dad’s shed) I’d probably do it and not even question it.
But, I’d probably have to swap the entire electrical as well. I parked the old bike because of spark issues that I’m pretty sure are in the electrical somewhere. It may have just been the coils in the engine, or maybe the ones on the frame. Or maybe there’s a bad ground or short somewhere in the miles of electrical wire that will be tough to track down.
Yeah, putting all the new stuff on the old frame is doable. I just don’t know that it’s worth the effort.