What to check before buying a used motorcycle

Before you start

Ask the seller for the registration document, any service records and the number of keys before you travel. A seller who cannot send a photo of the documents in advance is telling you something already.

Bring a flashlight, a rag, a tire pressure gauge and a cheap multimeter. Wear riding gear if a test ride is possible. Plan the viewing in daylight and ask the seller not to start the bike before you arrive. An unhurried inspection takes about an hour; if the seller is pushing you to be quicker than that, slow down rather than speed up.

Open the used bike inspection tool on your phone before you go. This page explains why each part of the inspection matters and how to read what you find; the tool is where you tick items off and see a repair estimate at the end.

Paperwork first, bike second

A beautiful bike with the wrong papers is not a bike you can buy. Start with the documents so you do not fall for the machine first.

Find the VIN on the frame, usually stamped on the steering head, and compare it character by character with the registration document. Modern road vehicles use a 17-character VIN defined by ISO 3779; older bikes or bikes built for some markets may use a shorter frame number, which is fine as long as it matches the paperwork exactly. Then check that the name on the document matches the seller’s ID, or that the seller can show why it does not.

Beyond that, the rules for transferring ownership, checking liens or outstanding finance, and registering the bike differ from country to country. Look up what your local registration authority requires before the viewing, not after you have paid.

Reading the wear story

The odometer gives you one number. The bike itself gives you a dozen, and they should all tell the same story.

Look at the parts that wear with use: the grip rubber, the footpeg rubber, the edges of the brake and shift levers, the chain and sprockets, the seat cover. A bike claiming low mileage with polished-smooth pegs, a hooked sprocket and a shiny worn seat does not add up. The reverse is also true: a high-mileage bike that has been maintained often looks exactly like a high-mileage bike that has been maintained, and that is a good sign.

Line up the service records by date and odometer reading. The numbers should rise steadily. A gap is normal; a reading that goes down is not. A mismatch is a reason to ask questions, not proof of fraud on its own - instruments do get replaced, and the seller should have a receipt for that.

Tires carry their own date. The last four digits of the DOT code are the week and year of manufacture, so a tire with plenty of tread but a date code many years old still needs budgeting for.

The cold start and the ride

Put a hand on the engine before anything else. If it is warm, the seller started it, and the most revealing minute of the inspection has already happened without you.

On a cold start, listen for how quickly it fires, how it idles once running, and whether smoke clears or keeps coming. Then let it idle up to temperature. Watch the temperature gauge and, on a liquid-cooled bike, wait for the cooling fan to switch on. Put the multimeter on the battery with the engine off: a healthy, fully charged 12 V lead-acid battery rests at about 12.6 V or a little above.

If a test ride is possible, ride it through every gear, brake firmly in a straight line at low speed, and on a straight, empty road relax your grip on the bars to feel whether it pulls to one side. If the seller will not allow a ride, ask them to ride it past you and watch it go straight, stop and change gear.

By bike type

• Enduro and MX: these bikes are serviced by engine hours, not kilometers. Read the hour meter, then ask for the top-end and oil-change history in hours and compare it with the schedule in the owner’s manual. Hard-used competition bikes can be clean on the outside and tired inside.
• Chain, belt or shaft: a chain and its sprockets are a normal wear set. A belt should have no cracks or missing teeth. On a shaft drive, look for oil around the final-drive housing and rock the rear wheel to feel for play.
• Electric: the battery is the engine, the fuel tank and most of the value. Ask for the state-of-health reading from the bike’s app or a brand dealer, and check the charger and charge port.
• Scooters: the CVT belt and rollers wear on a schedule. Ask when they were last replaced; with no record, budget for it.

When to call a mechanic

Pay for a professional pre-purchase inspection when the price is high enough that a hidden engine or frame fault would hurt, when you cannot hear or feel what a healthy example of that engine sounds like, or when anything about the brakes, steering or frame feels wrong to you. Brakes, steering and frame alignment are safety items: if in doubt, a qualified mechanic decides, not the seller and not a checklist.

A dealer can also run a recall check against the VIN and, on many modern bikes, read stored fault codes with the manufacturer’s own tools.

After you buy

Ask the seller to hand over every paper receipt. Garagely can import a service history from a CSV, so the previous owner’s records become the first entries in your own log. Then look up your model in the motorcycle catalog to see its service intervals, or browse the model guides, and plan the baseline service for your first month of ownership.