Hi all, looking for advice on what to do with my Australian bike now my trips over. I did a 15 month trip on my DR650 from Australia to the UK a few years ago and still have the bike with me in London now. It's just sat in storage for now and I've avoided thinking about it, or paying the duty/vat/whatever taxes associated with having it here, Customs never bothered me on the way in. However after this trip there's a number of things that need repairing on it and with all the costs involved in registering I've left it until I had enough cash to throw at the problem. I've kept up the Australian registration for now while I think about what to do with it.
I think I've got a couple of options:
1. Ship back to Australia, but the quotes I have are in the region of £1500-2000 for delivery in *.au, plus the cleaning fees, the bike is hardly worth that much and I'm not that attached to it.
2. Register in the UK, but it won't pass an MOT in its current form, and it feels like I'd be sinking far more money into it than what it's worth, and there's a lot of hassle because it's a foreign bike.
3. Sell off any of the bits that are worth something and scrap the rest.
So I think i'm leaning more towards parting it and scrapping. But I want to make sure I'm absolved of any legal responsibilities should the frame and engine appear elsewhere. If I part it I'm guessing bike breakers wouldn't take it as it's not worth anything to them, and then I wouldn't get a notice of destruction. Am I right in thinking that? Has anyone else done this? I don't need any official notification to unregister the bike in Australia, but making sure I don't get any issues in the UK.
If anyone's interested in the parts other than frame and engine block (until the legal bits been sorted out) I'm happy to discuss that. Just what I can think of off the top of my head: Oxford heated grips, bark busters, protaper mid rise bar, other bar risers, lower foot pegs, bash plate, 19L plastic fuel tank, sargent seat, luggage racks + pelican cases, ricor emulators, ricor shock, dynojet jets and needles. Theres other things I can't remember at the moment. There's a picture
here