Hi there, my wife and i will be arriving in Vancouver on the 1st of may and would welcome any suggestions on where to buy a couple of second hand bikes in that area. Also any information anyone can provide on popular models etc. in Canada/US - for ease of obtaining spares and what not as we are planning touring Canada and the US over the next 12 months.
Any information on trustworthy bike shops in the area would be greatly appreciated!
many thanks
Adam and Roz

Here are my personal comments based on observation or actual experience.

Presumably you're looking for major dealers in the Vancouver area who have a reasonably large selection of used bikes at any given time.

I had a good experience buying a used Kawasaki at Pacific Yamaha / BMW (pacificyamahabmw.com).

Down the road from them is Richmond Motorsports (richmondmotorsport.com) which also seems to have a fair used inventory. I've never dealt with them.

The above two are suburban.

Carter Motorsport (cartermotorsports.com) is a Honda dealer which always seems to have quite the fleet of used motorcycles. I've had repairs and servicing done there for multiple bikes. They are quite professional. Two locations, one in the center of the city and one suburban.

Finally, Modern Motorcyle (modernmotorcycling.com) is a small, family run Suzuki dealership, which has a following for service regardless of the brand of bike you have. Not a large inventory of used, willing to deal, knowledgeable generally. Located in the city on one of the more interesting streets (walk a few blocks north).

There are many other dealers, of course.

The usual suspects are popular here for serious travelling...the BMW dual purpose models, KLRs, Vstroms....quite a lot of choice but it's not Europe.

Good luck.

Norm

Hi Adam,

To help in your search before and after you get here, check out a couple of websites below to get a sense of prices and what's out there to help narrow your search. You'll notice on the second site (buy&sell), that pretty much all the dealers have ads for new and used bikes on their floor. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have questions now or when you get in, happy to help.

craigslist: san francisco bay area classifieds for jobs, apartments, personals, for sale, services, community, and events

BuySell.com: Canada BuySell online classified ads - buy and sell new used items in your local area with online classifieds

Thanks for the info its been good to check out those site and see whats about, Do you know if there is a weekly paper with classified ads in from private sellers?

Cheers
Adam

You can try
Vancouver Used Cars, Used Trucks, Buy Sell BC Used Cars, Auto Dealers - AutoTrader.ca

or "buysell" in British Columbia.
Cheers and Good Luck