No longer use my overlanding bike - what to do with it?
 

Hi everyone.

10 years ago, I had no kids/mortgage, so I could go traveling. I used my trusty Suzuki V-Strom 650 to ride all around Europe until I built up the courage to take it to India. As most of us, I invested a lot of time and money in preparing for the trip, and as a result of the trip, I also invested a lot of emotional capital in this bike.

Time passed and I got married and then had kids and I haven't really ridden the bike at all for the last 6 years. I don't massively miss it; my priorities have changed and I'm comfortable with the fact that right now I'm in a phase of my life that is not ripe for overlanding. I am more concerned with other pursuits at this point.

Which brings us to the dilemma: what to do with such a bike? It's fully equipped for overlanding (top case, aluminium Zega panniers, tank bag, expensive Ohlins rear shock, engine protector) but has been unused for a while and is getting old (it's a 2006 ABS model). Also, I never managed to get it registered in the UK, it still has the Greek number plate. This was okay back then as I would take it in and out of the country reasonably frequently and I have a EU insurance green card, but if I try to sell it in the UK now it needs time (that I don't have) and money to make "legal" (speedometer showing miles, new front light, number plate, UK insurance). It would cost more to make it road-legal in the UK, than the money I could ever hope to get by selling it. Things came to a head now as I tried to use it for a wee ride and realised the fuel pump is broken, which is another significant expense.

So I'm kinda stuck. It's not worth fixing and legalising to sell it. But I'm also emotionally invested in this bike and I think it's a massive shame to just give it to the scrap yard. I'm time-poor (due to job and family duties) so I'm not going to spend time to dismantle it and sell its parts one by one on eBay or anything like that. But it's a shame to scrap such an amazing bike, which is (minus the fuel pump) ready to go RTW once more!

I would be grateful for any ideas HUBBers may have.

Thanks,

Alex

Keep it.

In 20 yrs one of your kids will restore it and love you for it.

My GSA will be moth balled eventually.


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Rtw bike
 

keep it. clean it and put it into your living room, or somewhere in the house, so you are reminded of your journey and your kids grow up seeing it. maybe one day you will come across the right person to give it to or as being said above, your kids will restore it or you will take it to Africa ...

I restored mine after it was parked in a barn for 9 years ... and I hope one day I will have it in my living room.

mika :mchappy:

+1

Has anyone done this? It’s what I thought too, but i’ve been unsuccessfully trying to negotiate this for my travel bike with my wife for 3 years.

If you have, please please please share the argument that swung it for you :-)

I understand where you are coming from but putting it in the living room (or even garage) and keeping it forever for me is not a good idea - it spoils the memory of the trip, giving me guilt feelings for its current non use rather than pleasant flashbacks. Personally I know of several ex-travel bikes in that situation, bikes that are gently decaying, probably never to go back on the road again

Maybe a middle road between an open market sale and keeping it, is to sell it at a budget price (or even give it away) to a young traveler who is poor but has dreams. That way it can live longer for its intended purpose and maybe you could share the new adventures. Just a thought.

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The fuel pump and filter screen may only require a clean. I would be inclined to drain the tank too. Maybe water in the bottom from poor quality fuel.
In the past I've successfully MOTed my DR with a KPH speedo. You might not need to change it. It would be worth asking your local tester. Some are more "obliging" than others

A year ago I'd have jumped at the opportunity to buy it. What mileage is on it?


[EDIT] Clarification: The DVLA process the importation and new registration. It used be the case that they inspected the vehicle. They may well be more strict than any MOT tester.

A friend of mine has his old 1980s Suzuki Katana in his mancave/bar and it looks great. A good excuse to build a bar i suppose bier

The garage drained the fuel tank and said the pump is busted and needs replacing. I don't have the time to fiddle with the bike these days, so I'm going to trust the mechanic.

Re mileage - the bike is still at the garage, but I seem to recall around 75,000 km. Most of them good quality traveling miles, not commuting/city/low speed miles that kill a bike.

I would probably be happy to sell it to a fellow traveler for a minimal fee, but I don't even know where to start with the paperwork to legally transfer ownership, as the bike is registered in Greece. Without wanting to sound flippant, dealing with such paperwork is exactly the kind of thing I currently don't have the time/headspace for. I tried convincing a friend in Greece to take it for free, but he's not interested.

Thanks for all the "keep it" thoughts. It's such a shame to just give it to the scrapyard (to be honest, I'm sure paperwork for that won't be straightforward either, given it's not registered in the UK), so I might just spend the money to fix it for now, embark on the UK registration process, and then see what tomorrow brings. Regardless, good to air one's thoughts and hear some opinions in this virtual pub. Thanks all!

Pay it forward?

If you don't need the money, and feel guilty about moth-balling it, then pass it on to some other soul who wants to do it, but may be stuggling to make it happen.


When I moved to Australia 15 years ago, I passed on my XT600 to a mate. it had done over 200kkm at that time through Europe and Africa. Apparently it's still going and he's getting the most out of it.

There's nothing to stop you selling it on the Greek plates. It's not mandatory that you go through the importation process. You can let the buyer deal with the hassle. The buyer will want the reg document. Get a signed receipt, notify the Greek authorites.

The oem fuel pump prices are eye-watering. Maybe after-market pumps are available. Though budget fuel pumps can be a false economy - as I discovered on my way to HUBB UK in June.

How about £17 for a new non-OEM fuel pump?:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SUZUKI-VSTROM-V-STORM-DL650-DL-650-DL1000-2002-2003-2004-2005-2006-FUEL-PUMP/253646437675?hash=item3b0e817d2b:g:q6gAAOSwe7BWzwU n

I have just got my BMW R80 back on the road after a 15 year lay off. The things that needed to be done has grown as time has gone on and the bike is now being slowly upgraded for a long trip once I retire / take a step back at work. I am glad that I have kept the bike.

One thing that I should point out is that my speedo is in kilometres rather than miles and this has never been an issue for an MOT. I have pointed it out to the MOT tester and he changed the miles reading to a kilometres reading on the government MOT page - so it isn't an issue for the government either.

The reflector is probably worth changing if it is going to be run in the UK for any length of time - or put on the triangles so that you don't dazzle oncoming motorists.

Registering the bike is the UK is straightforward if you have the paperwork - details here:

https://www.gov.uk/importing-vehicles-into-the-uk/registering-an-imported-vehicle

Once you have the new V5C then you can get new plates made up and get the bike insured.

However, as has been said, you can always sell it and leave it up to the buyer to transfer the owbnership but as this is liable to be seen as complicated you may have to reduce the price to make it saleable.

Do you have family in Greece with a garage or barn where it can live? Take it back there, and use it on your holidays. Grandparents can spend time with the kids while you go riding. :)

Hi Apapadop - I can think of two options which ought to not encroach too much time or money wise on your current circumstances...

The first is to give Motofeirme a call/email https://motofeirme.com/ and see if they are interested in taking the Greek registered bike off your hands... they have customers from all over the world looking to source bikes for touring Europe, and although yours is reasonably old now, if it's in good condition I'm sure one of their customers would be interested?

The other option is to perhaps do something with the Horizons Unlimited community - you've already hinted that the monetary value of the bike isn't so important, and that you'd be potentially willing to even give it away to someone who could make good use of it?

Why not speak to Grant and Susan, and see if you can't hold some kind of raffle for it at the UK HUBB next year (or even at the Ace Cafe Adventure bike day for example) - any money raised could be given to a good cause, and one lucky winner picked out of a hat gets to keep the bike and keep on adventuring on it?

Something to consider I hope!

Jenny x

Agreed. Kids, wife, mortgage, dog slowed my tripping down to zero. I got rid of my travel bike, kept getting more local riding bikes. Its not like I forgot the trip, or let anyone else forget it:laugh:. Who can see the future, you may be able to return to the road again, just looking at it might just make you feel down.

Register it in the UK and sell it. You won't need to pay any import duties as the bike has been owned by you for some time, though you may need to hang on to it for a few months yet as I think there's some rule about not reselling immediately to discourage grey imports.

https://www.gov.uk/importing-vehicle...g-vat-and-duty

You can either get it back up running, which will no doubt improve its resale value, but with 75K on the clock and a non exotic model it won't be worth that much anyway, whatever its emotional capital to you, or sell it as-is as a project to someone willing to do the work.

What I wouldn't do, personally, is hang on to it if you're not going to carry on using it. Your memories will always be there and the bike will just be sat in a corner as a sad reminder of when you were using it but can't now, rusting away, taking up space with spares getting harder to find if you ever do get round to resurrecting it. Let someone else give it the use and love you'd want it to have.

It's a hunk of mass produced metal and plastic that has served it's purpose.

Sell it on to someone who will use it...

Use the money to make new adventures with your family.


Bike's don't like to be stored and not used. They corrode, dry up, seize and fall apart.


Use it or lose it..

The second after-market fuel pump I bought fit the bike, it has now been MOT'ed and only 350 quid and a few trips to the garage later is road worthy again. I built up the courage to start the DVLA process to register the bike in the UK (so I can then sell it), but the online forms don't seem to accommodate for my circumstances very well... it's a privately owned bike, which I bought brand new in Greece 13 years ago. I asked for a "registration pack" via the DVLA website and they sent me a pack in which I learned that I've already broken the law because "I must notify the authorities within 14 days of bringing the bike to the UK" - well guess what, that's news to me. The bike has been in the UK for over 10 years now. I never used it much (I live in London, so commuting was always public transport or bicycle), and have not used it at all in the last 7 years (since having kids). As a EU national, I didn't have to get a permit to move to the UK to live here permanently. I never realised I needed such a permit/registration for my bike, and since it was registered, taxed and insured (full EU coverage) in Greece, I thought it was all kosher. It's not as if they told me at the border last time I drove the bike through Dover... I wonder when this requirement came into force and how people are supposed to know.

So with a very heavy heart I decided to go ahead with the registration (this is costing me time AND goodness knows how much money by the time I'm done paying the fine for missing the 14-day deadline). I then realised that DVLA want me to register with HMRC first, who want me to go through the NOVA (Notification Of Vehicle Arrivals) process. This process does not appear to have a "I brought my own vehicle to the UK" option; it's all about buying something from abroad and bringing it into the UK. So I'm kinda stuck and landed exactly where I did not want to be when I embarked on this journey to "do something useful" with my disused Vstrom; on the wrong side of the law, and with unpredictable time and monetary costs ahead of me.
:(

But haven’t you just brought the bike over from Greece in the back of your mate’s van and decided to get it UK legal? :innocent:

As Jay_B says or ... take it for a trip to Calais (in a van) and start afresh. Or get a transport to invoice you for the journey?

The gov.uk website is actually quite clear on the topic. You just needed a bit of research before engaging with bureaucracy.

My various insurance policies have never permitted trips abroad of more than 30day -even within the EU. I 've had to get special dispensation on longer trips, and it wasn't a fore-gone conclusion they'd extend the cover period.

When I had a similar problem--a worn-out, rapidly-aging travel bike I wasn't planning to use anytime soon--I basically just gave it to a friend. This was a KLR, ten years old, ~98,000 miles, 5 continents, with only a select few significant upgrades.

My friend wanted a bike, and wasn't averse to this one, so I sold it to him for $100 plus he had to move all the touring farkles over to another KLR I bought. I gave him a list of twenty or thirty items I wanted to keep (hard case racks, skid plate, bark busters, horn, crash bars, center stand, that sort of thing), forgetting quite a few, and after busting knuckles for a while he gave me my money and rode away.

The kicker is that it's been a couple of years and the bike still runs, now well over a hundred thousand miles, although it's definitely not one you'd take on a long trip. I see him around town now and then, and every so often we've gone for rides together. Recently he asked me how much I wanted for the newer KLR, but I said I wasn't ready yet.

When something's not worth very much, it usually feels more important to find it a good home than to extract a few pennies from its sale. A lot easier, too. Just run an ad, wherever it is, offering a ridiculously low price to the right person. Then you can sit back and take applications from all who're interested, or just give it to the first person who responds and bask in their appreciation.

I'm serious, but you don't have to take me seriously. It's an approach that has worked well for me, and I've done it with cars, trucks, power and hand tools, books, computers....

Mark

This is the dilemma the original owner of my '83 G/S had, he and his wife had done a 4 year RTW trip on it, it had been used for commuting after that but at 20 years old and 120,000 miles was in a sorry state in his barn. He was worried that if he sold it to anyone it would be broken for spares, this was in 2002 before their prices took off but a mutual friend told him to sell it to me and I will do it justice.
We agreed a fair price, I rebuilt it then in 2007 shipped it to Africa and rode it the length of the continent, it's second time for that trip and James was delighted, I still have it and it recently spent 18 months in North America where over three trips I put another 20,000 miles on it, I still keep James informed of it's latest adventure or upkeep.