What I look for when buying a motorcycle project.

what's up guys welcome back to classic octane I am Taylor so this morning yeah I was doing what I always do and jumped on Craigslist and ended up finding a bike that we're going to go look at it's not gonna surprise you at all with what make it is I will wait to kind of show you guys what it is until we get there and we actually pick it up but again in making some more videos like this of kind of the day in the life of classic octane and trying to build a motorcycle business we are gonna go try to get a bike that we could potentially flip so I am going to hook up my trailer just because it's a lot easier for me to load a bike on there by myself and let's see if we can go get ourselves a bike [Music] hooked up and ready to go alright just ran through the ATM to get some cash out I figured I'd talk a little bit about how I typically find my bikes to flip so most of my bikes are either found on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace and what I like to do is instead of going to like a very specific search like say you're looking for a CB 550 KZ 400 whatever it is instead of searching for that specifically what I do is like on Craigslist I just put in a maximum year model year I generally go like 1978 maybe 1980 and it obviously depends on what kind of bike you're looking for but that's the easiest way to find them for me that also opens up the search to a lot of other models you may have known a thought of and what I find is a lot of the bikes that I end up picking up that are good deals are kind of titled something super weird it'll be like hond moto instead of like Honda motorcycle or you know see be space space space 750 written out in letters you know and it's like there's just not a kind of universal way to write the titles so a lot of people that just don't know much about the bikes will kind of just put a very generic title in there and that's the people that you end up typically getting the best deals from so if you guys are in the market for a bike I encourage you to you know jump on Craigslist you can do the same thing on Facebook marketplace and just do that maximum year you could also if you really want to sift through a lot of stuff just click on motorcycle and then sort by you know the newest listings and just go through pages and see what you can find so that's how I ended up finding this one yet to be determined if it's a good deal or not but it's worth kind of driving you know half hour down there to check it out this Tuesday morning so I'll keep you guys in the loop as we try to go pick up this bike we're back in the truck I just stopped to check the straps but we we picked it up here she is like I said none of you should be surprised that it's a classic Honda of course is there any other type of bike so this is a seventy-five cb750 the owner was very very honest with me which I couldn't be more appreciative of basically when I got there to look at it he did mention that the number one and number four cylinders were low on compression he didn't I didn't actually you actually mention exactly what the numbers were we'll run our own compression test when we get it back to the shop so I do have to keep that in mind but even with that I think we got a pretty good deal on it does have a clean title which is worth a lot here in Texas you kind of have to have that in order to really sell a bike so clean title seventy-five cb750 the carbs and all that stuff are in the truck tank seems to be in good shape it's definitely had some body work and needs some more body work but the insides been coated already you know we'll keep be getting rid of that seed and we're kind of determining what we want to do with the project as a whole but just wanted to give you a quick glimpse while I check the straps our selves another 750 so as you can see the PI committed home safe before I pulled it off the trailer I figured this would be a good time for me to not only give you guys a good overview of the bike but also run through my thought process when I go to buy one of these projects what do I look for what would I avoid all of that kind of stuff because I've had a few people ask me for that kind of information so I'll do my best to kind of cover it now so what I look for is going to be a little bit different than just your average you know home mechanic that's going to pick up a bike to build for themselves I'm looking at buying these bikes and their resale you know value when it's done what it's going to take me to get it to that point potential profit margins that kind of stuff which again if you're building the bike to yourself you're probably a little bit less concerned about that a lot of the same stuff is going to apply so we'll start with not even the bike itself we'll start with a title so for me a title is super important I have bought bikes without titles but it would have to be dirt cheap for me to be willing to do that basically buying it for parts if it doesn't have a title because in Texas it is mandatory to have a title to be able to register a bike you can't go through a bonded title process which is totally fine if you're keeping the bike for yourself you can get the bonded title it doesn't cost a huge amount of money there's a lot of steps to jump through but once you have that bonded title it's a couple of years and then assuming nobody tries to claim the bike as stolen there's their property you get a clean title so if you are building a bike to keep for yourself that's totally fine if you're someone like me who's you know probably going to only own this bike for you know maybe a couple of months a clean title is a lot more important so this bike does have a good clean Texas title so that immediately puts it high up on the list of you know something that's worth of buying for me next we actually get to the inspection of the bike so we start to look at all of the the biggest components the frame of the bike of course the engine and then get into kind of wheels and that kind of stuff so some of the stuff on the bike I don't care what the condition is I don't care the condition of this seat because I'm not going to keep it you know I don't really care the condition of the tires because I want to change them for a different look anyway but if you are going to be keeping those things of course the addition of those makes a big difference for you so that's something you'll have to keep in mind going to look at a project with kind of the end goal in mind will help because again the condition of the tank if you're going for a concours restoration you know this tank isn't going to be a good fit for you because we're the you know emblems go has already been shaved off and it's been kind of modified for somebody who's going to build this most likely into a custom you know bike it's not as important for me you know again if the tires and all this stuff just becomes items that you can use to negotiate so if the tires are shot and the seat shot and this and that you start to you know talk to the person selling the bike mention those things it'll get you in a little bit better position to negotiate the price so I look at the frame what I'm looking for when I look at the frame is any kind of you know bent neck any cracking any heavy rust holes anything like that I'm not too terribly concerned about light surface stress like you can see on here because that's a you know clean the rust off get it down to bare metal repaint it and it will be totally fine it does not hurt the structure of the frame itself also looking for if there's any past modifications you know a lot of the times if there's a modification done in the past you have to then you know see the condition or the quality of that you know you could very well have gotten somebody that knew what they were doing and modified it and if it's you know along the path of what you want to do with the bike cool if you're trying to do a stock restoration you might not want a bike that has the back end you know chopped off after you know kind of give a good overview of the frame I move on to the engines so the engine is this kind of interesting thing because for somebody like me who has spare you know cb750 motors sitting on the Shelf has experience pulling the engines and working on them you know the overall condition of the engine is important but you know it's not going to totally discourage me from buying a project if this is your first bike and the motors locked up or like this one you know potentially has low compression it may not be a good idea for you to go after it just if that's you know gonna make the project take two years instead of two months because you don't know what's involved in kind of getting that back up and you know maybe better for you to just buy a running driving bike instead of you know one that's in this condition I'm also looking for you know what is missing off of the engine so the carburetors are off but they came in a separate box so I know that I have a full set of carburetors because a nice set of you know carburetors that even you still need to be rebuilt are still a couple of hundred bucks so that's a you know a big chunk of money that you would potentially have to spend if you didn't have them and then when you're looking at the engine a big thing you'll want to do is turn the motor over so you on these classic Honda's you can use a kickstart to turn it over you could go as far if the bike is complete enough to you know throw a jump box on the battery and try to use the electric start you have to make sure you are checking oil levels and stuff you don't want to be turning this motor over if it's completely dry when you kick it over you can kind of tell if it has compression or not just by how much it pushes back you can kind of hear the compression in the exhaust it's something that's going to come with you know more experience it's gonna be easier for you to tell but you're looking to make sure one it's not completely seized where you can't kick it over at all and two it doesn't just like flop freely meaning there's zero compression so you're looking for somewhere kind of right in the middle if you're not sure I mean bringing a compression tester it's not that hard to pull some spark plugs out and run a little you know compression test right there in the garage before you pick up the bike so that's something that you know if you are not wanting to dive into a motor you'll want to definitely take some time and make sure that the the one you're looking at it's going to be kind of able to be brought back easily my experience with a lot of these classic Honda's if they turn over freely and at least sound like they have some compression or the really good chance they're going to run these bikes are super reliable even if they've been sitting for a number of years another thing you can do while you're looking at the engine is check the oil this bike the oil tank is completely dry and which could be a bad sign it could be okay all the oil leaked out somewhere it could be you know a number of different things if the motor if the bikers been sitting outside with no oil in it it could potentially build up some rust on the inside from condensation because I've got a good feeling I'm at least going to have to get the top end of this motor I wasn't too terribly concerned about it but the oil can tell you a lot of you know how fresh it is if somebody's you know changed it recently if it's got fuel in it that can tell you that you might have an issue with your carbs and it leaked fuel all the way through when to the cylinder leak past the piston deny your oils really thin Scott so the oil can kind of give you a little bit of an indication fortunately on this one it doesn't have any oil so it's not going to really tell us much so when you're looking at the condition of the gas tank you know it's important to kind of shine a light down in there I can tell that this one's been sealed with a red coat or whatever it's called tank sealer so it seems to be in pretty decent shape in there hopefully that red coat isn't hiding any crimes but kind of hard to tell now so you'll want to check in there and see if there's a bunch of rust buildup you know what is the overall condition a lot of the times you know those can be brought back but again it's just adding to that list of stuff you need to do money you need to spend to get the bike up to where you want it to be you know and then everything else is pretty much just what you would expect to look for are you going to keep these gauges or does the condition of the gauges the condition of the handlebars do they look bent does the bike look like it's been laid over at some point you know 90% of these Honda's that I've messed with have been on their side at least once so you can generally tell that by a scraped up a side of the handlebars scraped up footpegs side of the engine you know it's the the farthest points out or what typically hits the ground first again it's not going to discourage me from buying a bike it's just okay if it's got a broken side mirror and a scraped up gauge and a scraped up engine cover you know I'm gonna have to fix those things if I want this thing to be worth you know the most money and have the most you know potential profit when the project is done braking system is something that pretty much every old Honda just budget rebuilding the front caliper and the front master cylinder it's you know a total of even if you had to replace everything it's about a hundred bucks hundred and fifty bucks for a whole new caliper stainless line master cylinder everything so not a huge deal breaker just keep that in mind pretty much every one of them is either seized or just leaked out and doesn't have any fluid and the front brakes rarely work so don't be concerned about that I can't really think of anything else that's super important for you guys to look at so I hope that gives you you know some information so just a kind of a 10-second recap go look at a bike and have your end project in mind and start to subtract what does that in project look like versus what is the bike in front of you look like and try to make a mental list of everything you're going to have to do to that bike and you know if you can associate a dollar amount to that if you're trying to flip the bike or if you're just trying to build the bike for yourself and you have to stick to a budget you know don't get yourself in over your head I think nine times out of ten the projects that people end up giving up on are ones that they got a little bit too ambitious when they bought the bike and they're like oh I can rebuild that engine and do all this and you know unfortunately a lot of people don't kind of follow through on that so starting with a project that is you know maybe a little bit more expensive but is less work and it's going to be on the road sooner is generally the way to go for most people especially if you're just starting out doing this well storm I call it on this one guys I appreciate you guys coming along and I hope you enjoyed this new style of video okay okay I could hear you guys yelling at the screen I was leaving you hanging so what do you say we just run a compression test and find out for sure how we're doing so I got the jumper box hooked up and you can bring your jumper box with you and do this you know before you buy the bike to I'm going to turn my key on make sure nothing starts smoking or anything you don't know how long this electrical system has been sitting we can see we have an oil light on in a neutral light on which is exactly what we'd expect I did shine a light down the oil tank and there were actually was like two inches of oil so I just topped it up and so actually did have oil in the system which is a good sign so next thing I tried was I hit the start button and the start button doesn't do a darn thing so not a huge deal let me show you what to do if the start button doesn't work easiest thing to do is pull this side cover off over here and be careful when you do this this is not you know do not try this at home as my official disclaimer but you can jump both poles of the starter solenoid with an old screwdriver you can also get like a little trigger that you can basically you could just send 12 volts to this yellow wire with a red stripe however you want to do that little jumper wire off the battery whatever it may be I'm gonna do it this way again I'm just gonna put this out there I don't recommend doing this I can show you that it works but don't do it ever for any reason it will spark so just be aware of that see and it turns over so what I'm gonna do now is go ahead and grab what 18 19 whatever the spark plug socket is I'm gonna pull some spark plugs out we'll hook up the compression tester and see how we do got the compression tester hooked up in cylinder number four which is one of the ones they said was low fingers crossed let's see what happens that is certainly low about 55 or so so what we can do now is I'm gonna dribble a little bit of oil into that cylinder and if it seals up and our compression numbers go way up we can tell that it's probably rings if it doesn't make much of a difference it could be as simple as the valves being out of adjustment so fingers crossed let's uh dribble some oil down in there and then do it again a couple of squirts of oil down the cylinder let's give her another shot 180 so yeah that points to it being our rings so I would say good news bad news but that's pretty much as bad news expected news I guess so this motor will need a top-end rebuild so we can start to play around with what we want to do since this head does have some damage I'm kind of leaning towards just taking one of my 750 motors that's over here under the shelf right here we have these two to choose from one of these is seized and one of them isn't so well basically probably you start to test the condition I don't remember which one seized in which one is I believe this one is the seized one of the black one is not maybe we'll run a compression test on that to see if you know it seems healthy if not we'll just plan on doing a top-end rebuild so again this was known information when I bought this bike and the purchase price was kind of set accordingly so this is something that would devastate you if you paid a full price not knowing this and you get home and then you realize you're gonna have to pull the motor out and rebuild the top end so this is why it's important to check the condition of the motor before you start to negotiate before you take the bike home well that's where I'm gonna end it for today's video guys I hope you enjoyed this new format I just like the last video I'm just kind of grabbing the GoPro and filming what I do in a given day so we have a new project not a small one but one that I think is going to be profitable for the business one other thing I want to mention I need to start to mess with my GoPro settings I've started to notice there's like this weird black kind of shadowy line and I guess it's some kind of interference with the exposure or shutter speed or something with my LED lights in the shop so I did you know I've noticed that and in the video and I will work on getting that fixed if it doesn't work then I'll switch back to using the big camera or maybe get a point-and-shoot or something but I appreciate you guys follow it along and I'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: Classic Octane

Views: 47,336

Rating: 4.9451585 out of 5

Keywords: Honda, CB550, Cafe, Racer, Build, Project, CB750, CB350, CB360, Yamaha, Motorcycle, Garage. Shop, Update, Triumph, hardtail, bobber, chopper, welding, fab, springer, custom, trail, riding, sport, pit, bike, monkey, Stunt, gloves, burnout, handlebar, stunts, stunting, wheelie, hd, drift, Harley, Davidson, motorcycle, review, comparison, scooter, fix, tips, tricks, tools, painting, glueing, soldering, design, fabricating, solution, motovlog, buying a bike, buying a project, what to look for

Id: gbzi7Z6QHXg

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019