Tuesday, June 30, 2009

So True.

From the LA Craigslist:
Most of the shoddy built "cafe" motorcycles seen on Craigslist these days are complete jokes. These hacksaw assassins buy a well worn STOCK Honda CB500 or 550 for $1200 to $1500, about current market value. Then to make it a "cafe" they remove the front and rear fenders, the speedo and tach, the chainguard, airbox, seat and footpegs, then drill worthless holes in everything else to make it look "racer". Next is to make home made crappy looking rear sets that just look stupid, repaint the tank and bodywork flat black, or flat green, or some other lame color, and if you are real lucky it gets a cheap checkerboard sticker across the tank. The "cafe" seats look OK but the ones I've seen dont match the factory seat lock so just flop around. The low bars are OK too, no complaints there, but for the price they are asking correct clip-on's should be installed. Without the stock airbox sometimes you can get air pods, or just nothing at all, and that's just dumb. And what else will $4100 buy you besides all the stock parts removed? Will it get you new frame paint? No. Will it get you new chrome hardware? No, it still has rusty 30 year old nuts and bolts holding on the shocks, forks, wheels, and so on. Will you get new tires? No, usually not, at best a cheap pair of CS or IRC's. So really what are you paying an extra $2600 for? If you buy a $1200 motorcycle and remove $300 worth of good stock parts, replace those stock parts with $100 worth of "cafe" parts, $10 for a couple cans of rattle can flat color paint.... then you shoild have around a $1000 moto at best! If all you idiot kids, yes I said kids, want to spend your hard earned burger flipping money on a cafe, for gods sake look closely at what you are buying. TOO many motorcycle "builders" are crooks only out to rip you off. Oh yes, another thing, just because these flakes decide to name their moto, like the Destroyer or Wicked Bitch or whatever else they can think of, that will not add one cent to it's value. It's a marketing ploy to rip you off, that's all. At the end of the day you can do whatever you want with your money, it's your money, I'm just trying to help you from looking stupid. I mean you do plan on riding this thing, right? Other people will see you and say "Wow, there's that crappy overpriced death trap that was on Craigslist last week for $4100, that guy is an idiot". And no, I'm NOT a custom bike builder trying to smear other builders. If anything I'm trying to keep these old stock motos from getting cut up by morons.

2 comments:

  1. Amen!
    I have two bikes a RD400 and what was a Silver Jubilee that were hacked up so bad they made me want to cry. I felt sorry for the old bikes so I bought them. When I'm done they will be nice again but its a pain in the ass! I wish people wouldn't do that!

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  2. Thats definitely the best craiglist post I've seen. I hung out with a girl last year who was bragging about her x-boyfriend buying old hondas out of state really cheaply and turning them into cafe racers but they sounded like they were more or less what is being sold on craigslist now. Good cafe racers are hard to find. I'd love to have have a small cc late 60s japanese cafe with one of those bates fiberglass bumpstop seats and a narrow fiberglass or alloy gas tank!

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