What happens to old Motorcycles

   OK, this may be a really dumb question, but gonna pose it anyway.
One never sees a MC for sale
on eBay or Craiglist that is more than 20 years old and the majority
of them there are probably no
more than 10 years old. with less than 20k miles, esp the Jap bikes.
So where do old, used motorcycles
end up? I've been to a few scrap yards looking for parts when i was
rebuilding a 63' Mustang several yaers
ago and don't ever remember seeing a pile of rusting motorcycle
frames. Are the mototcycle salvage
(junk) yards or do they just get run off into the corner of a yard, to
rust away, weeds growing up through
the frames?

 

A lot of 20+ year old motorcycles are still in occasional service, the
owner takes them out and rides them on nice days, a few times a year
and then they sit in garages.

When they get tired of the older bike (or their wife wants room to
store boxes of Wal*Mart junk in that space) they advertise them in The
Recycler or some other free newspaper.

I know a guy that used to make a living off of snapping up
unappreciated older motorcycles, cleaning them up, maybe buying a new
battery, getting them running well enough to demo to a customer, and
selling them at a profit.

After a few rides, the enthusiatic new owner loses interest, and the
older bike sits in *his* garage, while he takes his old ball and chain
to the mall to go shopping on Sunday.

Then *she* buys a bunch of cheap junk and loses interest in it, so
that junk displaces the poor neglected older bike...

 

Ah, losers like you then. Got it chcikenhawk.

 
 > I've been to a few scrap yards looking for parts when i was
rebuilding a 63' Mustang several years ago and don't ever remember
seeing a pile of rusting motorcycle frames. Are the mototcycle salvage
(junk) yards or do they just get run off into the corner of a yard, to
rust away, weeds growing up through the frames?

Steel isn't worth very much to the salvage yards, maybe $0.02 per
pound. The broken aluminum and plastic parts are worth a lot more than
that.

One local salvage yard has operated out of a store front in the
commercial district of town, and they stack old steel frames on the
roof.

 On 16 Jun 2009, JaxKayaker wrote in
m


I had a few minutes so I checked Atlanta craigslist.  I counted
(quickly so I may be off a couple) over 85 motorcycles 10 years old or
older listed just in the last 2 days, a lot of them from the 80s.  I
bought my 1995 off craigslist 2 years ago.

--
Lew