Let me preface this by saying that I live in New York, which is affectionately known as "The Vampire State". We'll suck you dry!This is a part 2 of a post I made early last month about a Savage thats been given to me by a friend. Finally got it in my driveway even though there's a lot of work ahead of me. However, thats for when I resurrect my old post with pics of this beast.
This post is about the paperwork. Basically, I have this neglected but otherwise decent bike but no paperwork to accompany it. There are a couple NYS inspection tags on it, one from 2003, another from 1992 (yikes
). My friend has had the bike for 8 years or so. The tale as to how he acquired the bike complicates things. He was in Las Vegas with friends playing poker with some people, and apparently the stakes got pretty high when this guy put this bike up and lost it to my buddy. He didn't have any paperwork to go with it, but my buddy didn't care. Screw it, free bike!
The bike ran good for a while, then it got some of the "looks/sounds/feels like a carb issue but is probably a petcock issue" issues. Lacking the funds after throwing money into a carb rebuild, he said screw it and it sat under a tarp until I got it moved this afternoon.
So here's the nitty gritty: is there a "carfax" for bikes so I can get the low down on where this bike has been? If it was stolen (I'm hoping not), what do I do with it? Going to jail is not high on my list of priorities right now, so there's that to consider.
Thats a worst case scenario, and my buddy is 99.99% sure it isn't, so if it isn't stolen or anything like that, would I just fill out an application for a salvage title and go from there? It hasn't been registered since, well, 2003. I want to get this ironed out before I put any serious money into it just to find out that I wont be able to get it on the road legally.
This is going to be my first teardown/rebuild so any pointers would be appreciated.