Used Bikes and Repair Questions

[ssheftall]

I'm going to be looking at some used GS500's starting today and I'm new at this.  I've got some resources from various websites to help me spot trouble with bikes BUT I need help determining the cost of a particular repair (so I can take that off of the amount I'd offer).

In general, how much to fix (including part and labor):

Rusted Gas Tank

Rusted Exhaust Pipe

Clutch Cable

New Chain

Brakes

Good Tires

Lights

Mirrors

Thanks in advance for the help!

-S.

[scratch]

I can only answer a few.

Chain $60-80

Tires $100 each (at least), maybe $120 for the rear.

Lights - bulbs or ?

How about fork seals?

[The Buddha]

Cables say $20 a piece, and say $10 labor for clutch, speedo and tach, but $20 for choke and throttle, Tank, $25 for parts, and say $25 labor, Heck I'd say more for labor, rusty pipe, say $10 parts and $20 labor, brakes - you talking pads or disc... Pads are $25 and say $10 labor, disc is ~$150 new for parts and ~ $25 labor, tires - 60-120 front, 80-150 rear, and taking wheels off is another $20 per wheel, and usually shops fit it free if you buy the tire there, Mirrors are ~20 a piece for napoleans, and 0 labor, chain ~$50-60 parts and say $10 labor, lights, $6-9 for the bulb and $5 labor, tail lights and turn signals are like $1-3 each and labor is less. In short, a shop will easily charge you more than what a bike is worth to do all of this, and we all do the work ourselves and pretty much save on all the labor. Further shops dont take on messy and time consuming stuff like rusty tank and rusty pipe etc, they also dont fit cables if that's the only thing you are doing, Bulbs and brakes and disks, also forget it, its too small for them to even write up the ticket, and they have these minimum prices etc. So unless you are taking the bike for major work, they dont want it at all. Which is one reason why people never ride their bikes, and why they sell bikes with similar issues very cheap, cos the shop will cooly hand them a $1500 bill for a $1000 bike... they were better off selling broken bike (ok bike needing maintenance and TLC) for $500. I know of a guy that ended up handing the dealers the title to his bike on seeing the repair bill... OK it was an old honda CB 450 but they wanted $700 for some things he wanted done ... and he said... here take it.
Cool.
Srinath.