Tips for noobie buing their first 125cc bike

[Igor Grechnikov]

I am planning to buy a used 125 cc bike, as it is an amazing way of transportation (I live in Norway). My questions are:

• how long does an avrage bike last? How many kilometers are too many kilometers when buing a used bike?
• When are bikes the cheapest?
• Which bikes barely go down in value?
• Recomendations for bikes to look for?

My budget is ~ £3000 

[Guest]

Well maintained bikes will go on and in. Buy on servicing more than mileage. Bikes in the UK are usually cheapest over winter. Normal advice for a 125 is buy Japanese and you'll not lose much money on resale.

Edited September 13, 2021 by goat

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

10 hours ago, goat said:

Well maintained bikes will go on and in. Buy on servicing more than mileage. Bikes in the UK are usually cheapest over winter. Normal advice for a 125 is buy Japanese and you'll not lose much money on resale.

What @goat said 

[Fozzie]

I think the best balanced 125 is the CBR125.

 

The Yamaha YZF-R125 is I think still the most powerful. But they are expensive, and I've known 2 blow their top ends, and heard of more doing so. I had one, it's quite slow revving for a 125 as it has a long stroke. Don't know why, maybe an inherent fault, or a tiny 1.15 litre oil capacity that gives no room for the engine to burn it, who knows?

Things like the KTM look cool as hell, but again reliability is often suspect. 

 

And the likes of Lexmoto and other Chinese brands seem to have improved, but they aren't in the same league as Japanese bikes yet. 

 

The Honda CBR125 is 13.5BHP, about 2 or 3 hp up on the air cooled models, only 1 down on the likes of the Yamaha. But it has very confidence inspiring handling, an excellent reliability record, and the resale is generally very good. If you service it to the schedule, they are known to last. 

 

That's the best to me, but would see what others say to round your view.

[daveinlim]

Chinese brands are cheap for a reason and will depreciate much faster than Japanese.

As said above, buying a bike with 15k km that has been serviced well is better than buying a 7k km bike that's never been serviced.

 

I have a Suzuki gsxs125 with about 9500 miles on it and it is running as well as the day if left the manufacturer. 

 

Buy a well looked after second hand bike and when it comes to selling it you will lose very little in depreciation