Some of you might remember a few weeks ago I mentioned my TDM wasn't riding funny, wasn't sure if there was an issue with it. Well, it turns out there was....
I took it to a garage to see if they had any ideas, it was quite late in the day so the guy only had time to ride it round the block and pronounce without more time with it he couldn't identify the problem. Now this problems been annoying me for months, enough to write off what was always a dubious TDM (I've had problems since day one - although partially because day 4-5 I crashed it quite beatifuly when grabbing too much front brake in the wet), so I thought I'd head up the road and check out some new bikes at lovely M&S in Newcastle.
Now, I've known these lot are dodgy dealers, so expected them to offer me pittance for the bike. Anyway, long story short, when they did their "checks" to see its trade in price, they identified the cracked front fairing, missing grabrail at the back and a couple of other things, and offered me £1000. For perspective, bought at £2200, has 13k miles on it and is a V reg 4TX one.
This was until, his mechanic mate called us upstairs, and showed me the rear shock, which it turns out wasn't actually connected to the back of the bike at all, and lifted quite clearly off! Hard to explain btu I'm sure you know what i mean, basically if you lift the seat upwards, rather than lifting the bike, the rear shock isn't attached to the long metal bits which lead to the wheels from the front of the bike (sorry I'm not nearly technical enough to know the parts and I'm furiosuly writing this), so you just kind of pull the seat up freely instead.
Now, the guy at this point pretty much thought this was a total knock off, and offered me £500 trade in, or £600 parts and labour to repair the back bit.Now M&S are well known around these parts for being total rip offs, so I took the bike home with me where its now sitting in the garage.
If anyones managed to make it through all that, I have a few questions, the first being how much would you realistically expect to replace a rear shock for? Including parts and labour, i'd like to get better with bike repairs etc. but its far too major a project to start with. Now, to be perfectly honest I'm pretty certain this isn't the cause of my original niggle with the bike that caused me to take it into the garage in the first place, which a few people reliably told me on here was likely the coils (fortunatly M&S don't know about that one), how much would it cost to fix both the coils (presumabyl replace), and this rear shock?
In addition, if I was going to turf the bike off, is it really only worth £500? I'll take some photos of it if people are interested, its got about a 2 inch scrape on the top fairing, a few niggling bits and pieces missing and the rear grab handle is missing, it does have a Givi rack mounted though which surely is worth a few hundred bob in itself including box. If its worth more, does anyone know how much I should expect to ask for?
Finally, (i realise this shouldn't go in this part of the forum but hey), avoid J L motorbikes of Darlington at all costs. I had problems from day one with him getting it MOT'd, and apparently other things are missing from the bike that i've never seen (something under the seat? sorry for being vague, I was barraged with a list of problems and didn't make a copy), in addition half the work i've had done (new exhaust, rear brake disc) were inherited from him despite apparently the bike being in top condition!
Grrr!!
Thanks for reading this anyway, sorry for sounding so demanding for responses, I'm just rather annoyed
