I just found out that the 2001 F4i I bought less than a month ago dosen't have the factory motor in it. I ran across an old post the seller started, stating that the body has 8000 and the motor has 2000. Needless to say, I'm a little upset that the seller left that detail out to me. However the bike runs great and I got a great price. I guess you take the good with the bad. I plan to contact the seller in the near future, but want to get a greater understanding of the situation and determine what engine is actually in my bike (year, what happened to the bike a came out of, was it new, etc). I searched the forums for relating issues and didnt get much further than to get the serial number on the engine. So I look, no serial number...i have no idea what this means. Where should I go from here? Please HELP! Thanks!

 

the engine # isnt the same as the title/registration?

 

Start with contacting the seller. Most people refer to a rebuilt or newly modded engine as a new one. Example: Said seller took the bike into a shop at 6000 mile and had all the maintenance accomplished and upgraded some components, so now he says the engine only has 2000 miles on it. You already have the bike... no reason for him to lie about it now.

Like shraz said... there are three different numbers on the bike. VIN, frame and engine # and there all different.

I just looked around, there's not much from VIN checks on the net like Car Fax. I'm still looking and I'll post later if I find anything.

 

Thanks for looking guys. What gets me is that my engine dosen't have a serial number on it. I checked the manual for the engine serial number location and I don't have any numbers there at all, or any signs that it was tampered with. I'll double check when i get home from work tonight, but it appears that the area in which the number should be engraved is completely smooth. Is there a reasonable explaination that an engine wouldn't have a serial number on it? I'm pretty new to sportbikes and wanna get my facts straight before I call the seller, just in case he tries to tell me some bogus reasoning and I dont know any better than to accept it as truth. Thanks again.

 

I just got off the phone with my local Honda shop.... you can't buy a new bolt in engine. You have to have one built or rebuild yours. So, if the crankcase were replaced... where the number normally is it would not have an engine number on it. New crankcases or aftermarket crankcases do not have numbers.

 

Seriously, this forum rocks...Thanks a lot. Now I can call this guy and have an idea about whats goin on. Anyone ever have to replace their crankcase? Some serious sh*t must of happened to have to go that far, right? Wouldn't the original would have to be cracked??

 

That could be anything from stunting or as simple as some dumba$$ trying to use a regular jack to lift the bike up.

 

but again bike works

 

I see his concern... I wouldn't want to buy your stolen bike, or anyone’s. I wouldn't look at buying a stolen bike/part as a good deal. I'd be thinking I screwed over one of my friends, friends I don't even know.

 

The seller claims that the bike has never been laid down and there really isnt anything to make me think otherwise...yet. So hopefully it wasn't stunting and I couldnt be happier with the performance. All in all, I'm still pretty happy about the purchase. I haven't had time to call the seller, so busy at work[:@] . Thats good logic don, anytime you buy stolen things you are just supporting theft, esp. motocycle theft. What goes around comes around.