Troubleshooting – Project Dirt Bike

So you may of found an amazing used dirt bike for a bargain price but you are asking yourself why is it so cheap? Could it be stolen? Before buying any second hand vehicle it is a good idea to double check and not just take the sellers word for it. To establish if a dirt bike has been stolen you need to run a check on the VIN number. The VIN number is unique on every vehicle, it's 17 characters long, and can be found stamped onto the frame. For a dirt bike you find it on the head stock. Vehicles pre 1981 will have a VIN number of a different length, typically from 5 - 16 characters Keep reading to find out: Where exactly is the VIN number on a dirt bikeHow to check a VIN number to see if the bike is stolenWhat to do if you have purchased a stolen bikeHow do you tell what year a dirt bike is by the VIN number? Where Is The VIN Number On A Dirt Bike? The VIN number will be stamped into the frame on the head stock of your dirt bike. You can see this by turning your handle bars to the left left and looking inbetween the the fuel tank and front forks. If you see that the VIN number has been tampered with, or has been removed by filing it down then the bike is likely stolen. How to check a VIN number to see if the bike is stolen. First compare the VIN number against the paper work, this is the Dirt Bike Title if you live in the US, or logbook for UK residents. The VIN number should match if it is legitimate. Secondly run the VIN number through the online database to see if the bike has been reported as stolen. If both methods come back good then the bike is very unlikely to be stolen. There could be a possibilty that you are buying a dirtbike that has been stolen only hours before and if this is the case any online database may not show this if it hasnt yet been reported and updated. This means is why it is important to have the paperwork to match. Also if you are using my Used Dirt Bike Buyers Checksheet then you will likely weed out any thiefs because they wont have the knowledge to answer your questions. Here are a couple of sites where you can check the VIN database, the first one is for people living in the US and the second for the UK. NICB stands for National Insurance Crime Bureau. This is a free service that allows you to check upto 5 VIN's a day from a single IP address. They also offer links to partner websites where you can pay to find more info from a VIN number. CycleVin is an example for getting more info on motorbike VIN numbers. https://www.nicb.org/vincheck For the UK there is a website called Is It Nicked. Here you can enter either the vehicle reg or VIN number and find out if the bike is stolen as well as other handy info such as the road tax and MOT status. If you create a free account and login to the site then you also get more info like the MOT history. https://isitnicked.com/ What to do if you have purchased a stolen bike. If you have been unfortunate enough to of already bought a used dirt bike thats turns out to be stolen, then be careful that you don't get yourself in trouble. The best advice I can give is to call the local police and inform them of your findings along with any details you have of the seller. Hopefully you have some kind of receipt or bill of sale with a signature and an address from the home you may of picked it up from. If the police believe you haven't stolen the bike then most likely they will try and trace the bike back to it's rightful owner which will leave you out of pocket, but it's better than being bang up! Should you chose to carry on owning the bike in the knowledge of it being stolen then you run the risk of getting caught everytime you ride, and you are going to have a hard time explaining your way out of that one. On rare occasions I have heard of people who that have tried to do the right thing, only to be told that the bike will never be traced back to the owner so to keep it. Don't know if that would be the luck of many! How Do You Tell What Year A Dirt Bike Is By The VIN Number? Every modern VIN number is made up of a standard format of characters and each section of the VIN represents different info. The 10th character of any VIN number corresponds to the year the bike was manufactured - See the table below to check what year your character stands for. A1980B1981C1982D1983E1984F1985G1986H1987J1988K1989L1990M1991N1992P1993R1994S1995T1996V1997W1998X1999Y2000120012200232003420045200562006720078200892009A2010B2011C2012D2013E2014F2015G2016H2017J2018K2019 Decoding A VIN - What The Characters Mean You can get alot of info from a VIN so here is a handy chart to give you the overview followed by some detail on each section. WMI - World Manufacturers Identifier Made up of the first 3 characters, this will tell you in order, the country of origin from the first character, the maufacturers from the second, and the type of vehicle it is from the third. Vehicle Description Doesn't need explaining does it. Expect to find letter and number combos you have heard of, like XR250 Security Digit They throw this character in, which can be a number or a letter to act as a security measure. If this character was changed then it would invalidate the whole VIN. Vehicle Year Use the chart I posted above to find out what year your character represents. Manufacturing Plant This can be interesting because you can actually find out where your bike was built. VIS - Vehicle Identity Selector This is a production number, for example you may expect to see something simlar to 000001 if your bike is the first to roll of the production line.