Passes & Canyons Blog

From wrecked bike to salvaged parts listing is a fast and well-organized process.

(This is part two of a series on stripping a motorcycle for parts and listing them on the internet for sale. This is all taking place at Steele’s Cycles.)

With this wrecked 2023 Kawasaki Ninja EX650R now reduced to parts, the good separated from the bad, Tyler loaded all the smaller stuff on a dolly to haul it over to his listing station, where he would prep each individual piece for storage and listing.

But first he needed to deal with the larger parts: the engine, the intact and undamaged rear wheel, and the swingarm. These he hauled outside and doused liberally with degreaser. (He had previously sealed and taped every opening in the engine in order to prevent any water or degreaser from getting inside it.) Nothing that gets listed for sale goes out without being thoroughly cleaned, looking as much as possible like new.

Tyler took the larger items–engine, swingarm, motor–out to degrease them before getting them ready to be listed on eBay.

Typically Tyler would use a hose to rinse off the degreaser but on this cold January morning the hose was frozen. So he brought out a large bucket of warm water and poured it over them to rinse. Then they were brought inside to his listing station along with everything else.

That was just the beginning of the clean-up, however. Starting with the rear wheel, Tyler lifted it onto the bench and went at it seriously. Every spot on the wheel was scrubbed clean and then he sprayed it all over with a gloss coating to make it look really good.

Before making photos of the parts Tyler cleans them up like new.

He moved to the computer to begin the listing. Steele’s Cycles uses a system called MotoLister, which is designed to simplify the whole process of preparing a part for listing on eBay and then actually putting it up as an item for sale. The screen is quite large and vertically oriented, which minimizes any scrolling that might be needed.

Typically Tyler will search for a comparable part and use that as the starting point but in this case it appears Steele’s Cycles had never broken down a 2023 EX650R, and as the first one, Tyler needed to create a new listing.

Once the part is clean Tyler will shoot photos to include in the listing showing the condition of the part. In the case of this wheel, there was a cosmetic gouge that he was careful to document.

Once that was done he opened the listing for the wheel and used the connected camera to shoot more than 20 photos, from every angle and showing every bit of the wheel. In this case, the wheel had a small cosmetic gouge in one spot and he was particularly careful to document that bit of damage. He also made a note in the description of the wheel stating that the damage was there.

At times there can be issues where a customer receives the part and then complains about a ding like this that is clearly shown in the photographs. Did you not look at the photographs? Steele’s will take returns and give refunds but they do not offer free shipping on returns. Rick Steele said he wants the customer to have some skin in the game. Everyone knows these days about customers who order a lot of things online, only to return many of them because there is no cost to them. Not at Steele’s.

Two forms of identification help keep parts from getting lost and ensure that the customer gets what they ordered.

After the wheel was clean and the photography was finished, Tyler wrapped it with clear plastic tape and laid a red strip of plastic with an identifying number on it next to the wheel for another photo. He then printed out a tag with all the pertinent information, laid it and the red plastic strip on top of the wheel, sealed those in place with more tape, and then shot one more photo of the whole package.

With a few more entries into the listing system the job was done, Tyler pressed the Enter key, and in seconds this wheel was now available on eBay for purchase. Before his job was done he would do the same for every single part he had stripped off this bike.

The parts for each bike go into a separate bin, which go on shelves in the warehouse.

When all the parts were listed, they were loaded (with the exception of the motor) into a large blue bin and hauled back into the storage room. Here row upon row of shelves filled with similar blue bins store the individual parts of many, many motorcycles. The location of the bin is logged in the computer and when someone buys a particular part it is retrieved from the bin, matched to make sure it is the right part, and then shipped.

And just like a transplanted heart, a piece of that once sad, broken motorcycle helps another motorcycle go on living.

Each part is wrapped and tagged individually in order to facilitate finding and sending the exact part the customer ordered.

Biker Quote for Today

I’m not a biker by choice; I’m a biker by destiny.