What's Honda Motorcycle worth?

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

The Thumper: 1982 Honda FT500 Ascot - Motorcycle Classics

Long after thumpers ruled the racetracks, Honda built a modern electric-start street single, the FT500 Ascot.

www.motorcycleclassics.com

1982 Honda 500 Ascot.
500cc single piston engine.
From what I'm reading it was a modification of a bike design for flat [dirt] track racing.

Owner didn't ride it for several years, ended up in a nursing home for a while then passed away. His son wants to sell it. I'm somewhat interested but I'm not going to fix it myself so I would have to have a trailer to a repair shop what do you guys think it's worth and what do you think a repair bill on it would be?

Pros: I started it the other day! All it took was adding some fresh gasoline to the old gasoline that was in the tank, check the motor oil level in the crank case, took the seat off, ran some jumper cables to the battery from my car, and the electric start worked fine --it fired right up.

Cons: Nothing electrical other than the green neutral light works-- no horn, no headlight, no turn signals, no brake lights come on.

Neither the front nor rear brakes work. There is brake fluid for the rear brake system. I did not try to take the cover off for the front brake fluid reservoir and the sight glass is too dingy to look through these days.

Since this 350 pound motorcycle with a big powerful engine does run, but has zero braking ability, I did *not* kick the shifter down into first gear and see if it goes! So, status of the transmission is unknown.

What do you folks think the value of this would be :

(1) as is,
and
(2) after it is repaired and in good working order,
and

-- does anybody have any ideas about what it would cost to have a professional motorcycle repair shop bring it up to par?

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

 

[Crochet556]

How bad do you want it?

$500 give or take.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

PS: As you may be able to see,
the odometer shows 20,000 miles.
I don't know if the odometer still works and I don't know if it's been spun around and it's really 120,000 miles.
I don't think this bike has ever been used as a daily driver --the old guy that owned it since 1985 always had a car and sometimes a car and a pick up truck, and a trailer. He would ride this bike for fun during good weather only. But he was a former dirt track motorcycle champion back in the 1960s and '70s so he probably rode this thing hard in the '80's and may have crashed it a time or two.

 

[BIKER13]

Parts may be the problem

 

[The Old Jaybird]

as it sits worth $500, up and running, everything working as it should its worth $2000 or more. Depending on what needs fixin', might cost a couple hundred or a couple thousand to fix it up.

back in the day these were fun, not really too fast, bikes. Much more a street bike with dirt track styling than any sort of serious race bike.

Completely restored I found a couple online for $4000-5000 or so. New they were less than $1000.

 

[GeauxLSU]

$500 seems reasonable. I sure as heck wouldn't want a single cylinder 500cc bike though. Heck even my 360 was a twin.

 

[cdb400]

Were any of the electronics working before you jump started it using a car?

 

[basstracker89]

Nice bike none the less....

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

Were any of the electronics working before you jump started it using a car?

The Battery was stone dead --
well it was showing 0.2 V.
So we jumpstarted it --but my car was not running at the time. My battery output was 13.5 V.
I wasn't going to buy a new battery and install it when I don't know if the bike would run,if the bike would be roadworthy, or if I would even be able to buy it.