Buying a bike from UK

Hi guys,

I'll buy a UK used bike on eBay, I'll get it from the buyer and immediately start a journey through western Europe. For this to happen I need to get temporary license plates I guess. Do you have any idea what's the low - what plates do I need, how/where I could get them from? Any info on the price/taxes?

Thanks

Being an ignorant American this is purely guess.

Could you get plates from your home country (so it is registered there) before you go to buy the bike? Then after your travels, you could just go home and not have to re-license the bike?

In the UK a vehicle gets it's plates when it's first registered and the plates then stay with the vehicle for it's life (normally) so it should have plates already. What you will need is road tax and insurance. I think it'll be very hard to get insurance if you don't have a UK address.

Ask the guy to tax it for you, it does not cost much.

Ask him if you can use his address as an insurance address, if he will not let you then don`t buy the bike as you need a UK address. You can get insurance online for as long or as little as you want.

Go onto HorizonsUnlimited.com and ask this question. There are lots of guys from the states who do this type of thing on there.

Steve

Thanks a lot for the useful info !!

UK license plates will be OK all across Europe, but if you are going to re-register it as a Belgian bike when you get home you will need to remove the UK headlight and fit a European unit to get TuV approval (or your equivilent), not a big job, quite easy to do.

If it has UK road tax already that's good, if it doesn't then ask the seller to tax it for you and explain that if it's not taxed then you can't buy it as you need to ride it home, it's £48 for a year so not too expensive if you have to pay for it.

Insurance I'm not sure about, will your own motor insurance not cover it?