No matter your powersport poison of choice, the used market is often enticing. Maybe you like to browse for fun, with no intention of buying. It's the digital equivalent of window-shopping, if you will. Call it tab-shopping, I guess?
But maybe, just maybe, you're actually intending to go out and do a deal in your area. Or, depending on the vehicle and how bad you want it, even put some time, effort, and cash into traveling somewhere far away to get the vehicle of your dreams. I'm pretty sure most of us have been there at least once.
How do you know if a deal is too good to be true, though? That's the neat part; you don't always know. It might feel like that's a distinct possibility, especially if you're a person who's naturally inclined to be skeptical. Or, if you've had enough bad experiences that you have a tough time trusting what people write in classifieds.
Every once in a while, though, people can surprise you in a nice way. Take this 2008 Kawasaki KFX 450 quad that someone was selling up in Wisconsin. Apparently, the guy selling it really needed the money, so he was willing to part with this quad that he'd had for some time in a hurry.
When he sold it, he claimed that all he thought it needed was a battery charge, or possibly a new battery, and that it should otherwise be in good working order. Are your BS antennae going up? Mine, too. But YouTuber and frequent powersports equipment fixer-upper 2Vintage thought he'd give it a shot anyway. And to cap it off, he took the ultimate gamble and bought it before he'd ever even taken a look at it in person.
There's a reason he did this, though, and it's this. He says that in his local market, the KFX holds its value pretty strongly, and usually goes for around $4,000 to $5,000. Since he was able to get the seller to take just $2K for it, and he both enjoys and is pretty good at wrenching, he thought it was worth a shot. (And hey, it doesn't hurt that the story makes good YouTube content, does it? Surely not.)
The first thing you'll notice as he's bringing it in on the trailer is that the KFX 450 looks like it was well cared for. That's not always an indication that the mechanicals are in order, but it's definitely encouraging. It didn't just get abused and left outside to fend for itself in the elements since 2008.
To 2V's surprise and delight, the seller seems to have represented this quad accurately. While the battery is just as flat as advertised, it does start to charge when hooked up to a charger. It's slow going at first, but eventually it's ready to start up.
And the thing sounds...good! Very good, in fact. It's so good a sound, 2V can't help but want to immediately take it out for a test rip to see how it rides. So, not long into the video, we get a whole lot of onboard footage of 2V testing this KFX out for the first time.
The thing handles well and acts exactly as it should. It turns out that was $2,000 well spent, and not a horror story best suited to be told in the month of Halloween. See, good things can still happen on the Internet!
