How important is service history?

[pasmith73]

Looked at a 9 year old Honda at a main dealer today. Was surprised to learn that there was no service book with the bike at all. This made me nervous as there's obviously no guarantee that anything has been done. Is this important? The dealer would check everything at time of purchase anyway.

I know lots of people carry-out the services themselves on older bikes, but some record would be nice. I looked at a similar age bike a while ago and the previous owner had extensively listed in the service book every job he had done at each diy service.

Am I being too paranoid?
Cheers.

[andrew311]

Once out of waranty allot of people just do the work themselves. A service stamp is just that, not proof that all the work has been done.

Major concern would be the mileage being true, are there any old MOT's?? a dealers number on the number plate you could call? Or you could try the previous owner. When looking for a second hand bike recently the majority had no or only partial service history, I see it as a bonus for re-saleability but in the end would go for off condition and price.

[Momentofmadness]

pasmith73 said:

Am I being too paranoid?

Yes

I'd look for the other clues such as original toolkit, not dozens of owners, all keys present - is the chain good? Oil clean? Are the grips / footpeg rubbers worn? Get a 'feel' for the bike...

[dern]

You don't need an official service history but some kind of record would be nice. Some people will try and run bikes and cars as cheaply as they possibly can so not bother doing the more expensive stuff like valve clearances.

[catso]

On a 9 year old bike not that important IMO, you need to buy on condition.

My bike has a full 'service history' up until I started doing my own servicing but now that I do the servicing I know it is done more thoroughly and with more care & attention to detail than any dealer ever did, of course that wouldn't help anyone buying it that didn't know me but I'm not selling it anyway and once a bike's 9yrs or more old then I can't imagine any history make's a huge difference to it's worth as it's quite easy to spot the cared for and the neglected by that age.