Total Car Check ( and Total Bike Check)

A History Check That Saved My Thousands

I've been scrolling the internet looking for my latest toy, preferably a 1998 Ducati 916 in bright red.

I managed to find two I was really interested in. Both were in my budget of under £7,000 ish and both had reasonably low mileage. It was a pain in the butt that one was in Manchester and the other in Liverpool (both a good three hours from where I live at the moment.) So, rather than drive up only to find they were not worth the spend I thought I'd call the owners and get some background information.

My first call was to the bike owner in Manchester who said all the right things. The bike's in perfect condition, always been serviced and he's never had a problem.

On the second phone call to the owner in Liverpool, he admitted he'd missed last years service and there was a two inch scratch on the petrol tank and a little wear on the real wheel. This guy seemed far more genuine but his bike had done 10,000 miles more than the one in Manchester. Still, I found myself more interested in the bike from Liverpool cause the owner was open and honest.

Background History Checking

I grabbed the registration numbers of both bikes and decided to run a background check on them before driving 3 hours to take a look.

When it comes to car and bike checks there are a plethora of choices. The market leaders seem to be HPI Check but they are more pricey than some other less reputable ones like Total Car Check (who now also do bike checks.) As I hadn't even seen the bikes I wanted to spend as little money as possible on a check so I went with the Total Car Check option.

The results:

• Both bikes checked out for no outstanding finance
• Both bikes check out for genuine mileage
• Only one bike check out for accident damage and that was the bike from Liverpool

What a relief to find out what was going on with the Manchester bike. Had I bought it without running a Total Car Check I'd have lost about £5,000.

After all this, I felt confident that the bike in Liverpool was going to be good. So much so that I got the train up, bought the bike and rode home.

The moral of my story is to always run a history check before you buy a bike (or car). It saved me a tonne of money and a fair bit of stress I'd say.