For comparison, the new and old bikes, shortly before I sold the YBR.
The triumph is a 2005 model. 11,500 miles at time of purchase (June 2013) which means it's barely really been used. Picked it up from a private dealer who basically wasn't using it and his wife wanted him to give it up! It went up for £4k and I only went to see it out of curiosity - a bit out of my price range.
I'd actually been looking for a Kawasaki W650, basically a Japanese modern Triumph knock off, but with a smaller more economical engine, more manoeuvrability and theoretically cheaper. But damn are those hard to find. A couple of months of checking ads and I gave up.
I'd read that the bike market was suffering due to the never ending British winter - basically no one was selling anything. Pretty much confirmed by the fact I was the only person who'd come to visit it. After I didn't get back the Triumph owner dropped the price by 250 quid, and eventually I made an offer of £3,500 which he took :)
Needed an MOT and I'm glad I made him offer to cover that before I paid - turned out to have a dodgy back spoke (I have a feeling those spoked wheels may cause some headaches in the long run, but they are pretty!)
Also glad it was taxed. 6 months only but that was about £45 (compared to £17 for the year on my old bike)... basically this thing is gonna guzzle petrol/money compared to what I'm used to!
It's also worth mentioning the failure I had trying to insure to test ride it. Basically no one would give me day insure as a new bike driver to cover test rides. In fact it seems that day/temporary insurance for bikes at all is fairly non-existent now and you essentially need to have an existing policy that covers riding other bikes. The guy was great though and we came up with a little compromise: he took me for a test ride on the back round west London (perfect as I got to check it was comfortable for the other half) and then he let me give it a short uninsured ride round the local block (very trusting, no deposit, though I had to leave my old bike there.)
