What's up with motorcycle with "salvage titles"?

[Rumpltzer]

I've been watching Ebay and Craig's List to get an idea about how much certain motorcycles are worth, and I see a lot of motorcycles advertised as having "salvage titles".

With cars, my impression is that a salvage title is given to a car that's been in a flood or an accident where it's been deemed as a total loss or something like that.

Is it the same deal with motorcycles? Have these things been crashed, called a total loss, and rebuilt? Why are there so many of them?

 

[halik]

Usually the cost repair has to be around 75% of the bike values. Just about anything that has a dent in the frame is getting salvaged, because new frames cost prohibitive.

Basically every time someone drops a bike and make an insurance claim, if the ins. company pays ous for the whole bike, it's getting salvaged. If you ever check the OEM prices for fairings, you'll see that it doesn't take much to rack up enough damage to total a bike. (uppers are 500-600 bucks a pop )


Also the title bind to the FRAME only. So if you get a salvage titled bike and score a clean frame for cheap, you can swap it over and have a clean titled bike.