Pro Bikes

factory teams dont get bikes, they get parts and assemble from there

It depends on the team and system they have in place for race bikes, loaners, etc. Some mechanics from Honda have mentioned multiple times that they build from parts, and don't start with a completed bike. Kawasaki on the other hand has a loan pool system, their bikes must be returned for sale inside the company, and then on wholesale to dealerships. So quite often their bikes do start life as a production bike out of the crate. As for how many, I'm not quite sure. For 250F teams it's more common for them to sell their bikes at the end of they year. So when they strip them down, everything gets labeled and put away until the end of they year. Then the bike gets re-assembled with mostly stock parts and sold. The teams will usually leave certain goodies on such as exhausts, bars, new graphics, seats etc. If you have some sort of connection with the team you can sometimes purchase them with a few more parts on them.

Whend i was at a Yamaha dealership in 2008 we would buy bikes from the Yamaha dealer auction. That year we got one josh hill bike, one grant langston bike and a broc hepler bike. They all had new wheels, motors, suspension and subframes. They had a seat cover on them and the fuel tank petcocks were ground down to just a nub that requires use of a key or pliers. Essentially everything was new OEM aside from the frame, fuel tank and plastics which had their graphics on them. We also got many other bikes. A full pro circuit dirt rider test bike, yz250f, and Donn Maeda'S yz450f with Jubilo yamaha graphics that I think he rode at Loretta's in 2007. I bought the pro circuit yz250f

This question has been asked over and over for years. I love it.

Me too. At the end of the day, it's whatever deal has been lined up to determined the unused parts. More times than none, the striped parts will sit in a shop collecting dust or sold as standard parts.

I know from various interviews over the years that used/unused works parts from the factory teams are melted down to their component materials. The trickest of trick unobtanium reduced to raw metal.

Over the years a lot of these goodies make their way out the back door of the race shop.

JMB acquired his works HRC 250 out the back door of the Honda shop.

A lot of trick items come from the practice bikes of factory riders. RC4 had a pit at his house full of destroyed bikes loaded with works parts. Apparently Kawi was upset discovering this because it was easily possible to assemble an entire works KX SR250 simply from the pile.

The stock parts that are pulled off lead many different lives. They can be destroyed and written off as a loss in the P&L sheet, they can be sold through various channels, or they are warehoused until it is time to give the bike back for it to be sold.

Nearly all of the non-factory teams sell their bikes at the end of the year. A buddy of mine has a Stephane ROncada Kawazuki 250f, and also has a Kyle Lewis XXX CRF450. The Kawasuki from PC was amazing for the first month he had it, but then rapidly deteriorated. He had no idea how to maintain it.