Motorized bikes and Washington: experiences w/ law enforcement?

mevergreen

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I'm setting out to motorize my bike w/ a 49cc 4 stroke, and was wondering if any MBers in Washington (Seattle, to be specific) had any words of advice or could relay their experience of riding a MB in Washington.

From what I understand of Washington laws, a gas engine bike would be categorized as a "moped" or "motorized cycle" and required to be licensed and registered. I've done a bit of looking around this forum and haven't found anything from anyone who's successfully done this, and most responses come down to "just ride it".

While part of me wants to run w/ that and just ride as I please, another part is worried about sinking money into motorizing a bike only to pulled over and not be able to explain myself.

So Washington MBers: What's your experience been like riding here? Have you bothered trying to get your MB registered? If not, have you had any run ins with w/ police? Does anyone really care about MBs or am I just being overly cautious and worrying too much?
 
I'm setting out to motorize my bike w/ a 49cc 4 stroke, and was wondering if any MBers in Washington (Seattle, to be specific) had any words of advice or could relay their experience of riding a MB in Washington.

From what I understand of Washington laws, a gas engine bike would be categorized as a "moped" or "motorized cycle" and required to be licensed and registered. I've done a bit of looking around this forum and haven't found anything from anyone who's successfully done this, and most responses come down to "just ride it".

While part of me wants to run w/ that and just ride as I please, another part is worried about sinking money into motorizing a bike only to pulled over and not be able to explain myself.

So Washington MBers: What's your experience been like riding here? Have you bothered trying to get your MB registered? If not, have you had any run ins with w/ police? Does anyone really care about MBs or am I just being overly cautious and worrying too much?
Well California got their act clearly together, they made it easy for anyone with a motorized bicycle to get some tags.

From what I understand that comes with a special statement noting that insurance companies might not cover that vehicle, you print it out if you are handing the bike out to someone for sale.

From a legal stance you can find someone who's close by to work a few things out for you allowing you to obtain legal state tags, also from my vague knowledge of other states I know some don't require you to have insurance on a vehicle if it's from another state, I believe Washington is part of that group. With that an officer cannot pull you over with some sort of speculation against you since he wouldn't have the rights to pull you over based solely on being a motorized bike, if you have tags they can't legally pursue you until you've broken actual traffic laws unless they have certain statutes that require vehicles to be transfered into the home state of the resident after having being used there for a certain amount of time. Then you'd have to worry about an officer who could watch and recognize your vehicle more than once after a certain amount of time and felt the need to stop you for that violation.

You don't get a title so transferring is basically not plausible outside of California, and I have a feeling that they don't even check serial numbers against eachother in their registration, if I was there I'd experiment and see how many identical copies would push through since I don't expect that labeling your own bikes with your own numbers is against the law nor labeling them exactly the same. Sorry for that bit of off-topic..

Anyway the other option is the costly and difficult to do one, you can find people who can legally turn bikes into mopeds but it won't be easy or cheap...
 
I'm setting out to motorize my bike w/ a 49cc 4 stroke, and was wondering if any MBers in Washington (Seattle, to be specific) had any words of advice or could relay their experience of riding a MB in Washington.

From what I understand of Washington laws, a gas engine bike would be categorized as a "moped" or "motorized cycle" and required to be licensed and registered. I've done a bit of looking around this forum and haven't found anything from anyone who's successfully done this, and most responses come down to "just ride it".

While part of me wants to run w/ that and just ride as I please, another part is worried about sinking money into motorizing a bike only to pulled over and not be able to explain myself.

So Washington MBers: What's your experience been like riding here? Have you bothered trying to get your MB registered? If not, have you had any run ins with w/ police? Does anyone really care about MBs or am I just being overly cautious and worrying too much?



I live in bremerton and used to ride to work in Seattle, as long as you dont ride like your above the law cops dont care. It needs to be under 50cc which you already have covered, i was riding a 66cc 2 stroke at the time and would say its 49 if i was ever questioned about it. You should be fine.
 
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