A hobby turned into a side hustle

If you’ve been reading Mojo Garage long enough, you know I have a thing for small-displacement bikes. I currently own a 1974 Honda ST90, a ’75 Honda PC50 moped, and my latest acquisition is a trio of French mopeds: one Solex Tenor and two Motobécane Mobylettes — a 50V and an AV92. Okay, I’m not completely nuts; I sold the Tenor and the 50V, but I am keeping the AV92, a very rare model that was never imported to Canada. But these latest motorized cycles are not the focus of this column; rather, it’s my recent purchase of a rather large inventory of NOS (new old stock) moped parts. 

The ad for these parts popped up on Facebook Marketplace, and the price was such that I couldn’t turn it down. Within hours I was at the seller’s home (located just 20 minutes from my place), loading up my pickup to the brim with what turned out to be the inventory of an Ontario Motobécane dealership that had gone out of business sometime in the mid-1980s. 

The seller was not the first person to have acquired the inventory after the dealership closed down, and I probably won’t be the last. He told me he’d purchased it to restore mopeds with his son. His son has since grown and moved away, and he felt it was time to move the parts along to someone else. My goal is to sell these parts individually, and maybe (probably) use them to restore my own mopeds.

The inventory included parts books and a hand-written inventory list dating from the time of the dealership, which my girlfriend and I promptly transferred into a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, various parts have been taken out of the inventory by previous owners of the lot, but no one seems to have bothered to update the list. Therefore, one of my tasks is to take a proper inventory of the stock, readjust quantities, and put misplaced parts back into their proper bins. 

I also have to identify various parts that have fallen out of their original packaging and now have no part numbers. And about those part numbers: About 90 per cent of the parts are from Motobécane (I also have some Peugeot, Puch, Piaggio and Solex parts), and they are simply numbered sequentially. The lowest part number I have is 5, which is a steering-head ball bearing, and the highest part number is 52641, which is a throttle grip assembly. In all, there are 606 part numbers and a total of more than 6,100 parts, which will be readjusted after the quantities of each are verified. 

Going through the parts, I was shocked at what the dealer had to carry in stock. I say “had” to carry because the French manufacturer most likely had obliged the Ontario store to buy a minimum inventory to get officially certified as a Motobécane dealership. Within those parts are items that would likely never wear or break, or otherwise ever be needed — this has actually proven to be the case, because I now own a lot of those parts. 

There’s an abundant supply of aluminum intake manifolds (when will one of those ever wear out?), and countless handlebar clamps, wheel spacers, brackets, specialized fasteners, and a bunch of other things that should normally last the lifetime of a moped. I also have a lifetime supply of crankshaft assemblies, light bulbs, brake shoes, and all kinds of switches, levers and pedal cranks. There are even a few brand-new speedometers, which have proven popular since two have already sold.

On the other hand, there are no fenders or other body components, no petcocks (they’d be useless anyway due to ethanol), and no new cylinders, though there is a healthy supply of new pistons. That last point is likely because cylinders were sold with matching pistons, while pistons were sold individually. 

I also suspect that many of the missing components were used by later owners of the inventory to restore mopeds. Heck, I’m guilty of that. I used new parts to restore the latest mopeds I sold, and I have amassed a bunch of parts for the future restoration of my AV92. Fortunately, there are plenty of useable and sellable parts, like engine parts, gaskets, electrical and ignition components, and tons of other things that modern-day restorers can use.

I’ve since placed an ad on Marketplace to sell parts individually, and within a week I received and delivered four orders. With those four orders alone, I’ve already recuperated 30 per cent of what I had spent on the parts. I’m quite confident that I will recuperate the entire amount before the end of the summer, and after that I will begin to make a profit, which is my ultimate goal. Well, that, and perhaps add a little moped-restoration side business to my parts-selling side business.