Motorcycle Safety & Driveability: inexpensive to make street legal?, kawasaki kdx 200, honda crf 250

Question
Hi Pat,
i was looking to buy one of the following motorcycles (most
likely on Ebay)
Honda
CRF 250 or 230
XR 250 or 400
Kawasaki
KDX 200 or 230
KLX 300
I will be riding mostly off road, so  i will have them
converted to be street legal
(plated) for occasional street driving.
Some of these seem to cost more to make street legal.
How can i find out which ones are cheaper to make street legal,
and from the street legal point of view, what is the difference
between these models?
If you can answer this i would be most grateful as I seem to have
run into a brick wall on this issue
Thanks,
Ned Robby

Answer
The rules and costs for different states vary, but I can give you some general advice:

The cost to buy the street kit is pretty minimal: $75-150 for the lights, horn, whatever is involved. If you put it all together yourself, there is of course no cost, but if you need a shop to do it, you're probably looking at another $75-150. Still marginal compared to the overall cost of the bike.

Where you'll really get the expense is in sales tax: when you apply for the plate/title/reg you'll probably have to declare how much you paid for it, then tack on 6.5-8% to the cost. But really that's still only another $75-150.

You can shop around and try to find which conversion kit is the cheapest, but my guess is they're all within $75 of each other. My advice would be to buy the bike you like best and take the conversion cost as incidental. When you're paying, say, $1500 for a bike, does it really matter whether the entire cost (with tax and conversion) is $1650 or $1725?

Pat