If you title a pit bike yourself, be prepared to get the bike inspected, take your bill of sale to a DMV office, fill out registration paperwork and forms, prove you live in your state, give them your most recent tax receipts, show them pictures of the road-legal parts you installed, and then argue with them for 20 minutes over whether your pit bike is actually a moped.Īs if that wasn’t enough, most local DMVs don’t have the ability to do that kind of thing in-house, so that either means driving all the way to your state capital or waiting for snail mail to deliver the paperwork for you. They may put speed restrictions on them, too, and since you’re actually riding a street legal pit bike those rules don’t make a lot of sense for you. As obvious as that may be, some states require any bike under a certain CC size to be registered as a moped. Clearly a pit bike is not a moped because mopeds can’t do sick stunts. And as you might expect, getting one titled is a PITA. But it’s not actually street legal without them… you see the problem here.
See, riding on public roads with no license plate is asking for trouble, but getting a license plate and registration for a street legal pit bike isn’t easy. This is where most people skimp, and that causes problems. That way those legal bits will actually keep you safe, too. If you plan on riding it often or at night, I suggest buying a higher-quality headlight, tail light, blinkers, horn, and mirrors from us, from eBay, or from your local speed shop. Take the money you saved and buy yourself some wheels and tires, a wheelie bar, an exhaust, or a wrap to make your street legal pit bike stand out. Some states require you to have a license plate light too, and of course you’ll need a way to mount your license plate where it’s visible, so you will need a white automotive LED and a license plate bracket as well. Some pit bikes already have a brake light, so you’ll just need to buy a kit that has a blinker switch and blinkers.
No, really! It’s your call whether you want to take the safety risk in the long term, but if you just want to get it registered fast this is one place you can save some money. In most states you can pass your local inspection with a squeaky bicycle horn, bright flash light, and cheap mirrors from Wal-Mart. Think about all the things a normal motorcycle has: a headlight, tail light, horn, mirrors, and blinkers are the big ones.
The idea is to turn an off-the-shelf mini-moto into a fully street legal pit bike. You can get all the parts to build a street legal pit bike that will pass most state inspections for less than $50. We’re all so familiar with them these days, from riding on disused go-kart tracks to racing in full-custom indoor arenas, that I honestly don’t know what we did before the Grom came out. The Honda Grom was the first in a huge wave of pseudo-pit bikes designed for use on public roads. That all changed around 2014, when manufacturers realized that the world wanted a factory street legal pit bike that was built to the standards of a modern sport bike. Those things were popular for decades on end, so it’s hard to imagine a world where we went decades without Honda building us a proper evolution of that basic formula. Of course, if you want the OG street legal pit bike experience, get yourself a Honda Z50 “monkey bike” from the 1960s or 70s.
If you have a pit bike and want to learn how to race it, you should definitely read about how to get started in mini-supermoto racing or mini-motocross racing. You had to change the suspension and tune the engine so the bike wouldn’t fall on its face trying to carry your full-size ass down to Wal-Mart to ride dank woolies with your mates. In the old days, you had to modify some kid’s single-cylinder dirt bike to make a pit bike or mini racer. While mini-motocross and mini-supermoto racing have been around for a long time, purpose-built pit bikes have not.