I know Ashely has had someone buy stuff in Japan and bring it back, I'm looking into having a friend, who is going to the USA on business do the same for me.
My CL450 has very non standard semi pullback bars at the moment, although they look OK, the wires are on the outside, and I want the bike to look as stock as possible. At the moment the only set of CL450 bars available i the UK are a rough bent set from DK, they could be straightened and rechromed, but I'm guessing it would be more trouble than they are worth, though I don't know for sure what that would cost.
I'm fast finding out with this project that buying larger items from the US, the postage, plus VAT, duty and Parclefarce fee more than double prices of stuff that is plentiful over there - the CL was never sold here but there were thousands sold in the USA. Handlebars are particularly dear to post (they can't be easy to wrap either! ). A half decent set on eBay at present is £26 to buy, plus £47 carriage to the UK, plus 20% VAT on import, plus £8 collection fee!
In the near future my mate Ed is off to New Hampshire on business, does anyone know if it is possible to bid for stuff on eBay here (I dont have a US account on ebay.com) but have it delivered to a US address? If so Ed reckons he could arrange his clients to look after it, and bring it back as baggage on the company account. If I hit 'buy it now' then eBay automatically adds carriage to the UK etc, I'm not sure how to get round it.
