if you driving down to the states to buy a complete, there's nothing stopping you from doing a short detour to the local trails and dirty the bike up a bit. Then, when you drive through the border, you can claim that you're on your way home from riding great trails in the U.S. ( suck-up!) and avoid paying duties!
When i buy clothes down there, first thing I do is rip the price tags off, fold each item and pack them in my suitcase. Discard all evidence!
bingo. i don't know how many bikes we have done this with, but we saved enough in border costs to finance another bike.
There is one thing that may catch you though…it sorta caught us. They take pictures of your car as you pass through. We had 2 bikes on the car once when we crossed into canada. When we returned we had 3 (one on the roof and two on the back). We were questioned about it. They said we had two when we crossed and I swore we had three since the camera did not catch the roof all too well. Of course I could have claimed it was inside on the trip up but surely that would have caused the "well what is in there now that you don't have room for the bike now" question.
With one on the back going in and two on the return trip, they don't really question anything…of course certain border guards have it in for everyone so it does become luck of the draw sometimes :)
Just make sure you don't cross at the same border and not within a few hours of your first crossing and you should be fine. We tend to do a Aldergrove/Lynden crossing going one way and then a Sumas crossing the other.
dear DW,
since you got like a million bucks now, can i borrow $2850 for a Revolt frame?
thanks,
steve