Motorcycle Insurance Talk

Hey, it's Mike Roan. Fix my hog. In this video. We're gonna have the talk, the salvage bike, talk to buy the crash bike, talk and we're gonna talk a little bit about insurance to find out how good you're, you're covered. So getting back to the crash bike, you know, uh it's, it seems like an enticing idea at the time and it, uh there's a lot of variables that go into this, you know, you're at home, you're clicking around the internet. You come across this Harley. The price looks really low and you know, it's crash bike. So you've got to kind of weigh your options. Now. Uh, first of all, you gotta figure out how bad a hit this motorcycle took. You gotta look at the company that's selling it and all the fees that accrue when you click when you commit to say I'm buying this thing and you put a bid in. Now, let's read all the fine print. How do I pay for this motorcycle? When do I have to pick it up? What fees are involved? Um I had a customer, he thought, you know what, I'm gonna buy my kid a sportster, there's one on here, it's a late model at very low mileage, but it had kind of taken a pretty heavy shot and he didn't really do his research on it. He didn't call me or anybody. And he, he said, you know, what, what would I pay for this bike? You know, he looked at what they sold for that weren't crashed and he thought, hm, I'm gonna put a bid in for 1600 bucks. You know, that's it. That's my top dollar. He didn't want to deal with it. That was his bid. Well, as he watched the motorcycle all week long, nobody put a bid in on the bike because they all knew it was way too high of a bid because he didn't look at the, the seller or the, the fees he was gonna have to pay on the other end. So he won the bid and, uh, he didn't read the part where he had to pay with a certified cashier's check on that day or be there to do it. He put it on a credit card. That was another 5%. There was another fee because he didn't pay it with a cashier's check all in all. It was almost $800 in these additional fees on top of paying way too much for a crash sportster. So then he couldn't do the repair himself. Which that's another thing you have to consider when you look at it, you say, well, I'm going into this bike because I'm gonna fix it. That's fine. But you're still gonna have that salvaged title. So he brings me the bike. I write an estimate and he just wants to put a band aid on it. He wants to make it safe and that's a contradiction in terms as well. But, ok, so that's something to really consider when you're clicking, you probably don't wanna go all in what, what you need to do is, you know, ok, a street light, it's like their number one bike. That's the bike you're probably gonna be attracted to. It's a crash bike from pictures. Can you tell if the triple tree is bent? No, you really can't. But guess what? There's a pretty good chance that, that triple tree is probably bent. Um, some people think it's cool to straighten fork tubes. Uh, I don't know any shop that's gonna do that for you back in the seventies. Yeah, we did it all the time. Eighties. Maybe nowadays nobody does anything. They wanna fix it with new parts because there's lawyers in this world and everybody's gonna be held accountable. So if you're gonna be fixing this motorcycle and you're gonna be selling it, you know, there, there could be a gray area there. Plus you're gonna be riding it. It's your life and your passenger's life and, uh, it's just kind of a big risk. So if you click and you're going in, you gotta figure I'm buying all new parts to make this thing. Right. You know, the front rim, the brake rotors, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on. And usually the main reason these beggars total out is the highway bar gets distorted. It bends the frame or mounts the tab. And, uh, you know, they take it to a Harley dealer, they write the estimate and they go, well, it needs a frame. You know, because for one, most shops are so busy now when you bring a crasher to them, they don't want to deal with it. You know, everything's been nicked on the bike. It is totaled, you know, in theory it's totaled. So it goes to the, the crashed uh, website, they buy it for, you know, whatever they're paying for it and then they host it. You know, it's usually the price things that it's the huge attraction. But what you're not thinking about is all the fees and all the repairs and all the unknown problems. And at the end of the day, uh you get this motorcycle all done. You still have a shell salvage title. And, uh, you know, I did talk to my insurance man about it and he said, well, the problem with the salvage title is your replacement, uh, what you get on the replacement value is always less with a salvage title when you go to resell a bike and you got a salvage title on a Harley it's a big deal. If it's a metric bike, nobody really cares because the value wasn't there unless it's say like a gold wing or something. You know. So to me that's a big deterrent. So what you need to do is kind of, you gotta do the math. You gotta figure out how upside down am I gonna get this thing? Now, the flip side of that is there's so many people out there buying crash bikes and fixing them and most of the time they're not fixing them 100% properly. They're buying used tools off or they're buying used parts off the internet. They're putting a real cool guy, paint job on the bike. They're putting the stretch bags, they're putting the aftermarket wheels, they're putting handlebars on it and they're asking a lot of money because the bike does look cool and that's the attraction. Now they bring it to me for routine maintenance and right away. I deep down, I, you know, I've, you know, I, I could start picking things apart in my mind. You know, I can see the swing arms got a gouge in it. I can see where the engine has bounced off the frame because it took such a shot and, you know, it's maybe got a dent and exhaust pipe from doing that too. And I don't wanna burst the guy's bubble, but I wanna bring it to his attention, you know, that you start looking around and the primary's got a scrape on it. They didn't want to put a primary cover on it, you know, it's just dinged up kind of all over. But it's got a really nice paint job. So, now you've got a crash bike that you really didn't know and somehow this guy feathered it through without a salvage title. And, uh, so you, when you buy a bike like that that's been fully customized, it's nice to have a history. Yeah. Did this guy buy it brand new? Great. Now you're buying it from Joe. Blow out of the garage and he's real leery. Doesn't know much about the bike or, you know, maybe he's told you he's fixed it. It's hard to say there's a lot of scenarios, but you just got to weigh your options to me. I'm always looking for that stock, low mileage bike, you know, low price, it's gonna come down to, you know, your budget and your abilities. You know, if you're comfortable pulling the front end off and buying used parts and putting it all back together and making sure the thing cool when you're done and you got very little money into it and you're gonna ride the motorcycle forever and ever, and you're not worried about a salvage title. It, it could be an option for you too. Hey, before we get into insurance, I'm gonna share a little quick story with you on a crash bike. So this guy had a 2009 Street Glide. And it had all the cool guy stuff on it. It had the paint job, it had the bags, the wheels, the everything and the individual he bought it from, said, here's some new OEM parts because you know the fuel gauge isn't working. Right. And I didn't have time to put the fuel gauge in it. Which fuel gauge is not a big project on a Harley pop ferring off, put it on and this guy, you know, wasn't mechanical client and we were doing a bunch of work to it. And he said, here, can you put the fuel gauge in? And then he said, you know, the customer did put a brand new fuel scenting unit in the tank and we're like, oh, ok, no biggie. We're doing the, you know, making it a 103 and pull the ferring off. Put the new factory Harley fuel gauge in brand new out of the box, put it in and the fuel gauge still read incorrectly. And so we're like, well, obviously junior screwed up putting the fuel center unit in or something's wrong. There did a lot of testing on a motorcycle and it all came back to the fuel gauge. Everything's in the motorcycle is working properly. So we're getting a lot of time put into this motorcycle. And my business partner happened to notice that the motorcycle now had black gauges in it. If you notice the street light has silver gauges. Uh huh. So now we've discovered something and then we looked at the part number and he had purchased, or the dealer had given him the wrong your group fuel gauge. So that's the kind of stuff you'd kind of run into on crash bikes. But it's also another tech tip to make sure you're buying the right part for the right year group for your motorcycle. Otherwise you end up doing like what we did is spending a lot of time to figure out, you know who screwed this up. So whether it was, you know, the parts guy at the Harley dealer, if the customer told him he had the wrong year group, if he bought it from another guy, another guy that had fixed it as a crasher, we don't know, but that bike in the end shouldn't have had black gauges in it and it had a different year fuel gauge in it too. So whenever you're buying OEM parts is always best to research everything because you can't trust anybody these days. So, all right enough of that. Let's move on to the insurance talk. And here's the dilemma with insurance. Now everybody buys their motorcycle. Usually a stock handle bars, stock exhaust, stock, intake, stock, everything. And of course, what do you do? Spend big money on an exhaust system? You buy this cool guy high flow air cleaner kit, you put handlebars on that could cost up to $2000 or more. You put stretched bags on it, you put a 21 inch wheel on it and after a year or two you figure out, wow, I've got about 15 grand worth of accessories. I made the motor a 110. Um You know, you've incrementally just put a lot of money in this bike and it's very easy to do with a Harley. Uh It, it adds up tremendously and if you're paying somebody to do it, obviously it's gonna be even be more, you know. So, ok, you everything's wonderful until you have the little upset. Yeah, you crash the bike, you tip it over, it gets stolen, something happens and now insurance is gonna be a big deal. We're gonna find out how good you are hooked up with your insurance man and how well you're insured. Um Hopefully your insurance man's had to talk with you about accessory insurance. It's usually 3000 to $5000 doesn't go very far though if you got 15 grand tied up into your bike. So now what you gotta do is have all your documentation. It's like I had this done, I had that done. I've got work orders, I've got receipts. I did all the work myself. My time is worth something and so you've present this to your insurance man and he's like, ok, and they wanna, they're looking out for them, they wanna chisel away on you. So you kinda have to stand up for yourself and fight for every nickel you wanna get out of your motorcycle. Another option. And what some people do is they say, hey, they get right up front with their insurance man and they say I have $35,000 into this bike. I have $50,000 into my bike. I'm gonna pay a premium for $50,000 because if I come out of the bar or I come out of wherever and my motorcycle is gone. I don't want to get a check for 12 grand because that's what my street guides sell them for on the internet. Nope, I've got 50 grand tied into it. You know, I wanna be around getting a check for at least 40 you know, depending on how many miles. Of course you put on your bike because they like to penalize you for a high mileage motorcycle for some reason. So at the end of the day, uh have the talk with your insurance man. See where your coverage is, see where you're at because it's a slippery slope and they like to always win, you know, and so don't, don't roll over right away, put up a fight, you know. Ok. I hope you found this informative. Uh As usual, always check out fix my hog. We got a lot of great maintenance videos on there. We got a lot of performance videos. A lot of upgrades, check it out. Thanks for tuning in.