CRASH REPAIR

Repairing your bike after an accident

Legally, we all need to have insurance for our motorcycles if they’re ridden on the road (and that includes byways / green lanes), but we hope to never have to make a claim. If you are involved in an accident – whether there’s another person involved or not.

What happens when I call my insurer to make a claim?

All insurers will encourage you to report an incident as promptly as possible, even if you aren’t sure whether you wish to claim. They will make a recommendation of a preferred repairer for you to use, and you can choose to have your bike repaired wherever like, but it’s well worth considering how experienced a repairer is with dealing with insurance companies and potentially complex accident damage.

If my bike’s damaged, do I have to put it through the insurance?

No – of course, you could carry out repairs yourself. However, when an accident isn’t your fault, a third party will likely be involved. It’s not unusual for some incidents to be paid privately

You can choose who repairs your vehicle.

We remind our customers that they don't have to go to their insurance company's appointed repairer - that they do have a choice and can choose who repairs their vehicle’.

We take as much pride and care with your vehicle as you do, which is an area in which many of our competitors lack. 

Do I have to send my bike where the insurance company tells me?

No – it’s your bike, and you have the choice. However, again remember that your local dealer or mechanic is unlikely to have the facilities to carry out important structural and geometric checks, and perhaps not all the stages of a repair themselves (unless it’s a simple part replacement; the potential to see a machine written off due to potentially unnecessarily high costs could be a factor. Working with your insurer also means they’re warrantying the work directly.

Also remember that if a third party is involved, you should not feel pushed into doing what they, or their insurer, say; if you’re insured with a reputable company, contact them immediately and they’ll be able to step in to make sure your bike is not only repaired to the standard you expect, but that it’s done as quickly as possible.

Why can a bike sometimes take more than a couple of weeks to fix?

The other reason for delays is simply parts availability. As the bike market is that much smaller than the car market, it doesn’t have the same infrastructure or turnover of parts; it’s quite normal for even common parts to be supplied from European warehouses. When parts aren’t available there, they often have to be shipped, from perhaps from Japan or the US, which can take weeks or even months.

The small print in my policy says pattern parts can be used in my repair.

While the use of non-OEM reproduction – or pattern – parts is common across car and bike insurance policies, it’s far less relevant to motorcycles. You might also hear the term ‘green parts’, which refers to recycled parts. Because of the much smaller market.

One thing that might prevent a bike being written off is the use of green parts; here a structurally perfect piece – reconditioned to factory standard – might be used to keep the cost of repair within the underwriter’s threshold, or might be an option when a manufacturer simply doesn’t have the parts available; it’s not unusual to see new parts no longer available for motorcycles even as young as seven or eight years old.

Moto House Service has experienced body-shop specialists from the automotive world. 

When are parts on a crashed bike replaced, and when are they repaired?

Any insurance is in place to put you in the position you were in before the vehicle was damaged, be that with the motorcycle in the condition it was, or with you being in the same financial position.

Insurance companies pay out a typical market value, ie the price that bike would be for you to buy (minus your agreed excess of course). While it does take into account the service history, maintenance etc, motorcyclists in particular will too often be frustrated by the fact that it can be extremely hard to find a bike as good as theirs for what its actual market value is.

The cost of any work will need to be within the threshold given by the insurer. For example, a motorcycle might have a market value of £8,000 and a repair threshold of 75% – £6,000. If it can be put back to the same standard as it was before the incident within that cost, it will be. If not, it’ll be written off.

If pre-painted replacement panels aren’t used, the paint team will be able to match any finish, thanks to the experienced refinishers, three walk-in paint booths/ovens, and an airbrush room. All repairs have to be geometrically correct, structurally sound and cosmetically perfect. If any one of these can’t be achieved, then a repair can’t be undertaken. 

Our Colour Spectrophotometer reading means precise colour matching . During this process, colour matching is to the manufacturer's original code specification. 

What does it mean for a bike to be ‘written off’

Wherever you decide to have your damage estimate produced, the insurance company will then have an independent engineer look at the damage. It’s important that this person understands motorcycles, as a car requires very different repairs; from paint finishes to structural safety.

Based on the market value of your bike, the underwriter will have set a proportion of the value to determine if a repair is worthwhile, or if the bike should be ‘written off’. In this case, the owner is given money up to the market value, and the machine is sold for salvage.

If any vehicle – motorcycle or car – is written off, it’s given a category. Until October 2017, this was from A down to D…

Category A	Vehicle must not go back on the road, and all parts must be destroyed
Category B	Vehicle must not go back on the road, but serviceable parts can be salvaged
Category C	Vehicle deemed a total loss by insurer; it could be repaired, but the costs including VAT would exceed the vehicles pre-accident value (PAV)
Category D	Vehicle deemed a total loss by insurer, though it could be repaired, and the costs including VAT would NOT exceed the vehicles pre-accident value (PAV)

Category C and D motorcycles are often seen for sale – the level of damage they’ve suffered will depend on the market value of the bike when the accident happened. A 15-year-old machine that was written off with category C damage could, for instance, have very minor scrapes compared to a newer bike (of higher value) that might have more serious issues yet only be deemed a category D.

In a bid to make buying salvaged cars more safe, the Association of British Insurers has dropped categories C and D, replacing them with S and N for ‘Structural’ and ‘Non Structural’ damage. A car written off as category S could have a twisted chassis or a collapsed crumple zone, whereas one in category N might have been written off by the insurer for cosmetic damage, or problems with the electrics. However, there could still be issues with the steering or brakes for example, so it should not be considered as safe to drive.

On motorcycles however, there is no category S. If an assessor writes a bike off due to damage to the ‘steering assembly’, the ‘swingarm assembly’, structural damage to the frame, tampering with the VIN/engine number or irreparable engine damage, it will be deemed an A or a B, and will never be seen back on the road.

On the one hand, this means it should restrict the sale of some potentially dangerous salvaged bikes, but on the other, an assessor who doesn’t understand bikes might make a very different call on what they deem to be structural damage, seeing machines taken away from their owners when they could have been repaired.