Just had the renewal through for the MZ and guess what?? They have said my existing underwriter can no longer cover me but they are sure they can get me an alternative!
Insurance is going to kill anything out of the ordinary!!
As it happens although I've decided to sell my diesel MZ and Yamaha trike I got a renewal from bikesure for the trike recently so I contacted them and asked if they could do some sort of multi policy and after the usual trying to tell them about modifications I was surprised to get a quote of £250 for both.
Considering the trike quote was £177 I didn't think that was bad.
Pity I'm giving up through overall cost as I can't really afford to keep stuff on the road purely as a hobby now that I've retired
Trying to understand insurance is complicated, Old well cared for bikes, or rare bikes go up in value, ie vincent black shadow £25,000. New cars and bikes go down in value. Your bike 2004 enfield made in india would have been £3500 when new, now with a bust engine maybe £500, add to that a yan clone £300, not realy a difficult conversion, so add £200 to that and you would get £1000. That is the way the insurance will look at it. If you put a real yan in that alone would be £1500 just for the engine.
The problem in the UK is that any thing that is "modified" is seen as a performance modification and you have to declare your bike as modified
and there then follows a long tick box questionare about the changes to the bike.
As you can imagine changes to the exhaust are usually because you can't get anything else to fit and is not a performance mod.
The next hurdle is the change of engine as insurance companies don't usually have anything on their computer that covers diesel lol
They just don't understand that you have probably made your performance worse than the standard bike.
Fortunately there are a few brokers who will put your case to underwriters and get a quote after a few days.
The UK is gradualy going the way of continental Europe with type approval but so far is not as bad as our continental cousins.
Getting insured in Canada was a similar procedure except nobody asked questions. Bikes are either stock or modified. The fact that my modifications actually reduced the horsepower by 60% made no difference.
So I'm now insured with the only company around here that will touch "modified motorcycles" (YIKES! ) along with other high risks. You know, drunk drivers, young drivers with multiple accidents etc.) It is actually quite funny. And really not very expensive either. So yay for me:-)
Here in British Columbia Canada, you get a one page form from the goverment monopoly insurance company ICBC, fill it out with pics and ser#'s of all major parts frame, engine, trans, and pics of all sides of the bike and add $25.00 mail it off, then you need a mechanical inspection, at a inspection approved garage, and that's just a check list, lights, brakes, signals, mirrors, etc. to be safe. I'm just starting this now, hopefully it goes smooth.
