Dave's shonkers - continuing electroshite

[puddlethumper]

I'm not sure what is worse. Stolen never to be seen again or stolen and getting it back like that. Commiserations @Dave_Q.

[Dave_Q]

Decided I wasn't going to let the bastards get me down, so have today collected a replacement from an esteemed shiters fabled garage block in the scouse corner of not quite Wales.



Not actually ridden it anywhere other than up the road as it's raining and it needs a once over but from first impressions I'm very happy.

Should be able to do lots more drive by IPhone snatchings a day with the 400cc powerhouse, although the size of it means it might be harder to escape the 5-0 down an alley.

I have also taken some steps to SECURE THE BURG, the area is now covered by CCTV and it's locked to a wall anchor with a fuck off chain.

[Dave_Q]

Just rang the insurance for an update and they have written the Vespa off, their offer was £700 which is nowhere near. 

I pointed out that I would need something like 12-1500 to buy an equivalent scooter and they put me on hold before upping it to 900.

Slightly better but still not enough to buy the same bike. They are getting "the engineers" to call me back in the next couple of days to discuss disputing the valuation. 

Anyone any tips on this? I paid 950 for it with no MOT and have spent some time/money on it, I cannot see any for sale or recently sold less than about £1300.

[sdkrc]

Insurance companies are gobshites when it comes to settlements.

Keep declining their offers. They will have to eventually send you a final offer. If you reject this then you have 8 weeks to go to the ombudsman. The ombudsman will require evidence of what you claim the market value is. You may end up with less. You may end up with more.

Their engineers are just claims adjusters. They want you to accept the bare minimum.

You should be able to take their settlement and buy a similar vehicle from a dealer. 

Fuck them. Take it all the way to the ombudsman. 

[Talbot]

38 minutes ago, Dave_Q said:

Anyone any tips on this? I paid 950 for it with no MOT and have spent some time/money on it, I cannot see any for sale or recently sold less than about £1300.

Get prints of adverts, both ones for sale and ones that have sold and send them to the insurance company, indicating that this shows the market value for the vehicle.

I had to do this many years ago with a written-off Land-Rover.  I was offered £350 for it.  Managed to get the offer up to something like £1500 by absolutely refusing to accept their offer and bombarding them with adverts for similar* vehicles, all around the £1800-£2k mark.

Remember, the amount they offer is only that:  an offer.  You're quite within your rights to decline it if you feel it's unacceptable.

As I mentioned in another thread, an insurance payout should put you back to pre-incident condition with no (or minimal) costs to you.  Financially, the incident should be as close to invisible as possible.

[New POD]

What he said. Remember its supposed to be a retail value because you can hardly be expected to deal with private sellers who may be criminally intent. 

Also graphs. Plot price verses age. Price verses mileage, price vs colour. Price verses spec. Price verses distance from your location. Whatever you want really. 

[angle]

Getting copies of adverts etc can't hurt, but contrary to Internet lore the insurers don't have to actually pay much attention to them. From the actual ombudsman website:

'To decide whether a valuation is fair, we compare it with prices in online motor trade guides such as Parkers, Glass, CAP and Cazana.

We’re likely to agree with your valuation if the amount is in line with the guides. But if we think your valuation is unfair, we’ll tell you to adjust it using the guide prices.

If a guide price is significantly higher or lower than the others, we may think it’s reasonable to ignore it. This depends on the value of the vehicle. For example, a difference of £200 would be significant for a £1,000 car, but not for a car worth £9,000.

Customers sometimes say the amount they’ve been paid is unfair because they’ve seen similar vehicles advertised at higher prices.

We wouldn’t normally place much weight on adverts to decide whether a valuation is fair. Differences in mileage or year of registration can significantly affect value, and in sometimes the vehicle actually ends up selling for a lower price than advertised.

Although, you should be aware that more recently, we’ve been told by some trade guides that generally cars are selling at or close to advertised prices.

Adverts may be helpful if the complaint involves a classic or rare model. Or if they strongly indicate that the guides could be wrong. 

If your customer bought their car second-hand just before the claim, we’d still expect you to have used the guides to get a valuation.

The guides should give an accurate valuation and it may just be that the customer paid more than the guides suggested it was worth.

Although, if there’s a big difference you should think very carefully about whether this suggests the guides are wrong. In this case, we’d expect you to review other evidence, such as adverts, to get to a fair valuation.'

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/complaints-deal/insurance/motor-insurance/vehicle-valuations-write-offs

 

[angle]

Having said that, on something pretty low value the threat of the ombudsman would still be pretty effective, I guess. It'll cost them a few hundred quid in staff time to make a submission, so it's probably going to be cheaper for them to add that on to your claim to get rid of you... 

[loserone]

Insurance companies are right to ignore adverts, but actual sold prices are different

[Dave_Q]

So that was quick. 

Had a call just now and the bloke was fairly sound tbf, he was looking at ebay sold prices while on the phone. 

He also mentioned the ombudsman and I said I had looked at their site too and quoted the Cazana valuation:

He rightly pointed out that my paint job isn't the best and it's a relatively scruffy bike with highish miles. 

The last few sold on ebay were £1000, £1219 and 2 x £1320 and they were all lower miles and not painted in graffiti paint. 

We settled at £1200 which I would struggle to argue much higher. 

[New POD]

They start off offering 50% of retail value. And eventually convince you to accept 85% of retail value.  They really are twats. 

Book value says £1712. Take off your paint issue and I'd suggest the insurance company are rubbing their hands. 

[Dave_Q]

Yeah probably, but I am not off trying to buy an identical Vespa, I have a rank Burgman off a top shiter for way less than the settlement so I'm happy to have it resolved rather than dragging it on over a potentially small difference in valuation. 

[Dave_Q]

Paint happened:

Not a bad job for me, I used the same Montana graff paint but lacquered over it, as leaving it matt on the last bike did mean it picked up marks very easily.

Laquered in a few flies but other than that, pleased with my efforts.

[Dave_Q]

[Dave_Q]

As illustrated above by my non-existent selfie skillz I have done a collection.

I'm pretty sure this was the UKs cheapest MOTd running Tmax. Certainly as of what I can see for sale today, possibly ever.



So why so cheap?

Bits are missing



Other bits are scratched



Self tappers?


Yeah, self tappers.



Here, there used to be self tappers, I cannot fathom why here but there you go.



Deffo been a bit crashed/dropped, this rad is actually meant to be in roughly this position but not this bent/broken.


Relatively high miles and the oil and Vbelt lights are on. Seller claimed to have a history book that he forgot to bring, he says he'll put it in the post.



To do list is gonna start with looking at why neither the steering lock or the seat lock work. The lad did say he was mostly selling it as someone attempted to steal it from outside his house in That London.

For anyone wondering what it is or why I wanted one, it's a Yamaha Tmax which is a 500cc sports* scooter. I was definitely sold on the idea of a big scooter being the best thing to have for actual riding on real roads from my short time with the Burgman, but that was too low and not enough legroom for me, not problems I have with the Tmax which is huge.

Bodywork wise I will eventually source the missing bits, you can get a mostly full set of 3rd party plastics for £180 off of Italy via eBay but the radiator cowl isn't included and that's about a hundred quid from Yamaha.

[UltraWomble]

Its been a Loooooong day for you. But thank you for popping over to PR5 land.

[Dave_Q]

Its been a Loooooong day for you. But thank you for popping over to PR5 land.

You're welcome mate, hope the Burgman does you good service.

Yeah it was a pretty long day, reckon about 9 hours on the road and 460 miles with 5-6 hours work somewhere in between.

[Dave_Q]

I also made some progress on assembling the PK.

[Ian_Fearn]

The condition of that T Max is absolutely perfect! I’d love to try one of these, I saw a cool looking chap in Spain on one last year and Jesus..... it was quick.

On the subject of maxi scooters, those Piaggio MP3s look interesting for us car licence holders.

[Dave_Q]

The condition of that T Max is absolutely perfect! I’d love to try one of these, I saw a cool looking chap in Spain on one last year and Jesus..... it was quick.
On the subject of maxi scooters, those Piaggio MP3s look interesting for us car licence holders.

Yeah I have seen a couple of those fairly cheap, the early ones that are not car licence compatible.
Interestingly* they can be made so by just fitting the front wheel spacers, taking them for a Tricycle class MOT and sending the logbook off to DVLA.
I imagine many of the Tmaxes of London look something like mine, panels seem to be expensive and relatively rare so I will probably not be doing anything on that front for a while. Almost every remaining panel needs replacing really.

[Isaac Hunt]

On 5/4/2021 at 7:27 PM, Bstardchild said:

Jesus they must have been retarded kids to make that much mess.........

FFS, all that trouble and effort.  I bet if they tried opening a tin of beans the contents would be all over the floor.  I was going to say 'to risk getting caught for nowt' but of course the chances of getting caught are naught.

[UltraWomble]

Can I just say that even with 24 stone of Northern Fat bastard sat on top of it that Burgman goes like stink.

[Dave_Q]

Ha I came on to post something similar about the TMax as have just been out on it, having only just finished my battle to give the DVLA some flipping money for tax late yesterday afternoon (No V5 and PO computer said no to V62)

I think big scooters are quite deceptive in that they don't launch off the line like something with a clutch but once they are going they just go. 

I found on the Burgman that 50-70+ came up quicker than say 0-20 but still feels suitably serene, there isn't much difference in feel between eg 50 and 85mph so you do need to keep an eye on the speedo. 

The TMax is much the same but +25% powaaah. 

Brakes, engine, suspension all seem sweet so maybe it really has been looked after (mechanically) like the lad said. I can see why the sports variator is so popular though as like the Burg it doesn't feel as fast off the line as it could be, think at motorway speeds the engine is making the most power (5500ish rpm) but it seems to accelerate up to 40 or so at about 4500rpm. 

One day I will have a look at the variator and see if any belt or roller action is needed but will try to just ride it a bit before pulling it to bits. 

 

[Dave_Q]

Popped out between meetings today to fit an alarm and tracker to the TMax.

I also did some investigation into the steering lock, I think the steerer and ignition lock have both been scroted, the ignition is only available from Yamaha as a full lock/ECU set for ACTUALLY A THOUSAND POUND and 2nd hand ones are accordingly pretty expensive. I have ordered a bottom yoke for £16 and an ignition switch off a 125 of some sort which looks about right, hopefully I can lash something up.

Speaking of lashups I took the cover off the variator to inspect the belt, the bolts had all been mashed and one had even had a slot cut in the top to put it back in?

Had to drill a hole in a couple of them and smash in a torx to get them out, new bolts on order.

[Dave_Q]

Done a few bits to the tmax this week.

My new ignition switch turned up, as I said it's off a different bike but I took it apart to have a look. I think it could have worked with some faffing but instead it gave me some confidence to open up my $$$ to replace original.

I managed to fix the seat release bit, the lever had got bent presumably from theft attempt(s). I also found the housing was cracked around the steering lock pin so I glued it up as well as I could with some chemical metal. I also had to replace the battery as once I fixed the seat release I found that it still wouldn't lock as the battery was too big.

The steering lock still didn't work so I assumed the yoke was also damaged. I swapped the yoke over this afternoon, glad I did as firstly the old one was bent, and secondly it was missing a pinch bolt on the top yoke...

The steering  still has a bit of play in the locked position I think because of damage to the hole in the frame and yoke, even the replacement yoke had some damage so it's as good as it can be without spending hundreds.

I also changed the variator belt and rollers. 

It's all a bit chunky in there compared to the average rank moped:

 

The belt was a Yamaha one and potentially the original, the change interval is 20k miles but I have no idea if it was done, it's on 40k now. On thickness the old belt was maybe 70% worn. I also put in 15g rollers instead of the standard 21g which are meant to be much better for acceleration.

Otherwise I have been trying to make sure every time I take a bit of bodywork off I put it back better, I have got hundreds of bolts and screws now for replacing missing ones and I also splashed out £25 on this plastic "welding" gun off amazon which does a decent job of stitching broken plastics back together with a sort of wiggly hot staple.

[Dave_Q]

Also managed to catch some overnight activity on my anti-scrote camera, a couple of foxes and the bastard badger trying to get our food recycling.

 

 

[Dave_Q]

Impressing the shit out of both family and neighbours this morning.



https://youtube.com/shorts/laTcbWRjWCI?feature=share

Bystanders communicated their approval with a variety of positive comments:

"It's really loud, is the exhaust broken?"
"It's too small, Daddy looks ridiculous on it"
"Brum it faster Daddy!"

To which the answers are: no, don't care, and I'm already brumming it as fast as it will go.

[UltraWomble]

17 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

To which the answers are: no, don't care, and I'm already brumming it as fast as it will go.

Winning at life.

[Dave_Q]

Slow progress but I think this thing is ready for an MOT.





My bodywork is pretty rough in places but meh.




I've been over and over the MOT manual and reckon that the minimum for a pass is horn and reflector. It's an 83 so indicators are not required. I also couldn't find a requirement to have a way to turn it off but regardless I have wired up the ignition switch direct to the CDI so it switches off on the key.





Yes the horn is running off a 9v battery. Seems fine and no less pathetic than factory horns on some scooters. Annoyingly I definitely have a stick on reflector in stock somewhere but can't find it so have had to order one. Hopefully get it in for test this week.

[Dave_Q]

Oh yeah I also took my van for mot, needed a wishbone due to floppy ball joint and a CV boot. Advisory for drop links which were new only 2 years/ about 8k miles ago.

Normally we would be off to the Netherlands for holiday but they are not accepting visitors from Plague Island so we're off to Wales instead, slightly fewer miles but good to know everything is tip top.