I recently had a collision on my bike (other party claimed liability) and now I’m not 100% sure what to do.
All the fairings are either scratched or cracked in certain places so they’ll all need to be either mended or replaced. I took my bike to Mark Davall motorcycles out in Essex and he gave me a rough estimate of £2300-2500 including VAT and labour for genuine honda parts. That included front frame, front fairing, both side fairings, rear fairing, rear brake lever, 2 indicators and a generator cover that I ironically enough had just replaced two days prior to the collision. £2500 is close to what the bike is worth though.
Anyway - then a mate of mine told me about Dream Machines and how they had mended his fairings and given him a nice race-rep respray for much much less a couple of years back and now I’m wondering if I should go down that route as I wouldn’t mind a race-rep myself.
I’m just curious if anyone here has any experiences with Dream Machines, the quality of their work and if you know whether or not it will decrease or increase the resale value of my bike when I’m having the fairings mended and resprayed in race-rep colours instead of replaced with original Honda parts?
From my experiences, if it goes through your insurance company, they will write the bike off.
This might not be so bad, if you can buy it back from them for a reasonable price and then get the work done as you want.
The buy-back values over the last 5 years seem to have increased drastically
(obviously with insureres realising it is a good way for you to get a valuable asset back).
It is unlikely with the quote you have been given they will agree to repair it.
As to the resale value, IMHO, it would not necessarily decrease the sales value of your bike…
more likely to decrease the number of potential buyers, as only people who liked the same design
as yourself would think it was worth the money.
Personally, I would never pay as much for a modified bike as for a well kept ‘standard’…
which can then be adjusted how I want it…
Dude, speaking from experience eBay is your friend for replacement panels if you are patient. Most difficult bits to find are the front cowl and the rear seat unit if it’s a f-Sport model. I picked up all of them for about £240 on my CBR, but they were a mix of colours. Toyed with the chinese imports but went for originals as they all bolted back in easily. If you are painting to another scheme then that’s not a problem and a bit of road rash should be easily sorted as long as not through the fairing. I’ve got a few odds and sods from my 2001 600 so may be able to help you out.
Painting wise I’d stick with either something subtle or well know race rep colours, agree that you need to think of future buyers!
Honda fairings are very expensive, as has already been mentioned ebay would be a very good idea to replace the fairings that are really broken. If some just have scratches/a dent or too then you could get them repaired.
But this is a good chance to modify your bike with new indicators / paintwork. If you’re going to repaint your bike I’d suggest something that’s cool but isn’t too radical so you can sell it on.
at £1000 for a respray I wouldnt say they are cheap :w00t::w00t:
thats what I was quoted…dont cost that much for a bleeding car to be painted so why does it cost so much for a bike ?
still toying with the carbon wrap idea myself…will get it done in summer I think
I think I’ll go for the genuine Honda parts then if insurance is willing to foot the bill, but as Adzski said, there’s a pretty good chance she’s a write-off. I had heard that Dream Machines were good from other people, but my mechanic told me the quality of their work wasn’t too good - hence this post. Looks like he was right! I was by the way also quoted about £1000 for repair and respray.
steveCBR11XX - Carbonwrap would look pretty wicked :w00t:
i used a copany in devon called transprep did an awesome job on a repair to the fairing on my 2003 R1. sent it down to them and they had it back to me with in the week, even knocked my postage to them off the final cost. www.transprep.co.uk
