How much are garages charging?

[premmington]

I think it'd be them taking you to court
Did you know it was modified? - no
Did you suspect it was modified? - no
It has the capability to go faster than intended, how did you not know? - I drive within the constraints of the speed limits and road conditions, I never noticed any extra performance as I have not driven any other comparable vehicles.

That's all it would take - 'blind ignorance'.

Not that I agree or condone remapping or insurance fraud, I've long been of the opinion that garages should be able to report vehicles taken away without safety-related repairs carried out - brakes, suspension & tyres for starters, emission control defeats and vanity plates could also be reported for non-compliance but I think most techs would be content with calling in safety related stuff.

Your quote " I've long been of the opinion that garages should be able to report vehicles taken away without safety-related repairs carried out - brakes, suspension & tyres for starters, emission control defeats and vanity plates"

This what the MOT every year is for....? Someone in a garage does it all at once - once a year.

 

[Smallfry]

Being devils advocate, I think it would be the other way, insurer makes a claim, insurance company finds out it’s modified and not disclosed.
Tells the policy holder it wasn’t disclosed so wasn’t insured.

Who goes next? Policy holder is getting nothing from the insurance company

Insurance company is quite happy not to pay out.

Is the insurance company going to take the policy holder to court? No way that would include a financial cost with no benefit to them. They are on top here with nothing to loose.

So policy holder is getting nothing, if they want paid out they’d have to take the insurance company to court.

I’ve modified most of my cars by way of re-map, very noticeable torque increase, always disclosed it to my insurance company, makes about a 25% increase in my experience, about £75 in the grand scheme of things

Why not tell them?

£75 is reason enough for most people.

Also we are old. If the proposer is young, the additional cost will be even more hefty than a standard policy.

I often wonder what happens when mods like this are not disclosed, and comes to light after a bus queue full of Nuns and disabled children has been run down with multiple fatalities. Does the insurance company walk away ? If so, what happens then ?

I am not a great fan of remaps TBH, as most seem to cause problems of unreliability, and also, if this level of performance is available from the engine, why don't the manufacturers do it, given their R & D budget and capability ? Almost all over the internet, or out of the back of a van remappers seem to have copied maps from somewhere else, and not done any actual tuning themselves.

 

[Ubique]

Your quote " I've long been of the opinion that garages should be able to report vehicles taken away without safety-related repairs carried out - brakes, suspension & tyres for starters, emission control defeats and vanity plates"

This what the MOT every year is for....? Someone in a garage does it all at once - once a year.

Yep, but not every car comes in for an MoT, and even then, theres the 'can you check it over first?' Items are identified that would be a fail, they say 'oh, don't do the test then' and take it away. Or it comes in for EML on but has tyres down to the cords - 'Oh, don't worry about that'

 

[Keith 66]

It had to come - it just had to...

Maps with 10% to 30% for standard engines and up to 40/70%+ with hardware modified "Stage 3" tunes.

And just nobody tells there insurers...

A lad i know is into cars, just built a pickup. Shoehorned a v8 lexus motor & power train into it, now that thing has been massively modified, chassis suspension, drivetrain, engine remapped the lot. Its an absolute monster. Needless to say it wont be having an mot, iva test or whatever.
Yet he will drive it on the road, just pray he doesnt have a prang.
Just a couple of miles away are the new roads at back of canvey ind area, for most of the week you can hear the performance cars going mad on the circuit, It is a magnet for every boy racer for miles, you will see scores of modified cars there every night. In the summer you can hear them for miles.
I bet nobody tells their insurers!

 

[premmington]

Yep, but not every car comes in for an MoT, and even then, theres the 'can you check it over first?' Items are identified that would be a fail, they say 'oh, don't do the test then' and take it away. Or it comes in for EML on but has tyres down to the cords - 'Oh, don't worry about that'

I know - I have to pick the metal out of my fingers from removing wheels with bad tyres - and they still drive away from my garage after they been told. I just stamp the invoices...

"not fit for use on public highway"

I got a red ink stamp - I kid you not....

 

[james butler]

I'd guess that the timing belt pulleys were 'dabbed' rather than the correct locking tools used. Very few bother locking the HP fuel pump, even less bother checking it after the initial two rotations of the crank.
Some places don't even bother with replacing the idler pulleys or tensioner and just do a 'slide-off, slide on' with the belts.

and that many use vernier pulleys like on my pd150 engine to make good use of accurate locking tools
still doesnt cost the earth to do the job properly

 

[james butler]

Would not supprise me if the insurers at claim time don't start pluging them in at assessment.

Check the CVN - and then void your insurance if mapped.

I am sure they would save themselves a fortune if they did....

out of curiosity is there a time stamp attached to mapping? ie last modified up updated?
because if you are an innocent party buying a vehicle that has been mapped prior to purchase especially through a dealer then surely the dealer is liable in a crash claim?
where would be the due diligence of a competent seller come in?
only asking as i have seen this happen and customers end up replacing ecu s at cost to rectify

 

[Smallfry]

A lad i know is into cars, just built a pickup. Shoehorned a v8 lexus motor & power train into it, now that thing has been massively modified, chassis suspension, drivetrain, engine remapped the lot. Its an absolute monster. Needless to say it wont be having an mot, iva test or whatever.
Yet he will drive it on the road, just pray he doesnt have a prang.
Just a couple of miles away are the new roads at back of canvey ind area, for most of the week you can hear the performance cars going mad on the circuit, It is a magnet for every boy racer for miles, you will see scores of modified cars there every night. In the summer you can hear them for miles.
I bet nobody tells their insurers!

I have got a Lexus V8 motor patiently waiting for a new home ............

I also have to confess that in my teenage early twenties, I did not declare modifications. I don't think anyone did, unless it was proper "custom car" or hot rod.

 

[Morris]

Needless to say it wont be having an mot, iva test or whatever.

For a modified vehicle and MOT is required regardless. The IVA for modified vehicles was removed in August 25, just needs an MOT, declared to DVLA with a form and that's it.

Yet he will drive it on the road, just pray he doesnt have a prang.

You know for a fact his insurance is not aware of the modifications?
It can be surprisingly cheap to insure such stuff.

 

[Keith 66]

^^^^ Because he told me. "I dont bother with all that". It may be surprisingly cheap to insure such but there are people who for whatever reason do not like / will not deal with officialdom until the day they are forced to by getting caught.

 

[Morris]

Then he's an idiot.

 

[Morris]

^^^^ Because he told me. "I dont bother with all that". It may be surprisingly cheap to insure such but there are people who for whatever reason do not like / will not deal with officialdom until the day they are forced to by getting caught.

As well as the possible personal consequences of this, if there is any form of legislative push back as a result said idiots it's the ones that abide by the rules that get affected the most.
I've always registered and insured my vehicles correctly, some heavily modified.

 

[harveyp6]

As well as the possible personal consequences of this, if there is any form of legislative push back as a result said idiots it's the ones that abide by the rules that get affected the most.
I've always registered and insured my vehicles correctly, some heavily modified.

If you haven't got the money to insure it correctly (and there are plenty of specialist insurers out there), I would wonder whether you had the money to modify it correctly in the first place.
As much as I hate paying for insurance, especially the 5% VAT on the premium, I don't think I'd take the chance of not declaring anything significant.
Getting insurance after something happening would be very expensive, if you could get insured at all, which brings even more problems.

 

[Ubique]

out of curiosity is there a time stamp attached to mapping? ie last modified up updated?
because if you are an innocent party buying a vehicle that has been mapped prior to purchase especially through a dealer then surely the dealer is liable in a crash claim?
where would be the due diligence of a competent seller come in?
only asking as i have seen this happen and customers end up replacing ecu s at cost to rectify

Certainly at M-B, VWG & Volvo dealers, there is the ability to validate the mileage and carry out a 'tuning check', JLR vehicles will set a DTC for software manipulation, some 'mappers' will of course turn off the ECM's ability to set this DTC though. AMG vehicles have the tuning check removed from the list of available tests. It was the case that the mileage and tuning check tests were printed off and put in the Used Car Check documentation. BMW/Mini can do the same tests and apparently remove any 'subscriptions' the previous owner may have paid for.

 

[Ubique]

out of curiosity is there a time stamp attached to mapping? ie last modified up updated?
because if you are an innocent party buying a vehicle that has been mapped prior to purchase especially through a dealer then surely the dealer is liable in a crash claim?
where would be the due diligence of a competent seller come in?
only asking as i have seen this happen and customers end up replacing ecu s at cost to rectify

If it's done via OBD, there 'should' be, if it's done by directly interfacing to the control module, then it's probably not changed. Siemens & Bosch modules used to have an update counter in separate memory space that was a canary for dealer software, the dealer back-end would record how many updates the vehicle had applied to it, if that number was lower than the one in the control module, it would flag 'update needed' - without saying why.

 

[bricol]

For a modified vehicle and MOT is required regardless. The IVA for modified vehicles was removed in August 25, just needs an MOT, declared to DVLA with a form and that's it.

I often trip over adverts for "classic" cars - claiming no MOT needed, cheap tax, cheap insurance.

Old car shells that have been cut and shut over an MX5, an old Vauxhall that sits over a much newer Audi, plenty of others. All of which need an MOT and VED paying.

 

[Morris]

I often trip over adverts for "classic" cars - claiming no MOT needed, cheap tax, cheap insurance.

Old car shells that have been cut and shut over an MX5, an old Vauxhall that sits over a much newer Audi, plenty of others. All of which need an MOT and VED paying.

Quite. We have it reasonably easy compared with the rest of Europe with regard to modified cars, hot rods etc. just follow the rules, they're not that onerous. Even the much hated BIVA is not as bad as it is portrayed if you plan for it.

 

[james butler]

I often trip over adverts for "classic" cars - claiming no MOT needed, cheap tax, cheap insurance.

Old car shells that have been cut and shut over an MX5, an old Vauxhall that sits over a much newer Audi, plenty of others. All of which need an MOT and VED paying.

a bit like buying a rotton 1960s mini cooper s and putting the registration docs and vin on a brand new heritage shell cars back on the road the following week
to be honest no vehicle should be exempt from mot even if its technically legal because its simply dangerous
for most insurance policies to be legit the vehicle in question most often has to have a valid mot unless otherwise stated (a few have been caught out with that with classics)
as for needing mot and ved on modded cars ive known a good number of peeps putting new high power engines in older cars to have performance but keeping the often lower or no ved
in the hot rod world its been a longstanding problem of mot exemptions making the owners think they can do what they like with impunity hence why dvla have recently clamped down on vehicle originality otherwise face Q plate

 

[Morris]

a bit like buying a rotton 1960s mini cooper s and putting the registration docs and vin on a brand new heritage shell cars back on the road the following week

1960 minis didn't have a VIN number. Reshelling with a new shell is legal

to be honest no vehicle should be exempt from mot even if its technically legal because its simply dangerous
for most insurance policies to be legit the vehicle in question most often has to have a valid mot unless otherwise stated (a few have been caught out with that with classics)

Never seen that on my classic policies.

as for needing mot and ved on modded cars ive known a good number of peeps putting new high power engines in older cars to have performance but keeping the often lower or no ved

Which is naughty. No one here has suggested doing this.

in the hot rod world its been a longstanding problem of mot exemptions making the owners think they can do what they like with impunity hence why dvla have recently clamped down on vehicle originality otherwise face Q plate

I've been building hotrods on and off for 45 years, I've never heard anyone say this or imply it. The problems only came if you modified and ended up with less than 8 points under the 8 point rule.

DVLA have recently made it easier to modify old stuff by removing the 8 point rule. There never was a "clamp down", they enforced the rules as they were at the time, usually because someone wanted to transfer a number plate which opened a can of worms.

 

[Bobupndown]

1960 minis didn't have a VIN number. Reshelling with a new shell is legal

They had a chassis number and a body number.
Source: MiniMail https://share.google/6uHQMYlPerW7j7OUl
Re shelling is legal but depending on the new parts used, technically it shouldn't retain the same identity, if you put a new shell on 2 new subframes and fitted a new engine it's hardly the same car

These sort of arguments keep classic car forum members awake all night.