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The Motorsports Restoration Center

Bringing Bikes Back From Disaster:  The New Option For Crash Repair

Everybody hates a crash!  A crash is an emotional and economic disaster, even if you are fortunate enough to escape physical harm to your bod. The crash damage to the bike, the expense, and the loss of riding time create a triple whammy to your heart, your bike, and your insurance bill.  There is a new way, or at least an additional option – the way of restoration and repair.

The old way, which you may know by heart if you have ever experienced the personal and financial trauma of a crash, goes like this:

• You have a crash of any kind.

• Everyone assumes the bike is totaled.

• Sometimes weeks later, the insurance adjuster signs off on anything that is damaged or appears to be scratched, flawed, marred, stained, or scraped in any way.  The insurance company, worried about a law suit from you, is willing to replace anything, at full retail, to keep you happy – for now.  Later on you will pay it back in an increased premium because you have now “caused” a loss. If you are paying for the crash damage repair out of your own pocket, the parts list and cost will soon turn your hair gray unless, like me, a decade or two of devotion to spouse and children have already taken care of that detail for you.

• The wait begins for OEM painted parts to show up. This can sometimes take quite awhile, and makes for frustration on your part as good riding days, weeks, and possibly seasons pass by. There is also stress for the dealer, who would like to help but is getting nowhere with the manufacturer. In some cases, the part you most need is simply not available from the OEM.

• Massive amounts of time and expense ensue.

• You may end up angry with the dealership, while either you or the insurance company, or both, pay an enormous bill (which causes increased rates), and everyone is pretty well displeased with the entire ordeal.

There IS a new way, or at least an additional choice, in the services provided by The Motorsports Restoration Center.  Located just off  Mukilteo Speedway on Beverly Park Road north of Seattle, The Motorsports Restoration Center is a state-of-the-art repair and restoration facility that is, if nothing else, mind-boggling in its potential.  

Employees at the facility have a few decades of experience in all facets of custom painting and blended in a lot of square footage filled with modern technology. 

An enormous heated oven for painted parts means that you can choose to have them replicate the factory paint job, for less money and almost always in far less time than it would take the OEM to supply one.  

In previous years it was difficult to get an insurance company to agree to a repair job, due to the (let’s be honest) sometimes dodgy reputation and results obtained from “this guy who is a friend of my wife’s cousin… he’s really good.”  The Center's experience and equipment base have made insurance companies much more amenable to exploring different solutions to complex problems.  After the first 13 months of business The Motorsports Restoration Center saved consumers over $53,000 in repair and restoration costs agreed to by the customer and the insurance company, compared to the traditional practice of simply replacing everything in sight.

Here is how the new system works at The Motorsports Restoration Center:

• The crash takes place.

• The damage can be assessed using digital pictures via e-mail in less than 24 hours.

• The damage can usually be repaired efficiently, once you and your insurance company have agreed to the proposed route back to good health for your machine.  New parts are used when needed.  Repaired parts are used in most cases upon agreement that they will be effective and will save time and money for all concerned.

• You and/or the insurance company pay much less money, and in some cases more importantly, save a great deal of time.

• Dealers are happy, because the parts that are so hard to get are the very ones where Hot Rod will probably elect to effect a repair, so the dealer ends up selling to Hot Rod, you, or your insurer, parts the dealer actually has… everybody is much happier.

• Insurance company pay-outs are drastically reduced, allowing rates to stay stable or even… could it ever happen?… decrease.

• The insurance company and you are pleased to get your bike back on the road in much less time, and at a much lower cost.

This is made possible by combining experience and modern technology.  The staff at The Motorsports Restoration Center have been painting bikes and repairing crash damage for decades, but now have the technology to meet and often exceed the quality of original factory paint jobs, including exact colors and design, in a mere fraction of the time and cost. But there is usually much more to the repair than replicating a factory paint scheme on a steel fuel tank.

Plastic panels? In many cases, a ruined plastic side panel can be plastic welded, or a new one made from their existing stock of damaged parts, in less time than it would take to get a new one from the factory outlet.

Bent frame? With appropriate technology and a ton of experience, it is often possible straighten a bent frame quite quickly and easily. Transitional damage… damage transferred through the frame from the point of impact to a totally different area… can be hard to detect.  To be on the safe side, insurance companies used to just pop for a new frame or “total” the bike, but the experts at The Motorsports Restoration Center can persuade an insurance company to look at other options. To many of us, repairing our old friend rather than simply writing it off and tossing it in a dumpster in return for a check is a welcome idea to at least think about.

Custom paint?  Perhaps you have always wanted to have a custom paint job on your bike.  Now it is crashed anyway.  Through your dealer and insurance company, you could arrange an agreeable price for the custom job you want, which might actually cost the insurance company less than a return to the stock paint scheme!

ATV? PWC? Snowmobile? Similar repair and restoration skills are applied to these, many of which are not insured, so the financial savings can be both more immediate and personally gratifying! Repairs to snowmobile tunnels and personal watercraft hulls are quite common – even really severe damage is usually repairable.

Caveat:  what is a “repair?”  A repaired part is not a “new” part. In many cases repaired parts will actually be stronger than new parts, but they are still repaired parts.  If you dug down deep enough, you would be able to find the evidence that a part was repaired and not replaced.  If it is critical to you that every part on the bike be a perfect and never used part,  you should go that route, and insist upon that approach with your insurance company.

So, if and when disaster strikes, you at least have another option to think about.  Ask your dealer and insurance company to look into all of the factors involved, and see if it is not possible to come out of this with everyone feeling much better!  

TM/Spring 01

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