Accident Bike: Keep or get rid of it

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jawad242

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Hi,
i have a 2009 FZ1 with about 35k miles, got into an accident where a driver cut me off. The extent of the damage is the fairing (exterior and inner right), the right radiator support (little flap thing), radiator, radiator fairing, headlight housing, and a couple scratches/dent (nothing too serious). I did notice some oil started to leak after over a month of no fluids dripping, but it looks to be from the oil filter (have not confirmed this yet). If I would like to buy the bike back from the insurance, It would cost $1.7k. Do y'all think I should keep the bike or just get rid of it and try to find another?
 

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See if you can get them to sell it to you for closer to $1k - they will negotiate.

You can also call a scrap yard or an auction firm and ask them what they will pay for a damaged bike of that year and mileage. That will give you a better idea of your negotiation power.

The insurance company will probably sell it to an auction firm to try and recoup some of the loss.

Also check with your current insurance and see if they will continue to offer you insurance on the bike if it has a Salvaged title, and if they have any stipulations to do so.

I did this same thing for my first FZ1 and a car I owned. I ended up buying my current FZ1 with most of the insurance money, swapping over my go-fast bits from the old bike to my current bike. I did enough repairs to the old bike to make it safe and sold it on the cheap. The biggest damage on it was just cracked plastics since the accident that caused the issue was a 10 mph tip-over when a car merged into me and pushed me into a curb. I did a "Frankenstein" to fix the cracks, drilled holes on each side of the crack and then Sewed it up with zip ties. I think I had to plug a hole in the radiator with some JB weld too.... been a while. SO that said I did not need to deal with the insurance side of it since I had no plans to keep it. Back then I bought it from the Insurance for $380 or something like that and sold it for $1600.

For the Car, I planned to keep it and it was in much worse shape than the bike, actual structural damage, etc. I did not want to non-op it, so I the insurance company sent me a form to be filled out by a mechanic. My mechanic did me a solid and filled it out for me and I sent it in. This allowed me to keep it registered and insured while I was working on getting it fixed. I just did not want that gap in coverage. Took about a year of it sitting in my garage, me collecting parts, at least once it was towed to a shop for some heavy body work that required a frame puller, otherwise my body guy would come over in the evenings after his day job and work on it in my garage.
 
Klurejr said:
See if you can get them to sell it to you for closer to $1k - they will negotiate.

You can also call a scrap yard or an auction firm and ask them what they will pay for a damaged bike of that year and mileage. That will give you a better idea of your negotiation power.

The insurance company will probably sell it to an auction firm to try and recoup some of the loss.

Also check with your current insurance and see if they will continue to offer you insurance on the bike if it has a Salvaged title, and if they have any stipulations to do so.

I did this same thing for my first FZ1 and a car I owned. I ended up buying my current FZ1 with most of the insurance money, swapping over my go-fast bits from the old bike to my current bike. I did enough repairs to the old bike to make it safe and sold it on the cheap. The biggest damage on it was just cracked plastics since the accident that caused the issue was a 10 mph tip-over when a car merged into me and pushed me into a curb. I did a "Frankenstein" to fix the cracks, drilled holes on each side of the crack and then Sewed it up with zip ties. I think I had to plug a hole in the radiator with some JB weld too.... been a while. SO that said I did not need to deal with the insurance side of it since I had no plans to keep it. Back then I bought it from the Insurance for $380 or something like that and sold it for $1600.

For the Car, I planned to keep it and it was in much worse shape than the bike, actual structural damage, etc. I did not want to non-op it, so I the insurance company sent me a form to be filled out by a mechanic. My mechanic did me a solid and filled it out for me and I sent it in. This allowed me to keep it registered and insured while I was working on getting it fixed. I just did not want that gap in coverage. Took about a year of it sitting in my garage, me collecting parts, at least once it was towed to a shop for some heavy body work that required a frame puller, otherwise my body guy would come over in the evenings after his day job and work on it in my garage.
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Thank you so much! This was great advice!
 
1700 is excessive in my opinion. But then again 6200 I feel was excessive also.

In Oct I bought my 2007 with 26k. For 2300, (cracked frame was the biggest impact of the cost for me had it listed at 3150) I've done a bit since but I think all in I am around 3800.
 
I’ve been struggling to get this thing to run properly, it’s been overheating but I’m trying to figure out why. Did fresh spark plugs and got a used radiator that looked pretty good, filled it up with just distilled water for right now, just to see how it’s doing. So far just riding around the bike climbs past 200, and since my right fan doesn’t work, it over heats. Looks like the connector is messed up on the fan, so if the cable can be seperated I’ll do that, if not it needs a new fan. I am, however confused why it’s running so hot. Could it be the bad gas in there? It’s been sitting for like 2-3 months. I don’t think it’s the water pump since the water looks like it moves but tbh I don’t know how to confirm that. (Impact was on right side FYI) Forgot to mention, the oil filter is slowly dripping oil, didn’t think it would be a problem but I’m going to do a fresh oil and oil filter change tomorrow (motul synthetic+ Purolator 14610)
 
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Are you leaking any coolant from the weep hole on the bottom of the motor? If so the water pump gasket is failing and the impeller might be bad.

If you start the bike with the rad cap removed do you see the coolant/water moving? there should be some sort of visible flow to it.
 
Klurejr said:
Are you leaking any coolant from the weep hole on the bottom of the motor? If so the water pump gasket is failing and the impeller might be bad.

If you start the bike with the rad cap removed do you see the coolant/water moving? there should be some sort of visible flow to it.
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I haven’t noticed any leaks at all so far. I just got done riding in 69 F weather with plenty of wind, bike was running hot at around 185-190 depending on direction of wind on the highway (rode around under 5k rpm). Before the bike would overheat very quickly, over the course of less than 5 mins, but this time the bike just slowly climbed 160-180 then stabilized for a little before going 180-200. When moving it stayed under 200 but this will definitely not work in the Texas heat this summer. I’ll have to take a look at the water pump and see what’s going on with that tomorrow.
 
Klurejr said:
I suspect that the pump is not moving the water. That is why you are getting some cooling, but not proper cooling.

let us know.
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I just ordered an OEM thermostat, long overdue to replace it.
In terms of the water pump, how does the coolant look like when the cap is off? How much coolant should come out if I rev the bike a little? Kinda thinking it is the water pump but I don’t want to believe it .
 
jawad242 said:
I just ordered an OEM thermostat, long overdue to replace it.
In terms of the water pump, how does the coolant look like when the cap is off? How much coolant should come out if I rev the bike a little? Kinda thinking it is the water pump but I don’t want to believe it .
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If I recall correctly there was noticeable movement of the liquid when the bike was at idle. it looked like you were peaking at an underground river. I will pull my rad cap off this afternoon when I am ready ot head home from work and see for sure how it looks at cold start.
 
I appreciate this a lot!

I’m also thinking I’m burping the system wrong. Once I fill with coolant, I close everything, run it till like 140, maybe rev a bit, and then open the cap and fill if needed.

I think the correct method is to fill, leave the cap off, run the bike till about 200 and rev it a little bit in between, then fill, once its finally filled then cap it off.

I’m hoping to compile everything in this forum cooling related and everything I’ve learned from this to make a dummy’s guide to FZ1’s cooling system.
 
I just ran out to the bike on my lunch break and forgot the cap is mostly covered by the plastics. I will need to wait until I have a screw driver and can pull the plastics off. Sorry.
 
Klurejr said:
I just ran out to the bike on my lunch break and forgot the cap is mostly covered by the plastics. I will need to wait until I have a screw driver and can pull the plastics off. Sorry.
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No worries, I did my best to burp the bike yesterday, and noticed my coolant looks kind of shiny. I believe I did a good job flushing the system so it’s probably water pump that’s causing this…
 
I took the plastic off, popped off the cap and kicked on my bike. and immediately saw the coolant flowing. So at least in the Gen 1 bikes there should be active flow at idle from the water pump.
 
Klurejr said:
I took the plastic off, popped off the cap and kicked on my bike. and immediately saw the coolant flowing. So at least in the Gen 1 bikes there should be active flow at idle from the water pump.
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Hmm, mines not doing that, doesn’t coolant doesn’t move too much, was letting it burp (was burping a lot so I did it twice). When the bike heats up to around 200, the coolant goes from barley moving at all to just gushing out. Since there was a lot of brown radiator sealant originally (and I’m hoping the shiny bits is alumaseal), Im praying the thermostat is just clogged up. I’ll be tearing down the bike this weekend. How should I do a write up of all of this? Not too familiar with the forums but I want to at least contribute and help others learn from my mistakes.
 
Just take pics as you go and then post them into a reply with a caption for each pic or a paragraph if needed to describe what you did and what you found.

It makes sense that it boils over at 200 degree's the expansion is just too much to stay in the system with the cap off.

Either the water pump is not moving the water at all or something is blocking the movement.
 
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