[TW]Fox;10120905 said:
Okay - so I buy a second hand car, take it for a really aggressive remap, wrap it round a tree and then claim on insurance. Insurance company find undeclared remap - I say "Oh, I didn't know", they pay out? I don't think so.
Part exchanging car - do you mention remap?
- Thread starter AnastieByte
- Start date
Okay - so I buy a second hand car, take it for a really aggressive remap, wrap it round a tree and then claim on insurance. Insurance company find undeclared remap - I say "Oh, I didn't know", they pay out? I don't think so.
And how do they find this remap?
Remap was an example of a mod. I'm sure if the car was high value enough and the company were suspicious they could find anything.
OK all I have now looked into this further (after driving 500 mile round trip to have the remap removed)
If you sell a car on and do not declare the modification it can depend on two things:
1) Were you asked if the car was modified? If you were and you denied it that is deception and illegal.
2) If you were not asked if the car was modified. Then the positive disclosure spiel may work in your favour because the dealer never asked you a direct question.
However selling it on to an unsuspecting customer could potentially be dangerous. People have already stated that if not declared on the insurance it would be void. If they were involved in a fatal accident and the car was investigated. Found to be remapped. Then the police may come knocking on your door. As you did not declare it when you sold it on.
Yes you could deny it but with the right diagnostic equipment they may be able to identify when the remap took place. Or check your insurance. Because if you declared the remap on your own insurance then obviously you were aware of it!!
This whole debate on remaps etc is interesting. But in the end I went down the route of having it removed. This gave me piece of mind.
If you sell a car on and do not declare the modification it can depend on two things:
1) Were you asked if the car was modified? If you were and you denied it that is deception and illegal.
2) If you were not asked if the car was modified. Then the positive disclosure spiel may work in your favour because the dealer never asked you a direct question.
However selling it on to an unsuspecting customer could potentially be dangerous. People have already stated that if not declared on the insurance it would be void. If they were involved in a fatal accident and the car was investigated. Found to be remapped. Then the police may come knocking on your door. As you did not declare it when you sold it on.
Yes you could deny it but with the right diagnostic equipment they may be able to identify when the remap took place. Or check your insurance. Because if you declared the remap on your own insurance then obviously you were aware of it!!
This whole debate on remaps etc is interesting. But in the end I went down the route of having it removed. This gave me piece of mind.
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Is anyone aware of any actual cases where an insurance company have not paid out on a car because it has had an undeclared remamp? I have never heard of this (not that this means anything!) and wondered if there is a case history of an insurance company checking a cars ECU after and accident.
Mine was checked as was the car I had an accident with. As someone died and the claim was for in excess of half a million pounds I'm sure any insurance company will have used that as an opt out.
I'm sure thats a extreme case but I do think as a buyer I would definately want to know. How would you feel if you had been in a accident in a used car and you insurance company didnt want to play ball.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
How did they test the power output of your written off car?
Oh, and legally your insurer would have been unable to not pay out to the third party if it was your fault. And if it wasn't your fault, its nothing to do with your insurer anyway.
[TW]Fox;10133955 said:
The cars were not written off, they impounded them due to someone dieing. It was over 3 months before we got our cars back.
Acceleration checks where done on both cars.
I can tell you now after having to go through all of this for was was nearly a year the insurance company would not have paid out if I hadve modded my car or he had and not claimed it. The two companies would have latched onto that and used it not to pay up the 500k.
Man of Honour
What is an "acceleration check"?
They took the cars to where ever they test them and check the cars over set distances. This was all then in the police report submitted to the CPS.
Soldato
what a load of tosh, my car is rated as having a 0-60 of like 8 seconds and 168bhp, but as ford seemingly ran out of standard lower inlet manifolds at ~2000 and they put the ST200 ones on, it actually made 188.8bhp stock and i imagine was a bit quicker to 60....what would the insurer do, tell me they aren't paying out because it was quicker than book?
I'm not saying they wouldnt pay out i'm saying they would use it to argue out whose paying out the money when its 500k we are talking about.
So your saying a modded car from standard not disclosed to an insurance company would be fine in the event of an accident, especially at serious one?
What your talking about hasnt changed the car from standard buy.
Man of Honour
Sounds like ******** in all honesty.
Take the Honda Fireblade as an example (I know it's a motorbike but the principal is the same) One of the top mags, PB I think, tested about 10 'Blades back to back straight out of the showroom. All made completely different power figures, I think the variance was +/- almost 20bhp!
And magazine testers who spend their lives doing 0-60 tests can rarely get the same figure twice, and figures vary from car to car too. Sometimes you get a "good one" and sometimes you get a lemon.
Unless the cars are doing 0-60 in 3 seconds instead of 10 seconds I fail to see how any checks done by "them" (the police? the insurer?) demonstrate anything valid at all.
Soldato
no but ford never let on that they've used different manifolds, so as far as anyone is concerned they could try and say that i put them on.
Ok fair point about the differences I presumed mapping was the same as chipping when I could have taken my car from the 130 to the 160bhp version, that wouldve shown up clearly.
You can put it down as ******** it you like but there is another member here that works in the same office as me and worked with the guy who died. As we all worked together I kept nothing of the accident away from my collegues. I wanted them to know I was innocent so the whole step of the way they saw the police reports.
I'm nervous about going into too much detail on a forum and will edit my post in a bit, but i'm more than happy to tell you who that member is by PM so he can tell you i'm no liar.
Naturally as someone died i'm reluctant to scan in my CPS report.
So let me get this straight. Two cars were involved in an accident, the result of which is that somebody was killed. Following this accident, not only was neither car written off or affected in any tangiable way, but they were also both subject to standing start acceleration tests to.... prove what exactly? That the police driver was better at 0-60 than the manufacturer? or that the manufacturer was Peugeot and made up 0-60 times anyway? Or what?
I suspect if the cars WERE tested it was NOT for modifications at all, but to establish who was responsible for the death of somebody. Completely different thing.
I suggest you read the Road Traffic Act. Unlike hearsay on internet forums, it's actually law, and fact. Read specifically the part reffering to the legal obligations of a company providing insurance against risks to third parties.
Non-disclosure, whilst certainly a Bad Thing(tm) and not to be done, is a contractual and thus civil matter. Civil disputes cannot be used as an excuse against a legal obligation.
[TW]Fox;10133955 said:
By your logic - any non visible modification (i.e. engine internals, ecu mapping, electrics, injectors in certain cases) don't need to be declared, as they aren't visible and the insurance companies wouldn't know?
An insurance company will do ALL they can to avoid paying out a penny more than they have to. If they suspect a car has been remapped, they will pay someone to find out, whether by extracting the maps from the ecu and comparing against standard data from the manufacturer, or sending to the manufacturer directly.
Associate
As much as I can see why the initial question has prompted some debate I somehow don't get the impression that dannyjo22 would be making this up...
Seems a pretty pointless line of questioning to me?
The bottom line is it is possible to interogate a modern cars ecu and detect the changes to parameters that are common with remaps - I understand that is also possible to find out the date that these changes were made. Given the sums of money involved in some RTAs I would have thought it very likely that an insurance co. would stop at nothing in their efforts to check the validity of the claim and that would include checking for remaps.
Seems a pretty pointless line of questioning to me?
The bottom line is it is possible to interogate a modern cars ecu and detect the changes to parameters that are common with remaps - I understand that is also possible to find out the date that these changes were made. Given the sums of money involved in some RTAs I would have thought it very likely that an insurance co. would stop at nothing in their efforts to check the validity of the claim and that would include checking for remaps.
Inusurance cant check for re-map unless it goes on a rolling road, or a 're-mapper' downloads the software and compares it.
If its a Turbo petrol or turbo diesel you dont even have to trash them to tell if its been re-mapped, its obvious strait away, i.e my standard 0-60 was 10.3 secs, now its 8.8
I would get it re-mapped back to standard when you sell it just in case..
If its a Turbo petrol or turbo diesel you dont even have to trash them to tell if its been re-mapped, its obvious strait away, i.e my standard 0-60 was 10.3 secs, now its 8.8
I would get it re-mapped back to standard when you sell it just in case..