Insurance Claims on Sleds (Ya I did something REALLY stupid)

[stahlecker]

Sorry for the long post and no pictures. My sled is 3 1/2 hours away from my camera. Jump to the last paragraph for my question.

Well heres a post I thought that I would never make. I never thought I would own a snowmobile that was worth more than $3-4k. But this summer I went and bought me a brand new 08 Apex MTN. It's on a loan so I reluctantly bought insurance. Went up to Snowy Range 2 weeks ago put on 205 miles had a blast loved how this sled handeled. Well this trip up, yesterday, I tackled more than I could chew.

For those of you who know snowy range this happened on the big hill by the barrel roll off the NO trail. I took off to climb it thinking I would just test out the snow before I went for it. Well halfway up I decided to go for it. About 3/4 of the way up I thought I should have had more speed but I didn't turn out. About 6 foot from the top I knew I definatly wasn't going to make it. I tried to turn out. It was too late. The hill was too steep and I didn't have enough momentum. I left the sled and it and I commenced rolling back down the hill. According to my buddies between the sled and I we rolled about 30 times. I don't know for sure all I know is that it seemed like about an hour before I got my self stopped. When I got to a stop I looked up to see my sled rolling end over end, then hit a bump and star rolling on it's side. As stupid as it seems now I went into the path of the sled to stop it from rolling. At the time I was more worried about the sled then myself. Somehow I got it stopped. I then got it upright and down to the bottom off the hill.

I found the headlight pod and gauge cluster at the bottom of the hill. After I got the connectors hooked back up the sled was in limp mode. This was because the throttle cable pulled out of the crimp so the computer wouldn't let it wrap up. Unscrewed the throttle adjustment and bypassed limp mode I was able to ride it back to the trailer.

So heres my question where does an insurance company total a sled. I don't think it is totaled but I don't know for sure. Here is what I know it will need, new hood, side covers, dash where key and acc. outlet are. Also new headlight, and is there a mount for the gauge pod or are the mounting tabs buit in ( I didn't look too close ) pretty much anything attached to the headlight unit. New trottle cable, handelbars, the handelbar controlls all looked ok. The taillight assembly is also gone. As far as I could tell the front suspension seemed to be alright but I didn't look that hard. Same with the rear suspension. But after rolling that hard that long I can't believe that something didn't get tweaked. So right now I have a pile of parts under a cover with less than 250 miles. Also if it makes any difference I have State Farm insurance w/ $1000 deduct.

Thanks for your response, Brian

 

[marq]

If you look around here, hard core sledder, and sno west, you can get new take-off pieces and be back up and running for less than $1000. It cost me about $500 - $600 for a new pod, hood, gas tank cover, and the sensor that goes into the airbox after hitting a deer @ 60mph and rolling my sled a half dozen times or so. I too was suprised that nothing else was tweaked, but that was all the damage I had. Heck, my medium windshield didn't even break after the pod snapped off.

As to your other question.... after you disassemble the plastic around the pod, you'll see how the guages are mounted. I believe it's held in place by 3 screws that screw into the back of the guage cluster.

Not sure how insurance feels about these sort of things. I never made a claim on my damage.

 

[APEX 06]

All the ones I see get the AX is about 45% of the cost of the sleds blue book. If you have a shop do it you are looking a parts close to 2000bucks + what the cost to put it back on. I think they will AX it on you.

 

[yox185]

Take it to a dealer and get it fixed right. 250 miles, you know you want your new sled back. Worst case it cost you $1000 deductible, and your insurance fixes it new.

 

[RoyalBlue]

Bent

Next time call Cody or the fellas at Snowy Range Snowmobile Rental to avoid the mishaps. hire a guide and save yourslf plenty of money or even your life

 

[stahlecker]

Most of the time we (the group I ride with) stick to, the for lack of a better phrase, bunny slopes. In the 5 years I have been riding Snowy Range we have found little hills that we like to climb that the worst that happens is a guy gets stuck. We mostly like to play aroung in powder. The steep hills really don't interest us much. Just this time that we were up there was no powder and the hardpack made me try something I never should have. Am I an expert? Not even close. A Novice? Probably. This was a dumbass attack. I knew better but I still did it.

BTW, we've have talked to the guys at Snowy Range Snowmobile Rental before. They helped us out once by letting us use a drill to fix a throttle on a ski-doo in our group. They told us that one of their rentals had over 25k miles on the original engine. Thats why me and my buddy now have Yamahas.

 

[bdm]

Take it to a dealer and get it fixed right. 250 miles, you know you want your new sled back. Worst case it cost you $1000 deductible, and your insurance fixes it new.

This is not a universal truth. After my wreck I took mine to the dealer because I had no garage at the time. They had no clue what they were doing and it was a nightmare. I would have been way better off fixing it myself.

 

[mud99]

I would take it to a dealer and get an estimate, if the estimate is more than 2K I would call the insurance company and get them to chip in or total it.

If you bent the bulkhead or tunnel at all it will almost definitely be totalled, the dealer is only going to quote a full replacement of those pieces, which is a huge amount of work.

If they total it, that will be the best deal ever, you will probably get nearly full purchase price back from them, and they will probably let you buy it back for 2K or so, and you can probably fix it up for 1K.

Your stupidity might have just made you a bunch of money, so don't feel bad, buy that sled back, fix it, and reinsure i if they let you...

Mark

 

[stahlecker]

Well it's getting fixed. The Yamaha shop had an estimate that came to $4,470.03. They claimed that my sled still booked at $9,000. Insurance adjuster showed up at the dealer looked at the sled and approved the claim. Now I'm just itching to get it back to possibly get out west again before the snow disapears.

 

[dab102999]

I would head straight for that hill again and teach it who is boss!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mighty]

I would head straight for that hill again and teach it who is boss!!!!!!!!!!

Hell yeah!

 

[sledneck22]

Except this time when when you go to tackle that hill jump on your buddies sled and give er hell!