[anotherbiker]

If you have full coverage on your bike, wouldn't your motorcycle insurance cover the damage to the dealer's bike? It might vary by country and carrier, but I am covered for any bike I ride (not garaged at my address over 10 days) with the same coverage I have on my bike.

An interesting situation a friend in Las Vegas ran into: he had to sign a purchase agreement before the dealer would let him test ride a bike. There was a provision that if he didn't like it, the agreement was off. If he wrecked the bike, I assume he had to buy it.

Not in the UK. Vehicle insurance in the US generally means anyone can drive/ride anything (through either your insurance, the owner's insurance, or I guess conceivably both). But in the UK, you are only insured to drive your own vehicles unless someone else makes you a named driver on their vehicle's policy (at an extra cost).

The whole "I can ride/drive any bike/car and, with the owner's consent, be insured" was a pleasant surprise to me when I moved to the US!

The dealership in this case will have insurance on those bikes, but with a high excess. The guy who dropped it on the test ride will be paying the excess as per something he signed before taking it out.

 

[anotherbiker]

If an AT (or any other bike) owner is carrying full-coverage insurance, why spend the money on crash guards. They are sure to be a loss as well as the body work under them.


Nothing on my Concours 14 for this same reason. Had a tip-over a little over two years ago. Some scratches resulted, but the used-bike value has plummeted; so, nothing gets replaced unless it is broken.


Now, engine guards make sense for me if they can prevent a rock puncture. (It happened on my KLX650 in Panama--long time ago.)

This, my friend, is an interesting question!

I looked into the cylinder head guards for my Guzzi, until I realized that replacement rocker covers actually cost less than the guards themselves did!

How much are the plastic fairing panels on the AT is the question here? If you assume that you'll probably have to replace the crash bars, or respray them or something if you drop it anyway, do you save much more than you would replacing a fairing panel? I don't know.

I suppose though, the other advantage to upper fairing bars could be protecting the radiators?