……aaaaaand now the reality hits home. insurance quotes! £460 for fully comp, £100 voluntary excess. i tickled the quote to go 3rd party, fire and theft, put the max vol excess in (£500), its come down to £340. pay monthly, it comes to £430! theyre all adding nearly £100 for paying monthly?
some quotes are £1100 total excess on a £900 bike??

havent looked at adding him onto my insurance yet, i was hoping to get him (hopefully) building his own no claims up, but ill ask my insurer anyway for comparisons sake.

havent started on helmets & jacket yet, this is turning out very spendy for us :-/

Try Bennetts and Carole Nash. Also, if you are thinking of doing your cbt, see what it would be with you as a named rider.

It does get a bit spendy but its an investment in the lad’s future. It will build his road skills up and that might pay dividends when it comes to learning to drive a car in that he’ll need less lessons as he’ll have the road sense already.

ok ill try those rich ta. and these quotes were with me as a named rider 😉 wonder if that pushed it up a bit, ill try again with just him named.

havent looked at adding him onto my insurance yet, i was hoping to get him (hopefully) building his own no claims up, but ill ask my insurer anyway for comparisons sake.

Don’t bother, it’ll be near-enough as much.

It’s all location based though as my middle sons’ insurance was £450 at 16 y/o whereas my youngests’ was £300 at 16 y/o – nothing whatsoever to do with the value of the bike. And wait until he passes his car test… 🙂

ooooh – wish I hadn’t seen that Vespa!

Rachel

Get him building his own no claims. It is seldom transferable between bike and car in any case so unless he becomes a lifelong biker, after 2 or 3 yrs of riding, packing it in and getting a car will mean his NCD will lapse 2 yrs afterwards.
Don’t be conned by bike shops telling you he needs a £500 Arai helmet. Buy on ‘fit’ first and foremost and have a look at the Sharp testing
http://sharp.direct.gov.uk/
Kit wise, you only realise that a manufacturer uses single stitching and poor thread when you slide down a road and it all unravels. Buy good kit and make sure he wears it all the time. It isn’t cheap to set up but running costs are peanuts so in time it pans out

Get him building his own no claims. It is seldom transferable between bike and car in any case so unless he becomes a lifelong biker, after 2 or 3 yrs of riding, packing it in and getting a car will mean his NCD will lapse 2 yrs afterwards.

thanks dave. not sure if im understanding correctly, but doesnt that contradict building his own no claims if its not transferable?
either start building a good no claims and keep making it better as long as he bikes, or go on daddys insurance, dont bother with his no claims cos itll be worthless when he gets a car anyway?

thanks

Don’t be conned by bike shops telling you he needs a £500 Arai helmet. Buy on ‘fit’ first and foremost and have a look at the Sharp testing

A good bike shop will start you with the cheapest and work up to arai until they find one that fits. At least that’s what they did to me when me Da bought me my first lid.

The look on his face when he realised that I ahve a totally different shaped head to him, which just happens to match up to shoei perfectly was priceless (I wasn’t allowed to try on the Arai, as he already had some explaining to do to the mother bank;-)

spent all morning on this now, starting to lose the will to live. spent nearly an hour on phone to carole nash as they were trying to find an online quote i got, then trying to get it competitive, then actually raised it when a mistake was spotted and wouldnt budge, so that was the end of that…..

ive been typing in the same info on form after form yawwwwnnnn and getting the same results now so i dont think i can get any better. cheapest by around £100 is a company called ‘go skippy’ at £300 so i was well pleased with that. then did a quick look at their reviews on google which has scared me now.

so the question for now is, do i go with some cheapo complete cowboys just to make my lad legal, knowing that if he prangs it its pointless trying to make contact with them anyway as the excess is so large that he may as well just buy a new bike? or actually go with someone with better customer service for er….. better customer service that he probably wont need as the excess is so large as to make it worthless claiming anyway? if you see what i mean 😀

I’d pay the extra £100, as it’ll be far more straight forward for things like no-claims next year if you use a company that actually communicates with its customers!

I’ve always gone for TPFT, as I figured that if I have a crash that’s my fault I certinally won’t be claiming off of my insurance for it!

better customer service that he probably wont need as the excess is so large as to make it worthless claiming anyway?

Even if the bike is a write-off he doesn’t want to be claiming, the insurance is just to make him legal (ie pay for the third parties damage) – so service is irrelevant.

ebike (too late now I know)

Will stop him being a dick revving the arse off it all ASBO style. Will also stop him being cool and he will end up getting less girls pregnant. Or something like that.

Has your other half checked that his company will also insure your 18yr old on a motorbike ? I’d be very surprised if they did and personally, I’d not have him on mine and risk losing loads of money come renewal time. (All it would need would for him to slide off the bike and hit a car and claim go in) Whilts not generally transferrable between bike NCD and car NCD, he may well love biking and stick at it…in which case he’d be annoyed at having 0 NCD in a couple of years.
I used Wicked Quotes for my two bike insurance and they were cheapest and I am actually insured with a good and reputable firm. Maybe worth looking if you haven’t already ?

Kit is the easiest thing to sort.

I’d pay the extra £100, as it’ll be far more straight forward for things like no-claims next year if you use a company that actually communicates with its customers!

I’ve always gone for TPFT, as I figured that if I have a crash that’s my fault I certinally won’t be claiming off of my insurance for it!
yeah, tend to agree now ive thought about it, and yes, TPFT is where im heading, thanks

Have your other half you checked that his company will also insure your 18yr old on a motorbike ?

i rang my insurance company this morning, and no, they dont. which as you say may be a blessing 😀

ill have a look at wicked quotes then, thanks for the heads up.

First let’s talk safety equipment.

Most moped riders don’t wear much, yet you can get full on motorbike type crash damage quite easily.

There’s £500 of your budget gone. I did this with my lads in the same situation, and regularly had to replace things like helmets and gloves because the earth’s gravitation field seems to be a powerful attractant for young loons on motorbikes.

And get a decent small motorbike with decent handling and braking rather than a basic moped because it will all be used to the limit and any law regarding the coefficient of friction will be disregarded.

looking at sorting insurance now, im looking at him +me 😉

‘licence type’ is throwing me tho on the quotes. we’ll have both done cbt at some point but no full test, yet theres 3 options i can see could quite easily apply, provisional bike, provisional moped or full moped. ive got a car licence already he has nothing, which licences will we hold for 125cc use?

thanks

If you’ve done CBT you’ll have a provisional bike license. A 125cc Van Van is not a moped, so any additional moped entitlement you may/may not have is irrelevant.

thanks a lot, appreciated.

Moped = 50cc.

It doesn’t cost £500 for moped gear, a decent jacket can be had for £50-£75, helmet the same again, £20 for gloves and that’s the essentials covered. Trousers are a nice to have if you crash, ditto boots, but not quite as important. In context, I did 40mph on my road bike yesterday in Lycra and disco slippers, crashing would undoubtedly hurt, but I’d not likely die.

Those insurance quotes are cheaper than I ever got mine and I lived in the middle of nowhere.

Dadandlad, not sure if you got my email but my wife is interested in your Vespa if you want to send me details

sadexpunk, I seem to remember that you live near to me, I would recommend going to see Mark Phillips out on the Newark road for clothing, he’s a nice bloke and carries a good range of clothing/helmets etc.

http://www.markphillips-motorcycleclothing.co.uk

yep, im in lincoln so thats a good shout, thanks mate.

If you’ve done CBT you’ll have a provisional bike license. A 125cc Van Van is not a moped, so any additional moped entitlement you may/may not have is irrelevant.

just doing the quotes now and this is throwing me a bit. been on the phone to them and they say i cant be an additional rider as i havent done my cbt yet so cant be put on the insurance until i have.
yet my lad hasnt done it either, he does it on saturday, so surely itd be the same for him too?

looking at both our licences, we both have dates in the A section under nos 10 and 11, i assume theyre start and finish dates. so we both have a provisional uk licence from the dates on our licence dont we?

thanks