Alright I have a question about insurance. I have a 95 Civic coupe and I’ve done just about everything I want to do to the car except for the engine swap. I will be graduating college this summer so I will finally be able to do the swap. Right now for insurance I just have the basic plan because I have a 10 year old car with 160,000 miles on it. So my fear is this. After I do the engine swap if I keep the current insurance plan and I’m driving down the road and I hit a deer and total my car I’m screwed, I currently don’t have collision on my plan. So that really isn’t an option. My next option is to upgrade the plan to one with collision. However same scenario, car is totaled the insurance company looks at the 10 year old civic with 160,000 on it and give me a check for almost nothing. Even though I just did my $5000 engine swap plus all the other mods on the car. So my question is this. Do I tell the insurance company about the engine swap and other mods on the car. I’m sure the monthly rate will go up. But will they then take the engine swap and the mods into consideration when figuring out the compensation and not just base the figure on a stock car 10 year old car? Or by telling them am I just basically causing my insurance rate to go up?

 

For heavily modified cars they typically want a professional appraisal to provide a base value for the car. And if you want coverage for those modifications, the cost of insurance will be higher. Does your insuracnce company allow you to buy back damaged vehicles? If so that is an option. i.e. you wreck your car, get paid what your 160k car was worth, buy it back with that check, then re-use or sell the parts. Hope that helps.