Wanted to do a bit of a tour of the snow fields (bright Vic. area) and really wanted to try a Road King. Looked at hiring a bike. Did a google search and there is not a lot of optins in Melb. yet. Anyway booked a bike through "bikeroundoz" which turned out to be Garners in Nth. Melb. I thought I would share a few tips I found out.
1) Hire for 4 days min. If you hire for 3, it will only cost $17 to go for 4 days due to the reduced rental rate.
2) The excess is $5,000 (gulp!). for $12 a day paid to garners I reduced that to $2500. $48 well spent.
3) To cover the rest of the excess you need to have travel insurance. Now, I have insured the excess only on rentals before, but they were campervans not motorcycles. So you will find only 1 company that will offer a travel insurance package to cover the bikes excess. QBE offer a pack designed for cruises in Australian waters, gives you a lot of cover for things you will not claim BUT it covers $2,000 of hire vehicle excess and that can be increased for a bit more money.
4) Be aware lots of companies sound like they will cover motorcycles but they cover the rider NOT the bike. Or, its bikes under 200cc.
5) If you find a really good deal (you won't) all you need to do is look at the PDS. Check out "words with special meanings" and look at the definition of hire vehicles. QBE is the only one that has "motorcycle" listed as an acceptable hire vehicle. Its a bit of a trap hidden in the fine print.
6) There is a bond of $2500 on the ol credit card as well.
Now the experience. The guys at Garners are a friendly bunch, I picked the bike up and it had a full tank and was clean (not typical HD owner clean, but fine). Quick run through, signature here and there and away I went. The bike was a 2012 103ci with just over 74000 on the clock. Thats a lot of K's! The bike ran bloody beautifuly. I could not believe how perfectly smooth it was when running down the road. Yeah it shook like a wet dog at lights (hey, thats what Dynas do!), but with the rear brake applied it was cut down by near half.
The screen really pissed me off. Horrible buffeting, made me feel crook. At Warburton I pulled it off an strapped it back to the back of the bike. Heaps better.
Anyway, I return the bike and I had marked the sreen by my occy strapping it to the back of a bike for arounf 1400K. The guys at the shop could have quite rightly demanded a new one and kept part of my bond or put a 5K insurance claim in. In the end they had a screen repair guy come in, take the screen away, repair it and bring it back for $90. Bloody bargain I think! The remainder of bond was paid back within the hour.
Bloody Road King. Keep thinking of one now. Come on Tatts!
So, if you want to try a tourer and a ride around the block at the stealership just won't cut it consider hiring one.
