OK, breaking this away from another thread so as not to hijack the thread. The discussion came up on technician test rides. Specifically, someone posted that the dealer had put a 50 mile test ride on a bike with 89 miles to make sure it was repaired properly. I said I'd be fuming if a dealer did that to my brand new bike. The discussion went down from there.

There seems to be 2 schools of thought:
1. Long test rides are bad, as I don't know who is riding my bike and what they are doing. This is especially true during break in.

2. Long test rides may be necessary depending on the repair to ensure that it is fixed properly, or to find an intermittent problem.


Here is my thought: expectation is everything. I would be furious if any shop test rode my bike more than say, 5 miles or so. I've been around enough to know if I take it in for something they will probably take it around the block. However, if they are going for more, I would expect them to let me know up front. Depending on the situation, how well I knew and trusted the dealer, etc, I'd probably be OK. But if they handed my bike back with 50 or so miles on it without saying anything I'd be angry. Especially if the bike was still being broken in. I buy brand new because I like to know the complete history of a vehicle, and won't accept a brand new vehicle if it already has a decent amount of miles on it. So, how do I know the tech wasn't going crazy or whatever? I've heard some horror stories of test drives. I know they are few and far between, but it happens (years ago a guy with a subaru caught the tech taking his car over 100 mph by reviewing his GPS logs).

My bottom line, is expectation is everything. If a long test drive was discussed up front, I might be cool, or I might ask if I could test drive, or otherwise work something out. But to hand someone back there vehicle with double digit miles more on it than they turned it in with no head's up is just disrespectful of their property.

Thoughts?

 

If you don't trust the technician to ride your bike. Why trust him to fix it?

 

IF there is a problem, I'd want it thoroughly tested to ensure that the problem is diagnosed or repaired properly.

BTW the nearest dealer to here is about 3 miles away- I live near a freeway access.
I sometimes see dealer techs going by the house, maybe to test ride at freeway speeds

Mike

 

Watch youtube and fix your own bike.

 

A big part of the long test ride would depend on what was wrong with it. I have read many on here complain that the dealer didn't ride the bike long enough to duplicate the problem.

My take on it is if you trust your dealer enough to work on your bike, you also have to trust their judgement on riding it.

After having them work on my bike twice I decided that they will never touch it again. And this is a dealer with a great reputation. As I posted on another post, I just don't believe the majority of people take pride in what they do anymore...It's a "I'm owed a paycheck" kinda world

 

Every time I took my bike to the dealer to try and find out what was wrong or if it was repaired correctly the "The technician took your bike for a nice long test ride to see if the problem/code would reappear" that ride was less than a half mile.
Just my experience and btw they never found the problem .
Rob

 

A test ride is always done for liability purposes. If you don;t want your bike test ridden fix it yourself. 50 miles does seem excessive but I'd rather have them ride it 50 miles to ensure it is fixed than ride it 1 mile and tell me it's fixed only for me to find out that I have to take it back to them again.

There are two sides to every coin and this one is debatable.

 

I think 50 miles is excessive

 

I always take a picture of my odometer when I drop any of my vehicles off for repair. I caught a GM dealer's garage manager years ago with my truck unloading his boat from a local lake on a Saturday morning. My truck had been dropped off at the dealer for a simple service on Friday for Monday pick up. I happened to run into him, backed into the boat launch Saturday morning, with my truck an hour's drive from town. Some people are just ridiculous. Take pictures of my mileage since then, let them know about it as well.

The dealer for my bike tends to put about 7 miles on each test ride. I know the loop they use to do this, part highway, part town, part two lane road. I agree that this is a reasonable test drive for route and length.

 

If they're only gonna do a 5 mile test ride they might as well NOT even do one....my Indy gives me his bike to ride while he has mine and I always put more on his than vice versa...