Back in the good ole days, an old member Shane (white bugeye with Link, tbe etc) went on a hills cruise with bald tyres in the wet..

Ended up smack bang into a tree, was driven 40kms home (dunno how or who but apparently was a member here!!) and was a write off. HBF didnt say anything about the mods or tyres..

Was using "borrowed" rims for a bit. Cars off the road now after crash tho so i shoved those liberty ones back on (thus the dilemma with the car having different tyres from accident).

Yeah. Morale of the story, never lend your car to anybody else.

1st time; i lent it to my brother. Phone call an hour later, he had blown the box to bits after flogging it (antilag enabled) and fudged the shift from third to fourth at near redline. New clutch, new gearbox....

2nd time; i lent it to my dad. He comes home and tells me that i should look at my car. Not his fault but the front end is F4rked, radiator, cooler, engine oil leaking from somewhere around the cam seal(?) and it sounded like death when throttle was open.

My thoughts on the issues:

1. You should have no problems lodging a late claim however the insurer is entitled to reduce the settlement by the amount that they have been prejudiced by your late lodgement. eg. if the claim happened a year ago and the parts manufacturer had a price rise 6 months ago then they could reduce the settlement by the difference. However I dont think I have ever seen this applied - its just too hard for insurers to work out and they generally cant be bothered.

2. A basic principle of motor vehicle insurance is that your vehicle is roadworthy and conforms with all legal requirements. If the tread on the tyres is below the legal limit it will be a problem and I have seen this enforced. If you want to lodge a claim, change the tyres back - you will save yourself a lot of problems.

All mods need to be declared to the insurer and if the BOV hasn't been declared (or makes the car non-roadworthy) this will be a problem too.

The only way I can see around this with minimal effort is to get a quote from a repairer who takes digital photos (most major insurer recommended repairers use this facility) of the damage and the assessor will 'desktop' the assessment - they dont actually come and view the car, they just look at the photos. And they are definately more likely to do this if there is no pending recovery action and the claim is for a small amount (say under $2K)

However you still run the risk that assessor may just decide to go and view your car!

Hope this helps.

RAC are one of the few that have assesors still on the road. The majority do "Desk Top" assesments from digi photos taken by the panel shop. I think you may be worrying about nothing. An assesor friend of mine has always said when it comes to tyres he always considers how the tyre level or lack of it contributed to the accident. Say your tyres were .5mm on the right side of legal would you have been able to stop...probably not. I personally think the insurer will have more of an issue with the delay in lodging the claim. That rings alarm bells. They think your trying to hide something........