[Isaac Zachary]

So there's one thing that bothers me about auto insurance.

Say you're the kind of person who works on his/her car (which you probably do if you're an ecomodder.) There's a possibility that you may put in a considerable amount of money into an older vehicle. But if that vehicle gets in a wreck and say insurance is there to "cover" it, what can happen is the insurance company will simply say the car is totaled, hand you a check for a few hundred dollars and take the car.

I understand why it is that way, if the owner had a say in the worth of the car would allow for some major insurance fraud. But is there anything that can be done about not getting shorthanded?

Say I go replace my catalytic converter, HV battery and brake actuator on my 2006 Toyota Prius. That could run me nearly $6,000 in parts (and it is in need of a catalytic converter and the HV battery is not doing well either, so I need to nearly $4,000 in parts if I go OEM).

But if someone runs over my car (if they have insurance) or if a thief steals the catalytic converter (if I have full coverage) then I'm at the mercy of if the damage is less than the total value of the vehicle. And since KBB says the car's only worth $1,300 at a trade in, the likelihood of it being a total loss is very high. In other words, they'd give me a check for $1,300 (or whatever they calculate) and take the car I just poured a bunch of money into.

Of course I could just not put that kind of money into the car. There are aftermarket HV batteries for as little as $600 (that might last a year or so). And I could just not replace the cat or go with an aftermarket cat that costs a 10th the price but obviously isn't going to be built anywhere as well as the OEM cat.

Is there anything that can be done about this? Has anyone ever run into this problem?