Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft....

Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

We used to wrap our bikes in gaffer tape.

If I was a messenger today I would fit a tracker I could immediately trace.

Imagine the thief's surprise as you pull up next to them in a cab and grab your bike back!
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

No logos and nothing shiny - nothing that looks hip and trendy like disc brakes or suspension, battered cockpit, battered saddle, battered pedals and simply never clean it.
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

Buy a decent lock and whenever possible lock the bike up in sight of a CCTV camera and/or near another bike that has a worse lock ;)

Railway station bike parks (at least the ones I go to on the West coast main line) are usually well covered with good quality (i.e decent resolution and real-time recording) CCTV.

Thieves will usually move on if they think there's a chance they might be caught in the act.

You all have me even more paranoid now about parking my shiny Deore/XT (Dyna-sys) equipped FSR (with RockShox Dart II forks and a disk brake on the front) anywhere I can't personally keep an eye on it now :(
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

Try camouflage
 

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Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

Elysarian":3cj110nw said:
Buy a decent lock

Even a semi-skilled thief can break what most people think of a decent lock pretty trivially and quickly - most u-locks will fail through simple leverage unless you make sure the space in the middle is filled up.

As for


I'd forget it. If the bike is an attractive one, it's easy to keep your face hidden for the very short time needed to steal a bike or components.

This is a good insight into how serious bike thieves work - you'lll probably only find this calibre of thief in London in the UK:

The bicycle tube fashioned like a sling around the bolt cutter handles allow the thief to keep the bolt cutters slung over his shoulder, typically hidden under a light jacket or obscured by the backpack that carries his other tools. He whips the bolt cutter around, cuts the lock and swings it back around for a quick getaway on the stolen bike. It’s very slick; a practiced thief can do this right next to you and you likely won’t notice what he just did.

Multitool allows quick removal of parts that are connected with allen bolts — the seatpost, some headsets, some wheels, and derailleur mechanisms. Cable cutters make quick work of shifter and brake cables.

The pipe cutter (the big gray tool in the center of the photo) is a new one for me. I’ve heard some thieves now cut frames so they can later strip the bike of its components for resale.

tools-500x375.jpeg

The last is correct - people have been doing that for years. It's a favourite of thieves who hit US college campuses - they'll drive up in a van to a rack of bikes and "harvest" the lot - or at least the ones with gucci components - in about five minutes using some kind of cutter on the frame. You lose the value of the frame, but 5-10 bikes worth of integrated shifters, decent wheels, derailers, etc can easily be $1000-$2000, and by getting rid of the frames you lose the only thing with a traceable serial number.

If you hit several racks in a night, that's like hitting a bunch of liquor stores and late night groceries, with no need to carry a gun, much less time if you're caught - it's a very smart crime.
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

I'd add to the post above that it doesn't take long to break most D-locks if there's enough space to get a scissor jack in there (the kind you get supplied in the boot of most cars) between the shackle and something solid (or between the two sides near where the locking bar attaches) - I found this out when I lost the keys for mine down a drain and used this very method.

My point on CCTV wasn't the identification of suspects, it was the thief's not wanting to be seen aspect (these days the biggest use of CCTV is as a deterrent, though sometimes it does help to identify offenders too).

Pretty sure if someone was caught with the items in the picture then they'd be arrested and charged with "going equipped to steal" - though from what I can see, if it's a first offence they'd likely only get a community service order or 12 weeks inside...

Maybe I should have stuck to my original idea: park your bike beside one that has a cheaper lock ;) (though I did have an idea a few years back for making an alarm that would fit inside the seat tube or handlebars of a bike with an inertia sensor...)
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

My point on CCTV wasn't the identification of suspects, it was the thief's not wanting to be seen aspect

Bike thieves really don't care about this. Good ones can break a lock or strip components on a busy street, and CCTVs are lot less intimidating than passers-by - most are dummies or not watched in real time, and the few that are have one guy covering 20 screens. And that guy will usually just see someone who looks like the bike owner fiddling with his bike.

Pretty sure if someone was caught with the items in the picture then they'd be arrested and charged with "going equipped to steal"

Completely. But a good bike thief can make a lot more in a day than a burglar, he'll get a much smaller sentence if caught, and ebay provides a ready means of shifting the loot. It's a very rational crime.

Ironically, a major reason why NYC messengers switched to single or fixed was so that their bikes would have as little stuff as possible for theives to strip and because no one would want the ancient frames they were using...

So the answer to the question "Why would you want to uglify a good bike?" is "Because in some places that is the only way you will keep one, and the main benefit of a good bike is that it rides better." If I was in NYC I'd use my Zaskar for errands, but the wheels would be "value" ones and the rims and hubs would be drooled with epoxy and paint, the mostly alvio level components would have had the same treatment plus dremel time, and the frame would be repulsizively rattle canned and covered in stickers. I'd use a locking system good enough to stop a thief who wasn't using powertools from stealing the whole bike (and powertools guy would probably move on to a more rewarding target) and it would be obvious to part strippers that the bike wouldn't be worth their time. Because otherwise, even with a boron chain weighing more than the bike, I'd worry that I'd find the frame sawn in half so someone could make $100 from selling my wheels and shifters on ebay. Then I'd enter the bike in BOTM.

..But wrapping an inner tube or duct tape around a frame, or those stupid rust stickers you can buy, pretty much a waste of time.
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

Buy an on one, repeatedly hit it with a hammer for twenty minutes.
If the pig iron its made of doesn't shatter, it'll look cack enough that no one will want to steal it. And they rust like its going out of fashion with a full coat of paint, so a few dents and chips are going to make no noticeable difference.
Build it up with old or low spec, but functional, shimano that you've sprayed with paint. (Bright green or yellow for preference)

Sorted.

It'll still ride like a bag of nails, but no one will nick it.
 
Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

How about buying a cheap bike and making it look exspensive ,then if it gets stolen jokes on them
 

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