What do you do for prevention of motorcycle theft?

[Duki09]

After having one bike stolen and still paying for it, I have gone to more extreme measures  to make my Ducati less inviting and almost impossible to steal without having to stand in front of it with an assault rifle inside a secured building.

Light weight sport bikes are very easy to steal even if they aren't secured.  Two strong guys can get it in the back of a pick-up within seconds.

You also have to wonder if there are crooked employees who work at motorcycle shops who have access to getting keys made to starting up and unlocking fork locks of certain bikes. So you have to take the extra step in having an additional lock on your bike which no one else could get a key made for.

Think about this also, if you bought a bike through a private seller, what makes you think that person doesn't have a spare set of keys that he or someone else may use in order to steal the bike back? So you may have to go as far as getting the ignition re-keyed.

No one else with a motorcycle who lives around me secures their bike as I do and probably think I go a little overboard, but I had one stolen right from the front of my own home and that was one feeling I hope never to experience again.  Even being fully insured and have GAP insurance...NO...no more taking what belongs to me and getting away with it. I don't care if the bike is fully covered or not.

For those who don't have a garage and have to park their bike outside most of the time, what measures do you take?  Alarm? Disc locks?  Chain your motorcycle to a post? 

I think even something like a cover will help prevent theft as what people can't see, they may not be interested in stealing and may not want to take the extra time to remove the cover off the bike.

Most security cameras are worthless unless they are right in front of the motorcycle. They usually don't provide good video in low light and don't provide much close up detail to give a description and they surely don't stop anyone from taking the bike because many thieves are that arrogant that they will even smile at the camera.

[Kerry]

I have to park my bike outside.  I have had my Vespa stolen before, so I know the feeling of getting a bike ganked. 

I took a cheap but I think pretty effective route.  I drilled into the cement where I park my bike and installed an eye bolt.  I then took some industrial strength bonding glue stuff and glued the eye bolt into the hole.  I lock my front tire to this with a heavy duty cable lock.

There is nothing much that is 100% effective (learned that after watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) Just think how you would go about stealing the bike and try to make it not worth the time for someone.  I know someone could come by and take off the front wheel but that would take some tools, time and effort.

[ducatiz]

1.  obscure it.  if they don' t know what it is, it is less inviting. 
2.  wheel locks are great but cable/chain through the rear wheel and attached to something immovable is best.  i had a long-ass kryptonite chain wrapped around a traffic sign post.  leave the chain locked when you are riding.
3.  get a motion alarm.  mine is a Xena disk lock with alarm.  the batteries have to be replaced every couple of months, but it works very well and is absurdly loud. 

generally, you need to do all three. 

i found an obscure place on the sidewalk (in NYC) and put a Kryptonite Anchor into the sidewalk (nice to have a battery impact drill handy)..  it is VERY discreet looking and it is nearly impossible to defeat.  when i would park, i'd pull up, run a chain thru the anchor and put the bike directly over the anchor.  it was near the wall of a building, so someone would have had to work really hard to vandalize or steal it and there was plenty of foot traffic during the day.  keeping it covered kept the parking drones away from it.

[redxblack]

full coverage insurance. If you're looking for a settlement payout, nothing bad will happen to your bike. 

[He Man]

cost of full coverege is as much as the bike sometimes (mine is 40% of the bike value) + the $1000 deductible, not worth it. if youre just worry about theft, often you can buy comp without collision and its much cheaper

but as dictionary boy pointed out, you can just obscure it, if it doesn't catch their eye, they wont steal it. or if its too much work to bother theyll move on.

I have a motion alarm (same xena disc alarm) when im out, works great, stops epople from randomly sitting on it. especially since my steering lock is no longer active now.

[HuDuc]

Chain your motorcycle to a post? 

I said it earlier risk the ticket! it's cheaper than replacing the bike. I roll the bike onto the sidewalk and chain the frame to any post that's available.

[okhaze]

Lo Jack works very well if you want the bike back. It takes them about a day to find it.

[DoubleEagle]

If you have the resourses park the bike(s) inside and have armed 24/7 guards.

Dolph     

[hadesducati848]

i cut a 6"x6" hole in my concrete floor in my carport then welded one end of my krytonite chain to the exposed rebar and poured new concrete to fill in the hole. i also have a heat/smoke detecter that was already installed in my carport and i found that oxy/acc torch will set it off. so hopefully the crack heads will move on to another target. i do have a pitbull that used to stand guard on my hondashadoe but one day he decided to chew on the licence plate, so he was relocated to the back yard... cause if he eats anything on one of my ducs i might have to have him put down hahahaha J/J... well not really.

[fastwin]

I have several bikes in a standard rental storage unit. This January I got a call from the managers informing me that my unit as well as others had been broken into. They wanted to know how many bikes I had it the unit. They made it sound like one had been taken. I was there in about 5 seconds!

Ta Da!! They were all still there. Why? Because every bike was locked with big ass 30mm locking OnGuard cables. One cable through the back wheel and swingarm and another one through the front wheel and forks. And every bike had a third locking cable locking it to another bike. All the bikes were cables together nose to tail, you couldn't take just one.

The punks jumped the compound's fence and randomly picked my section to burglarize. They didn't cut off the locks they cut the whole damn locking hasp off the roll up doors! There was my hasp on the ground with both of my MasterLock disc locks still attached. A lot of good the locks did! They just cut around them!

They hit three units before coming upon mine. About the time they discovered the bikes inside they were scared off by another renter going to their unit. They ran, probably smoked some more crack for courage, went down the street to another rental storage business and stole their big box van. They drove it down the street and crashed it through the gate at my place. They parked it in front of my unit with the door still rolled up. Why the a@@hole that ran them off didn't call the police is still a damn good question! All my bikes are covered with Dowco bike covers. They took only one cover off and tried to move my Hayabusa. It didn't even budge an inch! They had the box van with the ramp down ready to roll all my bikes in the van and they couldn't even move the first out of my unit! It was dark and they couldn't see all the locks on the bikes so they totally wasted their time stealing the van and coming back!! I would have loved to have been watching them while sipping on a cold beer and laughing my ass off at their futile efforts. They obviously gave up or were scared off again. They left the stolen van with the ramp extended and the doors to all the units still up. Luckily they didn't damage any of the bikes.

I told the managers that they had a choice: either help me move my stuff to another unit right then or I get to spend the night in my busted up unit with an AR15! They helped me move...

All those OnGaurd locking cables saved the day and the fact that all the bikes were locked to each other. Nothing like trying to move an immovable bike! The bikes now have the screaming Xena disc locks too. Imagine the sound of those going off inside a 10x30 foot metal storage unit! Think like a crook.... it helps!

[ducatiz]

All those OnGaurd locking cables saved the day and the fact that all the bikes were locked to each other. Nothing like trying to move an immovable bike! The bikes now have the screaming Xena disc locks too. Imagine the sound of those going off inside a 10x30 foot metal storage unit! Think like a crook.... it helps!

that is a good story!

what part of north Jersey are you in?

[Howie]

Good to hear the thieves were not successful and all the bikes are unharmed

[angler]

The one's on the right

[fastwin]

That's a little small... I'm thinking 12 gauge Federal Tactical 00 buck.

[angler]

That's a little small... I'm thinking 12 gauge Federal Tactical 00 buck.

I don't know, an almost 1/2" hole on entry is pretty substantial.  Exit is more like a grapefruit.

Agreed nothing says get the make the beast with two backs out of my yard like a pump shotgun slide being racked.  Agreed that you don't even really have to aim a tactical shotgun.  Not so sure I want to be laying a curtain of lead around the monster though and it is hard to conceal in a moto boot.