Hitchcocks Forum

Spoke to a guy today who owns a Royal Enfield Electra X. He parked it in a public car park while he went shopping and when he came back 45 minutes latter, the dual seat had been nicked! Anyone else out there who has had parts nicked from their bikes. Maybe this is a good opportunity to discuss bike theft and what can be done to deter these thieves.

Whilst being a Classic Iron Head Owner , I am More Worried about scrap metal thieves taking the Lot...

I would Of Thought the seats Not the easyist of things to Nick & unbolt IF The Car Park is a patrolled one.

Lastly You Can Get Security Nuts/Bolts/Screws That would Slow Them Down a Lot...

"Hey It Did Not Vibrate Off on the Way there Did It" ;0) (My Triumph One did Many years ago)



Commiserations...Craig

I was reading an article in Old Bike last night and the figures for stolen bikes in the UK is staggering."The period between 1981 and 1991 saw a huge increase in the theft of motorcycles culminating in a staggering total of 115,000 machines being recorded in November 1991 as stolen on the PNC" I can't get my head around these figures, where do they all end up? The stats claim 1971 to 1981 200,000, 1981 to 1991 230,000, 1991 to 2001 200,000, 2001 to 2011 130,000 a total of 760,000 over the 40 years. This article was written by Dr Ken German, retired head of the London Met stolen vehicle squad

You have to realise that crime is a multi billion pound industry that lines the wallets of those who are employed in it very handsomely. If we had penalties that were so severe that they worked as a deterent (which of course they would) the average man in the street would be so much richer but the extremely wealthy law inductry would be decimated, which is why crime is allowed to flourish...my appologies for becoming political on this, but it is true. I am very sorry to here of your loss Reggie, they are thieving parasites and should have their hands cut off....publically.

Sorry, lots of typos now corrected: You have to realise that crime is a multi billion pound industry that lines the wallets of those who are employed in it very handsomely. If we had penalties that were so severe that they worked as a deterrent (which of course they would) the average man in the street would be so much richer but the extremely wealthy law industry would be decimated, which is why crime is allowed to flourish...my apologies for becoming political on this, but it is true. I am very sorry to here of your loss Reggie, they are thieving parasites and should have their hands cut off....publically

I'm with you there Les only I'd trim some other bits as well. We have to discourage low life from thinking that crime is a lifestyle opion.

I found some interesting videos on YouTube about how to prevent your bike and stuff from getting nicked. This was a particularly good one:


http://youtu.be/dBaEQgGOJFQ

Many years ado, my old Uncle parked his new Peugeot moped outside the library. When he came back, it didn't run very well; he couldn't understand why until he looked at the engine and found that someone had done a complete engine swap with some old banger during the time he had been changing his books.

More recently, I was a bit careless about locking the Bullet, partly because I thought the local scooter-nicking scrotes in hackney wouldn't know what to do with a kickstarter and right-foot gears.
I kept hearing it in the neighbourhood, and eventually found it parked in some local flats. I need to charge the battery and get the key, and as I was replacing the battery, someone unseen shouted "f**** B******", but only like you might say it too a friend who needed something back you had borrowed.

It took me a while to even figure out HOW to remove the seat of my Electra...
Many years ago somebody stole the tank, seat and side panels from my Yamaha LC. I was relly pissed: getting those parts for an old bike was laborious (which probably was the reason for theft in the first place) - why wouldn't the thief take the whole bike!
Well, next year my wish came true... Only lock and pieces of chain remained. However I found the bike (which was very tricky to start) from the next block a couple of days later.
Here in Finland 13% of the thefts are ever solved by authorities. May be a bit more concerning vehicles. I'd be surprised if the number in Britain would be much higher. So I do not believe the wealth of the law industry come from this source...
I have always wondered though the great amount of bicycles that get stolen - who needs these bikes?

I used to work at a large computer company a couple of years ago. One of the guys took delivery of a brand new Honda CBR600RR. A beautiful bike. 4 days later it was stolen from the company car park in broad daylight. A van was earlier seen prowling the car park. The bike was locked with a massive security chain but they still managed to cut through it. Someone knew that bike was there. It wasn't just chance that they found it there. I suspect the bike ended up on the race track or as spares on fleabay. After that they installed CCTV and built a special bike parking bay.