Can I ask, were you in at the time?

I don’t currently switch the burglar alarm on at night, but have started to think I’m being too lax on security after comments from others.

And did you keep your bikes chained up within your garage? Did it dissuade the thieves at all?

There have been a lot of expensive bikes nicked from garages in my town recently a guy had 5 bikes worth £12,000 nicked from his garage.

I wonder do the thieves spot a car with a bike/bikes on the rack and follow the car home.

I am utterley paranoid at the moment I have 3 locks on the bike and a alarm.

Not from garage but very secure shed…..stole one, been back three times since to try and get other two, second time they ripped the roof of to get at them!!! Theiving **** we were at home every time they came.Bikes are now in the kitchen bombers at the ready……

In the Chester area it was cars with bike racks that got the scums attention and they did not care where the bikes were kept, shed, garage or in the house,if they thought you weren’t around then they smashed their way in. Big chains and retainers some times slowed them down enough but only if the location was busy and they suspect they will only have a small block of time. Thankfully since they nicked the *wats thefts have slowed right down.

Am probably extending house this year, so I’ll take the opportunity to get a ground anchor cast in while the footings are dug.

Is a wall-mounted ring a worthwhile stopgap, would you say?

What chains do people use?

Getting twitchy now!

They’d have to take a large section of my (and my neighbours for that matter) garage wall to nick my Yeti.
Although there are nights when I forget to lock the garage and the other bikes in the garage could be nicked. But I live in a crime-free area 🙂

I have mine in my spare room, inside a locked flat, and locked together with a hefty cable lock. I just don’t think I’d ever trust leaving them in a shed, so they’d pretty much always be in a house or a garage that I’d have constructed like fort knox.

Surely location has a massive relevance to this topic?

My bikes are chained up in the garage, no alarm and I’m not too worried but I also live in a fairly crime free area.

my landlord pissed and moaned about me storing bikes indoors, when there was a perfectly good “locked shed” where the lock was put on back to front, leaving all the rusty MS screws accessible? tit

DezB

Not far from me a couple of years ago

Not far from me

A looooong way away from me though!

in terms of chains you have to go expensive (£100+) to get an uncropable chain but it will still get eaten fairly quickly by an (portable) angle grinder. IMHO they are just a visual detterent to stop a reasonably skilled opportunist thief. If they target your bikes they will get them whatever you do sadly.
I use the following
anchor
CHAIN
Portable New York D lock
[url=http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=8484]through chain above to secure wheels etc[/url]
3 of these but from aldi
I also leave a sacrificial Claude Butler hack bike that is locked to a washing line pole with a cheap combination lock.YOu could pick it up and over the pole(6 foot high though) if you really wanted it to stop the opportunist trying at my good ones

No matter what lock you use a decent hack saw will go through your frame in about a minute …. just think how much your parts are worth to sell on Ebay!!!

Good point Junkyard, I suppose parts like forks and wheels can be worth more than frames anyway and are far less traceable.

Sacrificial bike is an interesting idea, perhaps I’ll lock all the bikes up apart from the wife’s.

😉

Burglary #1 – from a joining but external garage, whilst we were in the house. Alarm not set (landlords didn’t think it was important to tell us how to set the garage) and locks not locked – I didn’t think they’d burgle if we were in. They tore open the garage door and cleaned us out.

Burglary #2 – different house, owned by us this time, in an internal garage. Lifted the bottom of the door up (making a great big noise that woke us up) and tried to grab a bike before scarpering. The bikes were locked so they got away with nothing apart from the satisfaction of giving me fear as I drift off to sleep.

Current solution:

– Electric (cos it’s more secure, not cos it’s flash) Hormann sectional door that apparently is tough to break into
– Massive Almax chain – £350 but it was for 6 bikes, and tbh peace of mind is invaluable. Almax chains don’t look like much on the website until you see how massive they are. I have 4m of it and it’s about as much as I can lift. So I reckon it weighs easily 80kg.
– Got the burglar alarm set up so that we can alarm the garage on its own
– Also got another sensor in there so that we can have the police response set up. Again, not cheap but it’s worth it for us.

The door could be smashed in probably (but not levered up due to its design) and the chain ground through maybe, but the fuzz should be on their way by that point. In any case, hopefully the above will deter the kind of scumbag kids that are rolling about if not a hardcore pro thief.

if you’ve been burgled once then you are most likely to get repeat visits,
they know that if there were expensive bikes then they will probably be replaced again,
they will also know entry points etc.

so make sure everything’s secure

I must admit that an electric roller garage door is a good thing. We are lucky enough to move into a house where the previous owner had a big garage built. It has a 4 section door with rollers down each side that would be tough to get into. He also left us the ground anchor he locked his motorbike to. (No choice really, it’s hard to shift them dy design) which we chain our Ducatis to. I fixed another one on the other side of the garage for the MTBs, and we use 2 locks on them.

so hands up those who have bought cheap 2nd hand parts online.
how do you know they were not nicked.

i live in the only house in the street that has not been burgled (in 25years) there was an attempt about ten years ago – for some reason they never came back
Opportunistic robberies occur about every 3mths in a road of 20properties, either car (contents), garage, shed or last one was a house (only one without an alarm at the time)

so hands up those who have bought cheap 2nd hand parts online.
how do you know they were not nicked.

Yes, I’ve tried to raise this issue before on bike forums and been shot down.

Everybody is very certain they’d never support bike theft and that bike thieves are the lowest scum of the earth – and if anybody tried to steal their bike they’d tear their heart out and eat it while it was still beating.

But, while I’m sure most STW users wouldn’t burgle houses, all those stolen bikes must go somewhere. It’s quite possible that a lot of bikes get broken down into bits and ebayed – and that some of those bits then find their way into the STW classifieds.

I’m not saying anything can be done to check the stuff you buy isn’t stolen, just that the stolen bike trade probably overlaps more than we suspect with the world we know.

recent purchases:

gobi saddle, worn, pics of saddle only.
race face bash ring – described as worn, no pics
race face stem – new (if this was nicked, it was outta the box never fitted)
lights – if the guy nicked these he is being very good about it – a responsible thoughtful crim (gets my vote)

so ive saved about 50% off list price, call it 60% if i went to my lbs for all of it…………. but i do now feel guilty, just in case.

however i have also sold stuff on here and never once been asked the hows and whys of the sale.

so essentially we dont care – more interested in spending a bit more of our hard earned (or not so) on chains/bolts/buildings and insurance.

Yep, They prized my under over garage door and cleared me out, cut through the chains which I used to anchor the bikes in and even tried to nick my gas boiler!

They came back 4 weeks latter, but this time the alarm activated, replaced the door a electric roller garage door with alarm, and all I spotted was their low loader speeding off down the road!

They’d probably be to keen on stealing the car when I’ve left the boot open more than once recently… 🙂

I live in a reasonably crime free area, and have had my bikes nicked, about 5 years ago. Still, couple of locks to deter all but the most persistent is all I have, Insurance is my guard against theft.

I know it’s not really a solution, but I simply have fairly undesirable bikes. I am pretty sure anyone who wanted mine seriously could get them, and I’d just have to not care and argue with the insurance about it.

The (relatively) nice ones are chained to a ground anchor with D-locks on them, hidden behind the wife’s Pashley. The Big Dummy isn’t chained because it comes out too often. It’s the most expensive one, but much more likely to get vandalised whern left on the street than stolen from the shed, and there’s nothign whatever I can do about that…

Ah, well i left my bike unchained in my parent’s garage, and it got nicked during the day while we were in…must have been tracked back to my house after a ride as i’d only been there 3 days and they’ve never been burgled in almost a decade.

The moral of this one is: if it’s not locked or alarmed then mr thiefy thief is laughing and wandering out your back gate with a smile on his face. If it’s locked and alarmed at all, despite it still being potentially nickable, there’s an infinitely better chance he won’t be smiling as much or you’ll notice! And almost more importantly, you’ll be able to make a claim on insurance.

Also, it’s all very well living in a low crime area, but i don’t reckon it’s worth taking the risk. Didn’t work for me.

I was forced to re-think when a mate’s bike was pinched from inside his home.
1. I fortunately live in a low crime area
2. Bikes hanging and chained to a supportive overhead beam with a chain that wont crop, but could be ground off with a petrol angle grinder (theres’ no ‘leccy in there and the ergonomics are tricky). A slot could be cut in the beam with a petrol chainsaw but it would probably bring the roof down on your head 🙂
3. Locked garage door – pretty feeble
4. Sacrificial town bike left unlocked
5. Car parked to prevent garage door from opening

phew!

I know it’s not really a solution, but I simply have fairly undesirable bikes. I am pretty sure anyone who wanted mine seriously could get them, and I’d just have to not care and argue with the insurance about it.

I’m not sure that matters to some folk. My knackered old 96 Orange P7 got pinched, that looked like crap but was of sentimental value to me and possible retro cool value to bikers. I’m sure bike thieving scum didn’t care what it was.

but much more likely to get vandalised whern left on the street than stolen from the shed, and there’s nothign whatever I can do about that…

Well there is – where and when you lock your bike is critical.

5. Car parked to prevent garage door from opening

Someone nicked motorbikes from up the road from us, despite their car being parked in front of the garage. They crawled under the car and cut the handbrake cable.

Had my golf clubs stolen from the garage, during which I guess they saw my bike, hung from the ceilling and loccked to a set of alluminium ladders also hung to the ceilling. They came back (i assume the same ones) a few weeks later, forced the new lock and stole the bike and ladders (still attached) in the middle of the night.

I now have the bike secured to a wall anchor bolted right through the wall!

Insurance sorted it all no probs but I hate the fact that the thieving barstewards have my stuff!!!