I did not want to be posting this message on STW, but 3 of my bikes have been stolen on Thursday night/ Friday morning from my shed in Oxford (Cowley)

If any of you hear or see anything about the following bikes please let me know!

Lapierre Zesty 314 2011 XL
Easton Havoc Bars silver
Thomson X4 50mm stem
Thomson seatpost
Red Hope seat clamp
Schwalbe Nobby Nic on the back
Maxxis Minion on the front
apart from that, standard build
and it was really muddy

Genesis Core 10 2011 17.5″
Womens Bonty saddle (girlfriends bike)
Deore HT2 chainset and external bb (not standard octalink)
DMR black pedals
The rest was standard

Charge Plug Racer 2010 L Silver
Brown brooks swift saddle
DMR pedals
Red and black bonty tyres 23 front, 25 back
Lapierre stem
Cut down specialized handlebars
Grey and red clamped ‘peaty’ lizard skins
Both brakes still on
Running singlespeed, not fixed.

Older photo, bike was as spec above

The bikes were locked together with a Kryptonite New York lock, and then locked to the shed with a cable. Our garden is enclosed and there are no signs of entry at the 8ft fence. I think this must have been a targeted theft.

The advice I now have is lock everything in sheds with at least gold rated locks and lock them to a gold rated anchor secured in double hard concrete!

Better still, keep them locked in the dining room, didn’t really use it that much anyway!

I have have my fingers crossed, but don’t hold out much hope.

Rich

Gutted for you.

Set up eBay alerts, browse Gumtree and craigslist, go for a drive around and pop into cash converters. Does sound very targeted tho. How do thieves shift this lot? My mate got his commencal nicked this week, no sign of it online or any of its major parts. Can only assume it will have been sold round the back of a pub but that charge isn’t going to be easy to shift.

Thanks, alerts set. Got to be something more we can do to trace bikes. If they can track a swallow to Africa surely we have the technology to track a bike in the uk?

Proper thieves either steal to order or some of it will go abroad. Doesn’t sound like the average chav attack – especially with the enclosed garden and decent locks. Were you away when they got nicked?

Keep them indoors. It’s the only safe way really. Bikes still get nicked with ground anchors – take nigel page’s CRC team bikes for example. All individually locked inside a secured garage with gold standard d locks, all locked to an enormous ground anchor set in 2 or 3 feet of hardened concrete. Still all of them got nicked. Twice. At the end of the day, thieves won’t break into houses to steal bikes, because they aren’t worth the increased risk of being caught / having the blue beaten out of them with a baseball bat.

Are there dodgy people near you who knew you had a nice collection of bikes in a shed? Call me paranoid but I don’t tell anyone but my closest mates… and I never ride them near my house on the street.

Sorry for your loss.

Don’t forget to search ebay with different spellings, as they tend to use deliberate spelling mistakes to stop them getting picked up with automatic searches.

I ride to and from my side gate after night rides – probably spotted on my Zesty. Bad vibes!

probably sounds obvious – but have you had a good scout around your area.
Friend of mine had his enduro bike nicked along with the pace it was locked up with. found the pace (rc100 of all things) in a field where it had been chucked. says something about the t**ts who nicked it really.
As above, gutted for you.

I’m Kidlington so will keep an eye out.

I ride to and from my side gate after night rides – probably spotted on my Zesty. Bad vibes!

Yep 🙁 happens everywhere. Buy a loud dog, put them indoors out of view from windows and use deadlock bolts on all your doors. Key locks, no matter how expensive, can be broken/picked easily. Lol I must be sounding like a right old paranoid now, but what the heck. Never had any of my bikes stolen in my life so I must have been doing something right.

Just about to order one of these kits from pragmasis 13mm Chain with Torc

Any advice on these? That should put the f*ckers off at least!

Bike matching my Charge Plug has been spotted in Oxford on Thursday. What do I do now? Stakeout the area?

Not sure what else you can do apart from drop by there more often. Was the person seen coming out / going into anywhere in particular, or just randomly cycling through the area. One of my bikes I had stolen in Oxford was spotted locked up somewhere over a year later, I couldn’t get down to check it out that day and it was gone the next day. It turned up at the same place a week later though