Scooterotica

After the sad news of Chucks scooter being stolen, I thought I'd post this advice about bike security. This is about motorbikes, so there are some differences, but the rules are generally the same. It's interesting how the thief and the owner/police think differently. Some scooters are worth so much these days, especially compared to motorbikes, and some are worth more in bits than they are complete.

Some basic rules: Never use a cable lock. Always lock it to something fixed. Try not to leave the lock trailing on the ground. Bigger is better for chains. Try to avoid leaving it in the same place every day.

hope this helps someone. I've had scoots nicked in the past and it's not a nice feeling.

http://www.elitesecuritysupplies.com/se ... thief.html

If a professional thief wants your bike its gone. That's that. If they've gone to the trouble of breaking into a garage then you're probably screwed without a massive chain and a ground anchor concreted into the floor and even that's only as strong as the bit of bike you've looped it through.

The best you can hope for is that you do enough to discourage the opportunist scumbag. A £25 cable lock will do that as well as a £150 chain.

The annoying thing about classic scooters is that they have very few holes in them that you can thread a lock through.

But welding a loop to one of the floor supports will help. Best done before the expensive respray though.

The majority of scooter / bike / motorbike thefts are opportunistic rather than breaking into garages etc and yes you can only do so much.

However, never use a cable lock is poor advice. Better advice is to use a good quality cable lock IN CONJUNCTION with a good quality D Lock, the reason for this is that opportunistic theives will generally carry minimal tools and generally only carry those for either one type of lock or the other, locking with 2 different systems will be one of the biggest deterrents you can achieve.

Theres other obvious pieces of advice too, such as never leave it unlocked even for a minute, never leave it without locking it to something else to stop it simply being lifted and put in a van and always park where theres plenty of foot traffic, potential witnesses and all that.

I do hope Chuck gets his scooter back though I do worry about the post letting us know where it says "it was parked on his driveway" I do park mine on my parking space outside my house and it's a quiet cul de sac, but I use a £55 D lock and it's locked to a trailer tent and that in turns got a wheel clamp security on it.

There are scooter "trick" parts that help, such as welding hoops to the foot struts as warts says, or similar to the picture below I took at the recent Wicksteed parts fair you can see Andy has a bar with hole in it to slip in the gap between front hub and rim which can be padlocked, he's also locked it via cable lock to another scooter, certainly enough deterrent at a parts fair type do.

sec by Donnie Canning, on Flickr

I saw a photo where someone had done a similar thing with an adjustable wrench with a padlock through the handle. Neat idea.

The trouble with cable locks is they can be cut through using a pair of wire snippers - you just snip each strand until you're through. Thicker cables just take a bit longer. A chain requires bolt croppers which are a whole different deal to carry around. For an opportunistic thief (ie one carrying a pair of snippers around with him, just in case) a cable lock is no deterrent.

Yes, a 'professional' thief is likely to take it if he really wants it, but that' s because he has sussed out your security beforehand and is prepared. All you can do is make it more difficult, I guess.

A friend of mine once told me about the time he rode back to Bude from Plymouth. Close to Bude, in the country lanes, he needed a pee so stopped his PX, nipped the other side of the hedge and relieved himself. When he came back, he saw a van parked in front of his scoot with the back doors open and two blokes either side of his scoot. He yelled Oi, and they looked up, hesitated, and one patted the saddle and said, "Nice scooter, mate. Mind it don't get nicked". They got in the van and drove off. He was bit shocked to do much about it. This was in the middle of nowhere.

While we are on this topic? Can anyone recommend a decent 'in shed' alarm?

I guess we will all have to resort to engraving our name or reg no on and inside the costly but easily shiftable parts:
Crankshaft, piston, cylinder, flywheel, stator, crankcase cover, exhaust, Carb, manifolds, headset top and bottoms. All the bits that come up for sale.

A large part of scooter security is not making it obvious. If you've got them locked up somewhere keep it low key. And certainly don't advertise the fact by leaving it on your front drive. You might as well stick a sign on it saying nick me. I appreciate it's not always easy. But, if you can't do that maybe you should think twice about owning a vintage scooter.

I for one was always very guilty of that, attracting the attention of passers - by and engaging in conversations with everybody. Not now; chained up, hidden away and alarmed. Drives me bonkers getting things out of the freezer but that's what has to be done.

Chris in Margate wrote:I guess we will all have to resort to engraving our name or reg no on and inside the costly but easily shiftable parts:
Crankshaft, piston, cylinder, flywheel, stator, crankcase cover, exhaust, Carb, manifolds, headset top and bottoms. All the bits that come up for sale.

The trouble with doing all that is,it doesn't stop it from being nicked in the first place.