GS STOLEN - WARNING

Not good.

I've been guilty of parking up in Solihull town centre on a number of occasions without applying extra security when I'm just popping to the post office for 5 minutes. That bad habit needs to stop.

Obviously we only really hear about GS thefts on here but I wonder if the GS has become known to the scrotes as an easy target. I'm staggered that alarms, immobilisers, trackers and steering locks still provide little to no protection having clearly received no significant development in the last 20 odd years.

Daxaar said:

Not good.

I've been guilty of parking up in Solihull town centre on a number of occasions without applying extra security when I'm just popping to the post office for 5 minutes. That bad habit needs to stop.

Obviously we only really hear about GS thefts on here but I wonder if the GS has become known to the scrotes as an easy target. I'm staggered that alarms, immobilisers, trackers and steering locks still provide little to no protection having clearly received no significant development in the last 20 odd years.

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It does seem weird when you consider how good car security is now. Now that the GSes have hill hold would it even be more than a software update to have the brakes applied at the same time as the steering lock? I guess that might not be a good idea for long periods of time, but it’d nice to be able to do that when you nip to the shops.

Funnily enough I saw a 66 plate GSA triple black with full Alu luggage wrapped in black parked in the car park when I arrived at my local hospital this morning. Not so much as a disc lock - right in full view of the bus stop and assorted wannabe scrotes eyeing it up. There's no way I'd park up £18K worth of newish BMW with just the steering lock!

attempts theft Chelsea - stuffed steering lock

I parked in a bike park in Chelsea outside 2 restaurants, many shops, painters about etc and went to get a coffee 40m around the corner.

I saw 4 guys on 2 scooters head around the corner towards the bike park and in 20 seconds my alarm was sounding. I ran around the corner to see 4 thugs hooded with balaclavas and helmets around my bike, I yelled and sprinted at them, they ran to their scooters they left in the middle of the road and just took off before I could get a shot at one of them, my hamstring pulled about 3m from them (I'm 61) and I was left hobbling after them as they took off. They tried to snap the steering lock but it held and is damaged. I can still engage it but it won't undo so I found after a lot of fiddling I could pop the metal prong back into place with my finger.
Does anyone know how easy to is to find an replace the key unit??
Is there a way to replace the damaged part within the original steering lock unit?

All advice gratefully accepted

Thanks

I'm starting to get a bit concerned over all the reports of bikes being stolen by scooter gangs. My son even saw such a theft taking place outside the Coop near to where he lives in Birmingham - so it's not just London. The owner of the bike had just popped in, got to the checkouts and then saw it happening, but by the time he got outside they were away with his bike before he could do anything.

I'm wondering what you have to do to protect against this. I've now got two disk locks and a chain which it looks like I need to start using all the time, rather than just on overnight stops when touring. I fit one disk lock to the front wheel and use the other to lock a 1m chain between my centre stand and crash bars. The idea of that is to make it impossible to take the bike off its centre stand and roll it away. Of course an angle grinder would make short work of the crash bar and/or centre stand, but hopefully it would put them off, though it doesn't stop it just being lifted into a van. I've also fitted an alarm so that I would get some warning if nearby, though it sounds like that doesn't necessarily put them off either. It is a bit of a pain having to carry all this stuff around, though I have found a way of stashing the chain and one of the disk locks behind the pillion seat, which might be useful to others, though I think this needs the seat in its forward position which is where I have mine.

Was chatting to the owner of a local Yamaha dealers yesterday and apparently the scrotes are visiting local motorbike events (Polesworth being a classic example) and sticking the small gps devices on a bike they fancy and are then able to track it down to where it's kept - not good at all.

He was also telling me that one of his local customers has had his MT07 pinched recently and it's been seen riding around in the company of a van and scooter up to no good. Police not interested and won't chase them as under orders not too.

Carlosfandango said:

I've bought an additional lock and chain for mine, trouble is they weigh a ton, thrashing and bouncing about in my top box, so I have a chain, disc lock and Abus D lock, plus when in the garage a ground anchor and its bolted to my other bikes, I am being paranoid?

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Nope. You're being careful and realistic.

Daxaar said:

Not good.

I've been guilty of parking up in Solihull town centre on a number of occasions without applying extra security when I'm just popping to the post office for 5 minutes. That bad habit needs to stop.

Obviously we only really hear about GS thefts on here but I wonder if the GS has become known to the scrotes as an easy target. I'm staggered that alarms, immobilisers, trackers and steering locks still provide little to no protection having clearly received no significant development in the last 20 odd years.

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Really? Respectfully, you're easily staggered.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/immobilize

"to stop something or someone from moving"

If it can be moved (into a van, for example), it's not immobilised.

Bike theft is as old as getting wet on a bike. Wanna stay dry? Buy & use waterproof gear. Wanna keep your bike? Buy & use effective security devices and measures. Suck it up.

fred_jb said:

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Fred, I'm afraid with that chain you may as well just use tie wraps.

The scooter scrotes often carry bolt croppers that will eat through that chain in seconds especially that close to the floor.

If you want to make life hard and slow them down then your looking about a 16mm dia link minimum almax or pragmasis jobs.

This forces a couple of minutes with a portable angle grinder atleast.

blueranger said:

Fred, I'm afraid with that chain you may as well just use tie wraps.

The scooter scrotes often carry bolt croppers that will eat through that chain in seconds especially that close to the floor.

If you want to make life hard and slow them down then your looking about a 16mm dia link minimum almax or pragmasis jobs.

This forces a couple of minutes with a portable angle grinder atleast.

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I'm sure you're right, but I don't park or ride my bike in UK urban areas, and it lives in my garage with a car parked in front of the door. I normally only feel the need to use this when parked overnight in hotel car parks while touring abroad. Maybe I will upgrade the chain to 16mm at some point, but this, together with the disk lock and the extremely loud alarm, which flashes concealed blue lights instead of the indicators, is really meant to put people off and get them to choose an easier target. The main point of the post was to show how the chain and lock is stashed on the bike without taking up luggage space.

Fred