Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft....

[The Ken]

Luckily less of an issue with me, I can keep my bike in the office and it always sleeps in the house. I'd hate to be in the postion of making my bike look rougher just to "appease" the neds of this world.

Route to work is regular but convoluted as it involves a school run and route home is one of 3 at non regular times. Although to be honest I hadn't thought of that up until reading this, it's just how it is.

 

[LeeDevelopment]

9 times out of 10 the bikes are stolen for drug money..... meh!

 

[reanimation]

Interesting stuff, for 3.5 years I've been commuting on a matt black Revolution Courier Race (retro Raliegh/bruiser of a BMX before that), enjoying the dings, paint scrapes, tiredness, grime and rusty steel eyelet bolts! I have a Kryptonite chain lock I got cheap from an auto jumble and its lasted! Ace. But riding your worst bike everyday and your good bikes not a lot at all really gets ya scratching your head! doesn't make a lot of sense but lost of us do similar.

I'm expecting a new commuter, I was chasing an orange coloured bike but poss a blessing in disguise that only the blue colour was available. I don't really wanna deface it or make it ugly as I like the way it looks but I do have concerns. I have adressed this slightly with the best lock I can afford (weight) and avoided buying more bike than i needed.

The fixie trend has turned all this on its head a bit cos they love the fluro colours and stand out features, and with all that svelte weight loss do they carry hefty D locks about?!

 

[djoptix]

If you're going to uglify a bike, I think sections of inner tube followed up with LX tape is the way to go - doesn't get glue on your frame that way. You'll probably need to seal the ends with LX straight on the frame to stop water getting in though, as you don't want to create a water trap; instant corrosion.

Get a good lock and always use it - even in your garage! Lock it to a solid object, or as solid as possible. If some chavscum get into your garage, they may think twice about taking a bike that's locked to the mower.

Very good point about disc brakes and posh wheels (even suspension forks) though. These are what Britain's peasant underclasses will be looking for...

 

[Andy R]

Very good point about disc brakes and posh wheels (even suspension forks) though. These are what Britain's peasant underclasses will be looking for...

I take exception to this - I'm a peasant, and I'm not really interested in suspension forks... :x

 

[The Ken]

That's because you haven't discovered how good a crackpipe a Rockshox Dual Air SID makes - upto 110psi of pressurised delivery.

 

[02gf74]

I did this to my Saracen KiliComp when I took it to Brazil.

Wrap black insulaiton table around the frame then take a stiff bush and dab black hammerite on the rims.

both of thee were reversible although the paint too a fair bit of elbow grease to remove.

 

[PurpleFrog]

Re:

I read an article once about bicycle couriers in the US disguising their bikes so they didn't get stolen. They used to wrap inner tubes etc around the tubes to make they look rough.

No one I knew thought that an inner tube wrapped over a glistening Stumpjumer frame would fool a bike thief into thinking it was anything but a decent bike. Even druggy thieves aren't complete idiots and will know what "Deore" means as opposed to "Exage".

Inner tube wraps were mostly favoured because messengers have to lock their bikes up 40 times a day, as quickly as possible - so you want to protect the paint.

There was also a feeling a bike marked as a messengers was less likely to be stolen - because a crook knew that within 5 minutes of taking it, an entire company's worth of messengers would be looking for it.

Tape around the frame won't deter a thief much either. What will, somewhat, is covering a frame with hundreds of crappy individual stickers. They're horribly time consuming to remove and make the frame recognizeable as well as less attractive, limiting it's resale value. So a thief *might* decide to take another 5 minutes to look for another bike - unless the frame has desirable components on, in which case it's worth taking even if he throws the frame away.

The only way to prevent this (other than the obvious one of only having cheap components) is deface stuff with a dremel, epoxy, and/or paint. Which obviously kills the resale value!

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

Just slap a Boardman badge on it. Would have me moving on elsewhere to pay for my next score!

 

[The History Man]

Re: Disguising good bikes as rubbish bikes to prevent theft.

I just buy crap bikes for a steal!