Bike Security Hacks

Depending on your bike and where you live, you can get pretty decent discounts if your bike is kept in a garage and locked securely to a Thatcham Category 3 or Sold Secure 'Gold' rated ground anchor - and in some cases this may be a mandatory requirement from your insurance company to even get a policy.

Of course, we'd all love to keep our bikes in Fort Knox style security

Brick built garage, with security doors, cameras, alarms, locks, and a couple of sweet Dobermans keeping watch. Do your worst, bad guys!!

Sadly, we don't all have the space or the cash to go down that route. But there are plenty of simple, cheap, even free security tips that can help prevent bike theft, even if they don't get you an insurance discount, they'll help to prevent you being an easy target.

Here's a few of our favourite ways to defeat the crims...

Gravel

• Thinking about getting a new block-paved drive? There might be a better option. Thieves hate long, wide expanses of gravel, because it's impossible to walk over it without making a noise. If there's thirty feet of sharp pea gravel to traverse, they'll look elsewhere.

Landscape gardening

• Thieves are human too (just). So they'll balk at having to crawl through nettles, thorn bushes and solid hedges, just as much as you would. Prevent sneaky access round the back of your garden or garage by growing proper wild patches of thick, jaggy stuff.

Lights

• Obvious, and not a panacea by any means, but most crims work at night, and they'd prefer not to be bathed in a million-candlepower spotlight while they work. £20 at B&Q gets the most basic IR-activated spotlight, and if you run an LED or CFL bulb, they don’t cost much to run.

Tape the Horn

• Sneaky one this. A bit of black insulating tape over the horn button, holding it on, means a scary blast as soon as Jimmy Lightfingers screwdrivers your ignition. It'll give him a start, and a warning to you. Also good for pranking your mates at coffee stops on Sunday blasts…

Cover

• Another obvious one, but if your bike is parked in view, keep it covered. It'll deter casual thieves, and stops the baddies scoping it out.

Dummy Key

• More and more crims will break into a house nowadays in order to try and find car and bike keys. Obviously, don't leave them near the front door – cunning baddies with long wire hooks, even fishing rods, have snaffled keys from hall tables and the like. If you're feeling extra-twisted, you could get a random old key that's the same brand as your bike, but doesn't fit it, and leave it semi-casually around. So if anyone does grab it, they'll stop hunting for the real key, and be in for a frustrating few minutes as they try to start your bike/car with the wrong key…

Sacrifice the Shitter?

• If you have two bikes, leave the most-crappy one near the front of the garage, with fewer locks than the good 'un, covered up at the back. Joyriders or kids will take the first bike they see and scarper, so you sacrifice your old shitter to save the dream wheels.

Tactics

• Daily security is key. Never – ever – leave the bike parked outside your house or garage. If no-one knows it's behind that up 'n over door, no-one will try to nick it. Ditto ostentatious jet-washing on a Sunday morning. Finally, particularly in big towns, watch for being followed home by dodgy types on scooters. Fancy exotic bikes are often nicked to order, and riders have been followed home before.

Parking the car

• Get creative. Make sure your car is parked in such a way that it will have to be moved if anyone wants to lift your bike away. Then they have to 'steal' the car first, doubling the workload (although this may also double the cost)…

How can BeMoto protect your bike?

Not only do we offer tailored cover for standard and modified road legal bikes, we also have a range of off-road and laid-up insurance products, whether you have an old favourite gathering dust in the garage, an off-road scrambler or a race-spec S1000RR for the track.

Call us on 01733 907000 to speak to a bike insurance specialist who understands what your bike means to you

Why not also check out our recent review of the Guardsman garage door barrier, it's not cheap but it's pretty useful.