Anti-theft options

Slim jim is spot on . 
The saying goes 

Locks keep honest people honest. 
Only options he left off were  park bike on a puddle of water and have very high voltage energize if the alarm goes off. 
And my personal favorite is a  remote detonated  claymore  under the seat  
Best wishes   
Dave

Good to hear you’ve got it back. Personally I have had a few things stolen and never seen again. 

Theres always this option.

 

I guess it's a sad fact that too many members will be aware of, that wherever you are in the world there are gutter scum that will happily steal your dreams because they are too lazy to work for the things we cherish. I am sure everybody has numerous stories on this topic, but the bottom line is you can only make it as hard as possible for them, nothing is guaranteed to be 100% effective (not even a 9mm and a big dog !)
One example I have of the determination these scum have was back in 2003. I used to do some part-time spannering for a guy called Craig Jones that was an "extreme rider" sponsored by HD Europe ( he was the 2002 European stunt champion and world stopie record holder) Craig is a good friend and it was a blast doing events all over Europe. We had done a pre-race show at Donnington Park in the UK On the Sunday morning before the BKSB races then jumped in the van and headed to Morzine in the French Alps. Being 2003 it was HD's 100th anniversary year so we were doing events all over the place (Hamburg in Germany was another) As Morzine is a ski resort the whole town was closed down as it was spring and the season was over. HD europe had booked the place out as a stop over for guys heading down to the anniversary event in Udine in Northern Italy, we had been asked to do a show in the Main Street of the town as the place was closed down. With this being the second show of the day with a Drive from the UK to France in between we decided not to pack everything back in the truck (the place was closed down after all, it was 11 miles from the nearest Main road and there were only HD enthusiasts there !!!!!!) so we parked the three bikes, one FXDX and two Buell XB1200's around a lamp post next to the truck and put a heavy square section chain through all the front wheels and round the lamp post then had a couple of beers and went to bed shattered.
The next morning as we walked down from the hotel the owner of the bar we were in the night before came running up to us waving his arms, when we turned the corner all three bikes were gone and the chain was lying on the floor.
Turns out the bar owner heard something when he was locking up and saw the FXDX being loaded into a van. He gave chase down the mountain road in his car but they were prepared and used a stolen car to run blocker on the road so the van could get away. Fortunately while Craig was on the phone to HD explaining how he had lost their bikes ( the FXDX was brand new with £5k worth of screaming eagle 110 inch stroker kit and heads) a local came and told us they had found the two Buell's behind a shop in the town. Our guess was they had been stashed and if they hadn't been chased off they would have come back for them during the night.
the key point of this rant is the way the chain was disabled, it wasn't cut, ground or sawn through. One of the square section links had been snapped like a biscuit ( you could see the graining of the hardened steel on the broken end)
The French police told us that the latest craze at the time was to use "pipe freeze" similar to liquid nitrogen it was available at any plumbers merchant to enable a plumber to freeze pipes and carry out repairs on a "live" water system without having to drain it down. Apparently they pour it on the chain, wait a few minutes then smack it with a big hammer and shatter the link. The recommendation was to use plastic coated chains as this method won't work without the fluid contacting the metal (at the end of the day they can cut the plastic off but as others have said, it's about making it difficult, most thieving scum are lazy)
 

Has anyone tried an immobiliser? The appeal of an electronic immobiliser is that it was stolen for hooning and it looks like the ignition was forced to start it, with an immobiliser that would need a lot more work.

I’ve also considered active tracking like a gps or tile, but it’s probably not as important, especially for the case when someone nicks it and dumps it before the morning.

It’s strange, I always assumed if it would be stolen, it would be stolen from town when I went in for work. It was always parked in the same spot for years, and many times overnight. I really didn’t expect it to disappear from my driveway, it’s not easily see from the road, and it’s a cul-de-sac so no through traffic either. Ideally I’ll keep it parked in the shed in time, but being bolted to the ground with a big chain and some extra sensor lights might be enough for now. 

I’ll just feel pretty stupid if after getting it back it gets stolen again. The thief was never caught, knows it was dumped in working order, and can expect it to return to the same spot. Maybe I will look into an alarm of some sort.

I am planning to replace the ignition switch on mine with a remote control relay. The ign switch will only control the parking light and the steering lock. There won’t be any ignition wires to short out at the front of the bike

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I’ll just feel pretty stupid if after getting it back it gets stolen again. The thief was never caught, knows it was dumped in working order, and can expect it to return to the same spot. Maybe I will look into an alarm of some sort.
 

If you have to park outside at home, you could set up some motion-detector-activated lights or add motion sensors to existing light fixtures. Light can be a decent deterrent.

There are also motion-activated still and motion cameras sold as "trail cams" or "game cams". (They're meant to be set up outdoors to take pictures of animals at night.) They're battery-operated and take standard SD memory cards.
 

I have motion sensing lights, but I've installed another right where the bike is. The existing one won't reliably turn of from that far away (and if I set it so that it does, any breeze will blow the trees enough to light it up all through the night).

Ideally I will get it back in the shed, I'm in the process of taking down two smaller sheds and installing a larger one, the bike is outside until that's done. I've already prepared a schlage security chain and lock to bolt the bike down (bolted down with drilled-out hex bolts) and the extra motion light.

A remote control relay for the ignition switch sounds like an interesting idea. With mine they just forced the ignition barrel which renders the steering lock redundant anyway. There are some RFID relay systems which could work well for that - forcing the ignition barrel will disable the steering lock, but electrical work would be needed to get it running.

I'm also considering the idea of an alarm that activates when the bike is taken off its centre stand, which is how it's usually parked.

I use the Kryptonite New York Faggettaboudit chain lock along with GPS tracking devices.  The GPS trackers have a geofence, so if the bike breaks that area your phone is alerted.  Make sure to use a battery tender with the gps units.

Another option is to form a large cement block in the ground with a hoop of rebar buried in it.  Park your bike on top of the block and secure it with a large chain underneath.  Hard to get at.

If you go the trail cam route they make them to be used with wireless internet  so you will get alerts to your cell phone instantly  
I use them for trespassers  on hunting land and to pattern deer and turkey movements 
Dave

I went to bring in a customers old school metal trash cans , only to get the bejeezus shocked out of me. He hooked a 110 power to it with a pick clamp and had it wired to a switch inside his porch. barely saw that wire coming out of the ground. 
He said the raccoons were bad in that neighborhood, too bad you couldn't "electrify" your ride to stop the human night prowlers.

And always remember not to pee on a electric fence / wire  around a livestock pen ..

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And always remember not to pee on a electric fence / wire  around a livestock pen ..

I was going through a 5 strand wire fence with a friend a long time back, the top 2nd wire was hot and the 2nd from bottom was hot, I got through without getting zapped, my friend wasn't so lucky, he managed to get half way through and touched his shoulder on the top hot wire, the bottom wire threw a spark that hit him in the balls, I've never seen anyone get through a fence so fast in all my life, followed by a weird horizontal dance with both hands holding the family jewels...!! 

Back to the alarm. If you are going to fit a sensor light near the bike, try and wire a horn, maybe with an flasher unit to make it pulse, light and noise is a better deterrent....