To stop a thief, think like a thief…
If someone wants to steal an unlocked or poorly locked bike for convenience, they'll take what's convenient, no matter how good or bad it is. If someone wants a bike for the expensive parts/components, they may cut through the frame to take the bike.
Between these extremes are nice bikes, locked securely (with at least one better-than-average lock, used properly). They're not convenient to steal, so they're safe from purely opportunistic theft, but being a nice bike, someone might break a lock to steal it.
Since I personally know several people who have had bikes stolen over the last few months, this has me thinking of two things:
- If my new bike wasn't already mostly built up, I'd consider taking the frame to an auto-body shop, and have them strip off the old paint, and re-paint it to look like rusted pipes. Any bike thief would see that with a decent lock on it, and turn away in disgust and/or laughter. My bike would be safe. Maybe it's worth the hassle to take it all apart and do this?
- Since the bike is mostly built I'm thinking about just spray-painting over the make and model that's printed on the frame. That should drop the resale value of "ABC model" of "XYZ brand" to "unknown" and/or "unverifiable", which should lower the resale value enough that it's not worth the effort of busting a good lock. My bike should be safe, I think.
What does everyone else think? Any bike thieves or recovering bike thieves who can comment?
I'll also have a sticker on the bike advising that it's in a register that police have access to. I'm not sure how well that (in addition to being securely locked up) will discourage theft… I'd like to think this would discourage theft, and encourage a thief to find another target. Anecdotally, it seems that these kinds of stickers may actually reduce the chances of a bike being stolen.