has anybody ever recovered a stolen bike..

had a pit bike and a tricked out mtn. bike stolen from my garage and had my suspicions who did the stealing. took me two weeks and assault and battery on the thief's gay hair dresser roommate to find out where they were. when the police checked the crack house they found the pit bike, but no mtn bike. insurance covered the mtn bike so i was glad to recover the pit bike at least. i'm still waiting to see the thief on the street one day and bust his ass.

To fight against the theft of dirtbikes, I created www.volmx.com, at the beginning only for France. Now the site is usable in the same way in all countries. Try it !

How the fuck do they get away with charging the person who's bike was stolen an impound fee? Am I the only one who would tell them to get bent and get the news involved or something?

my neighbor rode all his life and a couple years ago he bought a 2006 yz 250, brand new! first ride on it he punctured his spleen or something like that and told this guy he was selling his bike. that night it was stolen out of his trailer, he always thought it was this guy but never knew where the guy lived or anything,, 3 years later he was driving his harley and saw a bike in the back of the truck that looked like his, he hurried home and got the vin numbers and called the police, drove back hopped up in the truck and sure enough it was his,, a bunch of guys came running out of the house and said "hey get out of the truck its not for sale" and he said "im not here to buy it, im here to get it back!" ,,, so after 3 years he got his bike back, and i ended up buying it off him!!!

I know of a couple containers full of dirtbikes that were "found" in dade city...

My buddy had his new 2000 yz 125 stolen in 2001 in seattle. Just last spring the cops called him telling him they found his bike in Wenachee (eastern washington), abandoned on the side of some road.
He got a couple good rides on it on some sand tracks before the top end went out.

Years ago, someone we know stole my daughter's LEM out of our garage. It had been modified for flattrack and they even tracked down the motocross tire sitting in a different area. Called the cops - gave them a value of about $3000 on the bike - it had a downpipe, a pvl digital ignition, frame lowered, etc. The cop didn't believe me. About every two months, someone from the local cop shop would call and ask me if I had found my bike yet.

Almost 8 months later, a friend called and told us he thought he knew where it was - that someone had it for sale for $300. I cringed to think of what it must look like by now but the ignition was worth more than that and my only hope was that they didn't know what they had. As suggested, I took a friend - figuring that if the guy wouldn't turn loose of the bike, one of us would stay and one would go and get the cops. Turned out the guy who had it was a local biker and he had traded some kid an ounce of weed for it - who wasn't keen on getting the cops involved. Claimed he didn't know it was stolen but he had removed the plastic and had it on one of those clothesline deals in the backyard - had already spray-painted some of the plastic blue. The front rim was bent (probably from some adult riding it and realizing too late it had some power) and OF COURSE THEY HAD RUN STRAIGHT GAS THROUGH IT.

The cops called me for another few months after that - even though I told them I had gotten the bike back.

Stealing a bike is bad enough, stealing a kid's bike is the worst!

I had mine stolen last Christmas. Called the cops and they treated me like I was the criminal. I spent a couple of months looking for it and finally found it on Craigslist. The ad was really generic and there were no pictures, but the description sounded like my bike (Pro Circuit linkage arm, FMF Megabomb and 4.1 system, Pro Circuit clamps, anodized wheel spacers, axle blocks, and engine plugs, revalved suspension, black Renthal Twinwalls, black 08 KX450f seat, rear black Excel, front silver rim all randomly in the same exact small high desert town it got stolen from) After a week of acting like I wanted to buy it, I finally got pictures and it was my bike, I even got e-mails from people asking me if it was mine (RacerXill posted it for me and it was posted all around MX forums) . My graphics and preprints were ripped off, front number plate gone, black/red bar pad from my Renthals taken off, stickers on all the aftermarket parts taken off, and all anodized parts were painted black) From his e-mail address, I got his full name, cell phone number, myspace, photobucket account, and his a ton of screen names he uses (I think he might have even been around here). He lied in a bunch of the e-mails and I had proof he was lying, I found pictures of the same exact parts taken off of my bike on his photobucket, and even figured out that he swapped the frame on my bike. Told the police all of this, tried to show them pictures (every single unique part that I had on my bike was on this bike, included painted motor mounts) but they werent interested in the pictures and acted like I was the asshole. They finally went to the guys house and ran the numbers on the frame (I told them in advance that the frame was swapped and the motor had the rod snap a couple months before so I got new cases/parts from Kawi but I never took the time to get the vin stamped into the cases), said "its not your bike" although they never bothered to look at all the pictures of my bike, and I havent heard from them since. The two guys selling it on craigslist are marines and have since relocated to another area so its a done deal. My fault completely for it getting stolen, but it bums me out a little bit that I took so much time and gave them all the evidence and information but the guys home address, and they didnt bother taking any time to try and figure it out. I understand that all they can go off of are the numbers on the frame and motor, but it didnt take a genius to figure out that the bike was stolen.

Back in like 1991 my buddy Jerry Jetton had his RM 125 stolen at perris raceway. ( I didn't think you could give a RM away back then). Anyway Goat Breker used to run the track back then and he found out some black kids took it I'm not a racist at all just sayin who took it. So about a week later Goat set up a meeting to buy the bike off of these kids and stole it back......true story......

A good friend of mine did. His bike got stolen out of his trailer at their house. The bike didn't have the air box or the rear finder on it. A guy comes in the shop to buy an air box and a rear finder for the same kind of bike "07 KTM 450." The guy that had it, bought it from the thief for $1500 and was more than happy to give it back.

I recovered my friends bike. It was stolen a year before and I walked into a workshop of a local garage and there it was in for work to get done on it. I ID because of the trick parts he had put on , they had tried to change the look of the bike but some of the parts were import parts and not available to buy off the shelf in the UK

a bunch of our bikes got stolen 2 summers ago. turned out the guys lived about 2 miles from me.finally after a month or two watching craigslist they poped up. they were really customized so they were easily identifyable even with the graphics removed.called the cops they show up and look at my pictures and say"those are definately your bikes" so a buddy goes to the guys house as a potential buyer. the people are crackheads. calls me up and says the bikes are trashed and you dont want it back so we call the cops and tell them where they are. i did all the leg work and the cops didnt have to do barely anything.it took them 9 days to get a warrant even with all my proof and we had idied the bikes. when they showed up they were gone but they found other stolen shit. problem was they told me they were working on it and stalled. i should have gone to the house and called the cops to tell them where i was going to force them to show up. what a fucking joke. the real question is. who screwed me the worst. the police, insurance company or the thieves.

I'm just wondering what you all did to prevent your bikes from being stolen? Just curious as to what the thieves had to do to get the bike.

I have an old baby monitor set up in my garage and the receiver in my bedroom. A mouse cant walk in there without me hearing!

My home owners insurance covers my bikes when they are on my property.

So does mine, but I'm not about to let a dirty thief steal my bikes.

We have ours in our trailer at our shop. We back it in so the gate faces the fence, and have locks that you can't cut off. I don't have a picture of it, but basically it's a solid flat circle with maybe an inch opening where the bar pokes through. When we have the bikes in the big truck (big U'Haul style box van) we back it up to the garage so there is only a foot or two between the truck and the garage. We've been luck enough to not have a bike stolen from us.

I feel like we've had one stolen from our shop though... they cut through the fence. Not fun when you sell Ducati's...

I recovered a friends bike while working at a dealership. My buddys week old 1980 something CR250 was stolen and about 4 years later it was traded in to the dealership I worked at and sold again the same day. As part of the sale the new owner wanted a new clutch put into it. I got the work order and as I finished doing the clutch I glanced at the rear hub and saw a grease fitting tapped into the floating brake arm. I knew my buddy had done this to his bike. Wrote down the vin number and called him.....sure enough it was his.....Funny thing was he had just made the last payment on the bike. .......If another tech had gotten the job no one would have known and lets just say the sales department was not very happy with me. It ended up being a dead trail to try and find out who stole it as it had been sold many times in the 4 years.