comment on the world(non-political)

[bigbob81]

Last week a friend competed in the Antique Motorcycle Cannonball Run (pre 1937). He was riding on a team
of 8 bikes, his being a 1919 Harley J model. Finished well with minimal problems. They ran from Daytona, Fla to
Tacoma, Wa. They finished on Sunday 9/21, loaded 4bikes onto their 16ft machine shop traier, complete with
tools, spare parts & engines. (those old ones take alot of maintenance!) Long story short, they went to dinner
& the whole rig was stolen.
It seems someone was & had been watching them.
It ended up 3 days later in Seattle. Social media to the rescue! The team put the info out on fb, etc.
It was sitting at the port waiting to be loaded onto a container to ship overseas. The truck, tools,
machinery & engines were gone, but they recovered the bikes & trailer.
Guys, I know this hits homes to alot of us. No one may be interested in our antiques except
us X heads, but people will steal anything. be careful & aware.
Good riding on clear roads everyone!
bigbob81

[EMS]

These thieves seem to be well organized. It is not the casual theft out of opportunity to finance a drug habit. These are well funded rings that deal across borders and oceans. The thing that concerns me is, that there are people who buy stolen vintage cars and bikes and are able to shell out big money for them. You wonder how much of the authorities they buy beforehand to make these transactions possible.
It reminds me of a discussion we had here, where Ian Foster was telling us that he cannot export a bike without a proper title....So, how do the crooks do it?

[bigbob81]

Yeah. i could melt an iceberg when I think of those shelling out the big bucks, and being pc, I won't
give my opinion of them, but we work all of our lives to have something nice and some puke just
takes it because they can. I could go all Jessie Ventura (Predator) on 'em.
bibgbob81

[RJ CB650]

It is like you said. Somebody on the take. Any exported container is supposed to be fully documented, sealed and inspected. Forgery of papers is probably a good one. the big thing is laziness by inspectors as well. They ship out 10,000 boxes of soap or something simple, but the boxes are hollow covers packed so tight that they don't inspect really. Think about it. If there is a large skid wrapped and loaded with boxes, nobody is gonna inspect.

[Ringnalda]

The whole lot was probably waiting to be broken down to smaller pieces. You can export 'motorcycle parts' without any problems... Even if the parts contain frames with numbers.

And in some countries it is not to difficult to register a "self-build"...

Jan

[solarmoose]

Wow, good to hear they got the bikes, bad that the rest was not recovered, yet.
Here's hoping the rest of the stolen stuff will be found.

I've trailer-ed (enclosed trailer) old bikes a couple times. Never occurred to me that someone would steal
the whole rig. Maybe a hidden ignition kill switch on the tow vehicle would slow 'em down... Will think about
this before the next time.

[RJ CB650]

Wow, good to hear they got the bikes, bad that the rest was not recovered, yet.
Here's hoping the rest of the stolen stuff will be found.

I've trailer-ed (enclosed trailer) old bikes a couple times. Never occurred to me that someone would steal
the whole rig. Maybe a hidden ignition kill switch on the tow vehicle would slow 'em down... Will think about
this before the next time.

Actually, hitched and enclosed trailers are often targeted. Thieves will go to events to find cars that they can get a good bit of coin for. Happened here to a guy several years ago. Had, in a secure compound, his trailer hooked up to his truck with security on it, etc. Truck and trailer disappeared during night and never found. In the trailer, an authentic Lotus Super 7