I plan on riding bike for often and while I have invest and will continue to invest in the typical security measures (D lock, wheel lock, etc.). However, in the extreme case that it should get stolen I want a way to track it down. I was thinking about getting a Tile tracking and place it within the frame of my bike but there’s a better way please suggest it. Thanks in advance!
Register your bike, with the police and a registry like 529 Garage.
The fact is, police recover hundreds of thousands of stolen bikes, but can’t return them to the rightful owner because it hasn’t been registered.
FWIW, I use two locks, and a hidden motion alarm when I park my bike. I only have a tracker on the keys for the locks/alarm, but will likely put a Tile somewhere on the bike this year.
Also, keep in mind that thieves are scumbags and will steal anything off your bike: lights, saddle, pedals, accessory mounts, etc.
Do your best. Unfortunately, a motivated thieving scumbag will still try, and if they can’t steal your bike, they’ll try to damage it.
Honestly, I don’t want to track my bike down. A thief who is sophisticated enough to get past my lock is probably sophisticated enough to look for a tracking device, so if I find it, it’s probably already parted out or tossed in a ditch somewhere. I’m not going to personally track my bike down (seems dangerous), and the police are unlikely to make it a priority. And if I felt the tracking device would help, I’d probably let my guard down because I have a backup plan.
Instead, I make my bike unappealing to steal. I use a high quality lock, avoid parking where thieves are likely looking, and cover up anything that could indicate any sort of value.
I do the same. I’d add; make it a little more difficult/ time consuming to take than the next one. I use a chain lock and a u-lock for different bits of the frame. Hopefully a potential thief doesn’t want to spend twice as long on my bike and leaves it alone.
My area has low crime, so a ulock is an order of magnitude better than the micro-cable locks most people use. I also lock my bike to cart returns at stores if the bike rack is insecure.
So yeah, just be a little more secure than the bike next to you and you’re probably good. Thieves are lazy.
As others said, Tile or AirTags would probably be your best choice. AirTags have a better chance of being located (due to the large amount of iPhone users) but you’ll need an iPhone yourself. Tile should work too if you are in a more densely populated area. I have an AirTag on mine, but it hasn’t been stolen so I don’t know how useful they really are. But there are tons of ways to hide them on your bike. Just look for “AirTag bike mount hidden”. Under your bell, under the saddle, behind a reflector or even in the fork. If you want to go maximum security, disable the speakers (you’ll need to cut the AirTag open for this) and use 2 AirTags in different locations. The thieve might eventually be notified that an AirTag is moving with them, but you can hope that you’ll find your bike before the thieve found both of your trackers. Good luck with securing your bike!
Radio-signal doesn’t go through metal, so sticking such a thing inside a metal bell blocks the signal, except where no metal is.
ie, if the top half of the bell is metal, and the lower is plastic, the signal can only get out through the lower-half.
Test the product, to discover how it actually performs, please.
There are many bogus products in our world.
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I use an Apple Airtag mounted in a bicycle bell housing. You can buy those on Amazon, they’re quite cheap. The Airtag bell looks just like my regular bell. So, I just put it on the opposite side of my handlebars. Means I’ve got two bells, but that’s not uncommon on mountainbikes anyway.
You can track the bike using your iPhone and the Find My… network.
There’s some caveats to it, obviously. You need to have an iPhone for one, and the tracking works best if you’re in an urban area with lots of other iPhone users nearby. It’s not an actual GPS tracker, but rather gets pinged by bluetooth from nearby phones which report the location. Another caveat: they start to chime after x amount of hours away from your phone, as an anti-stalking measure. But you can just disable the speaker on them if you want to.
The overall benefit is that they’re quite cheap and require no additional data plans or sim cards.
