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I am thinking of purchasing one for the trailer as where it's parked leaves it a bit vulnerable. I have heard reports that they are pretty much no deterrent to the accomplished oik. Has anyone got any positive real world leads to share? Thanks.
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Take the wheels off and lock them away somewhere and use a heavy duty chain and lock to secure the trailer to something solid. The bad guys will look for something easier to steal.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Tue 17 May 16 at 11:19
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If you don't use the trailer much, how about a pair of these?
www.thecaravanstore.com/winter-wheels-maypole-mp905/#.VzsEDr7PpOw
Has the additional benefit that you can store the wheels and tyres in the dark (if you have somewhere suitable), so extending their life.
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MD = Builder. I don't have time to fann about putting wheels back on or indeed any other fancy stuff. Just want a good lock that will be hard to compromise.
I am fully aware that if the Hatton Garden lot came for it then likely it would be gone, but I want some protection and also to make it more time consuming in the event of thieving Pete having a go.
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 18 May 16 at 01:51
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We have one of these for the caravan:
www.towsure.com/milenco-compact-plus-bailey-wheelclamp
But I don't suppose a builder's trailer has alloys. Plenty other choices at same place though.
www.towsure.com/security/caravan-wheel-clamps
We also have a hitchlock.
Neither would have stopped the n'er do well who got in the compound last week and nicked 20+ sets of rear lights. Mine was untouched as they were after complete fittings, not just the coloured plastic discs over the bulbs on my Elddis.
Plenty £££ a set for those affected.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 17 May 16 at 14:40
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Having had a trailer stolen, I can agree that a clamp and the sort that lock onto the wheelnuts are no deterrent. No one saw it being taken, but I believe the vehicle used to take it must have been a recovery truck as the power tools carried by one would remove the claps/locks in less than a minute.
In addition to visible locking stuff, the replacement trailer was chained to a serious ground anchor I made. Wouldn't stop a truck, but if a car was used, good chance of really serious damage to the tow vehicle occurring as the chain and attachments were hidden and of a serious size. Just a bit of slack - then bang! I'd feel no guilt if I came home to a blocked road and the police in attendance...
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My sister had the 'men in white Transits' try to steal her horse trailer a month or so back.
They didn't succeed because of a heavy duty lock over the tow bar bit, which had damage on it, whereby some sort of hydraulic type thing was probably used to try to rip it off. It had damage to it, but prevented the theft and was still usable.
Local Old Bill advised they'd be back with a bigger device... so she parked it at my place for a week and hid it down the bottom, out of sight of the road.
She's now going to have a retractable pole fitted in concrete at the entrance to her yard.
The thieves were thorough, they removed a CCTV camera from the wall first and left it dangling by the wires, facing the wall. Re-playing it, showed a man in a big coat with a parka type hood done up to look like an Arctic visit.
A while later, we found out a good haul of stuff from other local people (Land Rover and quad bikes, etc) was recovered from a caravan site in N. Devon, .................they are dodgy up there...;-)
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>>I am thinking of purchasing one for the trailer as where it's parked leaves it a bit vulnerable.
A lock on the wheel will stop the passing chancer. It means that someone going past with a tow hitch won't be able to take your trailer on a whim.
However, anybody who *really* wants your trailer will stop, study it, work out exactly what he needs and come back on another night. Sometimes they will defeat the security arrangements one night, and then come back a week later for the trailer.
So I guess it depends what you're concerned about; if its the chancer, then a clamp would seem to b e a very good idea. If it is a determined thief, then you're pretty much screwed.
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Of course there's always the battery angle grinder with one of those 1mm thick blades fitted that will cut through most things. I knew that there was little hope of finding a decent solution, but then if one doesn't ask etc..
Ground anchors are fine if you've concreted them in yourself with a wider bottom than the top to provide as much resistance as possible to a forced removal. Then the chain needs to be super hardened to attempt to prevent the 1mm attack above.
I may have posted yonks ago about a chap that 'lost' a horsebox to thieves, but located it by hiring a light aircraft. He located it in a Gypsy encampment, BUT Plod would not go. We all know why, but why the hell should we pay our tax, pay the system, provide the proof of the location to said Plod and then be told they won't attend?
Try not paying yer income tax and see how long yer get away with it. Grrrr...
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 18 May 16 at 01:52
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Appleby Horse Fair soon. My two friends in the local force tell me that their progress to the 'venue' can easily be followed.
Grrrr isn't the half of it
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Might be a chance to buy a cheap car mind. Warm one like...
;-)
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...One horsepower?.......
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Joking apart, it's not a fun time of year if you live on the route
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>> Joking apart, it's not a fun time of year if you live on the route
>>
Or anywhere else for that matter if they come a-calling. Basically nothing and nobody is sacred, they can and will nick anything that's not screwed down; and if somebody in your village or town regularly doesn't get bothered you can bet your bottom dollar he's either a copper, a relative of a traveller or has dealings with travellers himself.
The term "organised crime" usually conjures up images of sharp-suited Mafiosi. Since the advent of the mobile phone, it can just as easily be attributed to gangs of travellers. As mentioned above the plod are scared stiff of them, they have a well-oiled PR machine in the name of the Gypsy Council who will crank up the lefty liberals every time a Chief Constable tries to take them on; an estimated 20% of male prisoners in the UK is of "no fixed abode" and very few of the latter are vagrants, work it out for yourself.
The old jokes used to be about them turning up to tarmac your drive. Nowadays that doesn't happen very much at all, it's too labour-intensive and traceable. Ditto landscape gardening.
I could post a lot more, and will later; but before the usual suspects accuse me of racism, Nazism and every other ism under the sun, I speak from experience. Remember those workmen recently featured in the press, the "slave labourers"? Well back in the late 1980's I spent about 6 months as one of them, and that's how I know all this. I managed to get back to normal life, others are not so lucky.
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Now I am about to say something on this subject, but don't start giving me the lefty liberal nonsense, I'm perfectly well aware of the behaviours and habits of the travelling fraternity, every summer they pitch up around our town wherever they can park their vans, cause havoc and leave unbelievable debris to be tidied up. An eye must be kept at all times, they are often not to be trusted.
But. Point of order. How can you say on the one hand that the police are scared stiff of them, and imply that they never touch them, and in the same breath imply that 20% of the male prison population are travellers? Something doesn't add up there. How did this staggering number get to prison without the police wading in?
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Our friends, who live in a tiny village just south of Appleby woke up one day to find all four doors, bonnet and all the seats missing from their Land Rover crew cab pickup.
It was parked in their field next to the house and yes, it was horse fair time.
No street lights there so it was probably noted during the light and returned to later.
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The police tend to avoid the camps as has been noted by others. However since most of the crimes affecting those outside the travelling community are committed outside of said camps it follows that the police will catch a fair few either in the act or going to and from the scenes of their crimes.
Perhaps the answer is to confine them to the camps but of course that would infringe their yooman rights as travellers. This last comment not intended as a dig at you Bromp but it really does grind my gears when travellers who spend their lives trying to live outside of the law invoke it when it suits them to.
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I recall a few years ago the Big Fat Gypsy Wedding shows.
Very much a 'Ooooh, we like the travellers community and they are so misunderstood' bunch of toss.
Maybe if some regime decided that the 'traveller/romany' folk were a menace to society, and detained them in camps... Oh, wait....
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I and a couple of others had to collect 60 straw bales (the old kind) from a village show last year, a job that couldn't be deferred. The trailer we were to borrow was locked up with a padlock and chain, for which we had the key but the lock was jammed.
I borrowed a bolt cropper and within 10 minutes it was free. 9 minutes and 58 seconds of that was fetching the cropper.
Wheel clamps can be attacked with an angle grinder, but it does make more noise.
Hitch locks aren't great. They don't need to be removed to steal the trailer. A rope or chain around around the drawbar and the towing bracket and it can still be towed away, and the hitchlock cut off at leisure.
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Wheel locks/clamps - Old Navy
