Lockt ad: Seventeen years ago I swore I'd never fit one again 👆🏼

What have you done to your bike today? A few weeks back I turned round at the post office counter and a lad was sat on mine, bouncing it off its side stand. His pal stood in the doorway watching me pay. This morning I fitted the one thing I swore in 2009 I'd never put on a motorbike again. Nothing went missing, and there isn't a mark on the bike. What I keep coming back to is how long he had it. I'm Roland. I mend watches and clocks in Leek. The workshop is at the back of a yard, a minute from the market place. Most of the day I've a loupe screwed in my eye and brass tweezers in my waistcoat. I can tell a clock's out of beat from the doorway. I listen to my engine the same way. The bike is a red 2004 Ducati ST4s. I bought it in 2006 from a man in Congleton who'd gone over to four wheels. I've done every belt change on it myself. At sixty-four, I still can't ride the A53 under the Roaches without grinning. I've never been careless with it. The travel chain hangs on a hook by our back door. I put it on for anything longer than a coffee. At night the bike sleeps in the garage on a heavier one, round an anchor in the floor. The steering lock goes on at every stop, even for a paper. One Friday in October, at ten past eleven, I rode down to the Co-op. The post office counter is at the back. I had a mended watch to send to a customer in Kent, Special Delivery. The chain was on its hook at home. The steering lock was on, and the bike was on its side stand at the kerb. When I turned round with my receipt, a boy of about sixteen was sitting astride my Ducati. Feet down, hands on the bars, bouncing it off its stand like a kiddie ride outside a supermarket. His pal was leaning in the shop doorway. He wasn't watching the road. He was watching me count my change. By the time I got to the door, the pair of them were off up the street, laughing. I time things for a living. I'd looked at my watch as I parked, and the receipt has the time on it. Three minutes and fifty seconds. I went over that bike like a watch that's been dropped. Not a scratch on it, and the steering lock had held. Everything I'd fitted had done what it was meant to. It had also kept perfectly quiet, a few yards from a full queue. When I described it on a forum, a man told me what they'd been at. You sit on it, you rock it, and you see whether it tells anybody. Mine told nobody. So I did the one thing I'd sworn I never would. If you've ridden as long as I have, you'll see yourself in some of the reasons. If, like me, you once ripped a wired alarm off a bike and swore off the lot of them, start here. Mine was fitted in 2006, by a man who charged me £295. "It'll pay for itself on your premium, sir," he said. It never knocked a penny off. What it did do was flatten the battery three winters running. Then water got into a junction box under the seat and turned the connections green. In September 2009, Glenda and I rented a cottage at the top of Robin Hood's Bay. At two one morning, the alarm went off outside, and it would not stop. The fob did nothing at all. I went out in my socks with the side cutters from my tank bag. I cut the whole box out under the porch light, with half the street's curtains open. I stood on the doorstep with a fistful of wires and swore I'd never fit another. I kept that promise for seventeen years. This morning I put an alarm back on my bike. Not wired in. On the front disc. The other four reasons are other people's. Two I read on the forums. The other two I was told in Leek, because once you tell a story in Leek, Leek tells you its own. If, like me, you leave the chain at home for a quick stop, you'll know why mine was on its hook that Friday. The chain weighs more than the parcel did. A fellow on PistonHeads wrote, "I just popped away from my old GSXR 750 for a couple of minutes." He'd left the steering lock on, same as me. When he came back, there was a space. If, like me, you've always thought your garage was safe, here's one off a forum. A chap wrote about a friend of his. Thieves got his bike out of his own garage past his car, so tight they took the paint off the wing doing it. Think of the effort in that. A motorbike dragged out past a car, inside four walls, and nothing on it so much as squeaked. If, like me, you reckon you'd know straight away if your bike went, try this one. A young man came in last week for his grandad's pocket watch. His bike went from his mum and dad's garage while he was working overseas. They put croppers through the chain on the back wheel and pushed it out past the house. Nobody knew till the weekend, when his dad went to get the car out for the shopping. Whatever happened in that garage, none of it made a noise worth looking up for. If, like me, you think nobody would bother with a bike as old as yours, I thought that too. Mine is older than the boy who sat on it. The woman on the post office counter told me about her son's friend, that same Friday. A few fourteen-year-olds dragged his old 125 out of a back yard, and they're still riding it round the estate. A man on Bike Chat put it plainer than I could: "Any bike is a target to those scum." I spent two evenings reading, with the workshop shut and the clocks going round me. There's a thread on Bike Chat from 2009 by a man who'd had enough of his wired alarm. "In my rage I just cut the whole alarm box out," he wrote. Fifty-odd replies, and plenty of them had a horror story of their own. Then a much newer one on UKGSer, full of older riders praising a cheap little alarm. It gives a warning pip if you knock the bike, and a proper scream if you keep at it. One of them had it on his old R80, and wrote, "Saw the neighbours curtains twitching." Reading the two side by side, the penny dropped. In 2009 I'd thrown out the wrong half. I didn't hate the noise. I hated the wires. Every bike in those stories had to move to be taken, and not one of them complained when it did. So I wanted the noise without the wires. On the wheel, in a lock that holds the disc as well. I read the reviews of the cheap alarmed disc locks on Amazon first. They all look alike because they're all made in the same factory. Going by the one-star reviews, half of them don't even go off. Then I found one the makers sell themselves. This one has nothing to wire, because it lives on the disc. It has its own battery, charged by USB-C, and runs about six months on one charge. It never touches the bike's battery at all. It's fully waterproof, so there's no junction box to go green. Its smart sensor doesn't flinch at wind or rain off the moors. Like a good striking clock, it keeps quiet until it's meant to strike. And when it does strike, it's 110 dB. I ordered one on Tuesday night. £33.99, free delivery, and a reminder lanyard in the box that now loops round my bars. It arrived this morning. It was on the front disc in a few seconds, before I'd even opened the workshop. This afternoon I rode back to the Co-op and parked in the same spot at the kerb. I clicked it shut through the front disc, and it gave the one beep that means it's armed. I took the brass tweezers out of my waistcoat and flicked the disc, the way I'd test a balance wheel. It pipped at me twice. In my trade we'd call that the warning, the click a clock makes just before it strikes. After that, it sat quiet. Then I swung my leg over, the way the boy had, sat on it and bounced it off the side stand. It struck. The full alarm, all 110 dB of it, with me sat on top. The woman from the post office counter came out to the doorway with somebody's parcel still in her hands. The driver unloading the Co-op lorry stopped halfway down his tail-lift, holding a cage of milk. I turned the key and it stopped. I locked it again, one beep, and went in to post another watch. Same counter, same wait. I looked round once, to take a photo of my bike sat there with nobody on it. I haven't taken anything off. The chain still hangs by the back door for anything longer than a coffee. The bike still sleeps on its anchor, and the steering lock still goes on. All of that holds on. Now the front disc can shout as well. In fairness, there's plenty it won't do. If a van turns up with enough hands to lift a bike into the back, nothing on a disc will argue with them. And the street doesn't drop everything when it goes off. That isn't its job. Its job is to make sure nobody sits on my bike as long as that boy did without it saying so. It cost me £33.99. The wired one was more than eight times that. And nobody had to take the panels off to fit it. None of that is why I did it, though. What I wanted back was the bike I had before that Friday. One I could leave at a kerb without watching the door. The oatcake shop. The lay-by on the A53 with the Roaches in front of me. The post office, twice a week. I've got it back. If you're the sort who answers "what have you done to your bike today?" with a spanner in your hand, it's for you. An old Ducati, a Bandit, a Hornet, a scooter you nip to the shops on. Front or back, if the disc has a hole or a slot that takes a 7 mm pin, it'll fit. If there's daylight through your disc, measure the gap. It's the DiscGuard. A firm called Lockt makes it, and it's sold direct from their own site, never on Amazon. It's £33.99 for one. If there's another rider at home, two DiscGuards at 50% off are £56.99, and three come to £76.99. UK delivery and the reminder lanyard are both free, and you get ninety days to think it over. Nobody's paid me for this, not a penny, and I've no connection with the people who make it. I'd just sooner you heard it from a man with a Ducati than found out the way I did. That's what I did to my bike today. The link's below. https://trylockt.com/products/lockt-discguard