Recovered my stolen 2002 VFR800 with pics - check out how easy it is to hotwire these bikes

Parting it out or selling it for cheap. Any interest?

 

My bike was stolen 3 weeks ago and recovered a week later. I can't believe the f****** mess they made of it

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk

 

Sorry to hear of your bad luck, but something is confusing me here. How do the thieves bypass the chipped key situation? I've heard horror stories of people losing their keys and it costing a fortune to get the bike to run again.

 

They are not all chipped. My 2006 is not chipped. I am the original owner.

 

My apologies, I assumed from the 5th gen on they had chipped keys.

 

I am not sure why some are and some ore not. I think it depends on where it was sold new. This might have something to do with a particular country's regulations. It seems to me that most European countries have the chip while we over here in North America did not get it until later years if we even did at all.

 

You are right Randy - the EU introduced rules which required manufacturers to fit enhanced security to make it far more difficult to hot-wire larger capacity motorbikes.

Honda's answer "HISS", proved pretty effective as without a matched key individually coded to match the PGMFI ECU, the bike would never start. As some owners found out to their cost, Honda did not provide any back-door to the HISS system, so if the owner ever lost both keys it was more than £1,000 to replace ECU and locks and keys to get the bike running again. If you only have one HISS key it is a good idea to get a second programmed by a Honda dealer and possibly have the missing key to be coded out in case a former owner still has it in their possession.

On models with HISS, thieves rarely bother with 6th Gen VFRs in Europe as they also have a visual led clue flashing on the dash - which helps persuade even total dimwits to realise the system has an anti theft system fitted. Soon afterwards many dealerships in Europe also offered to permanently etch the VIN or registration number onto all the major parts making them very traceable if a bike was ever stolen to be dismantled and sold as spare parts.

Sadly the North American market did not have similar rules in force when the 6th Gen was launched and their bikes remain more at risk.

I think it was not until 7th Gen onwards VFRs, HISS became a worldwide feature.

 

Interesting skimad, so it seems it was to stop thieves/joyriders killing themselves as much as a security issue. The one horror story I heard involved a 5th Gen, and it would have cost the owner almost as much as he paid for the bike to replace the key ect. He apparently found someone who literally cut open the CDI/ECU and removed/replaced the offending electrical bits. That was the story, don't know how true it was.