There is gonna be some big eating of dicks here.
How the fuck was how one turned one’s bike on a problem that needed solving?
How was the key-into-ignition-and-turn paradigm lacking?
Go on. Say “theft”, you cunt.
A fob, in that porridge you use for a brain, has made your bike harder to steal, right?
Maybe this briefly happened back when the fob was first introduced. And maybe thieves just went right on picking bikes up and heaving them into the back of utes.
We once used chains to secure our motorcycles. Big, fuck-off steel chains with big fuck-off-even-further padlocks. That system was meant to dissuade an opportunistic thief from an easy score. And it worked. The bike could still be picked up and heaved into the back of a truck, but if you had managed to chain it to a pole or another bike, then maybe not.
At one stage in Australia, back in the late 80s and early 90s, bike theft was booming. Especially with Harleys. Milwaukee’s finest were always priced at a premium, had expensive parts, and the Harley boom brought on by the onset of the Evolution engine was fertile ground for mass thievery.
A good mate of mine had his brand new Fat Boy stolen virtually under his nose. Keetsy was in Balmain getting a pie. He’d parked his bike in front of the pie shop, didn’t bother putting a padlock on it because he was just going to be in the shop for less than five minutes and the bike was just there. By the time he’d turned his back and ordered his pie, some bloke had jumped on the Fat Boy, jammed a screwdriver into the ignition barrel, fired it up, and was off down the street even as Keetsy ran out onto the pavement with his pie.
He came back to work. He told us what happened. We made some calls because we kinda had an idea who was behind the wave of thefts. A day later his bike was returned undamaged with a jovial apology.
Would a fob have prevented that theft? Sure.
Would a fob have prevented the theft of another mate’s three Harleys, chained to the floor in his garage with a car parked in front of them, and two Dobermans in the yard? Nope. The thieves got the bikes, wheeled them over the top of the car (leaving tyre marks), and probably had them parted out or rebirthed before he got home from work.
If someone really wants to steal your bike, they’re gonna steal it. Way it is.
But let us return to today’s exciting new world, where fobs are all the rage, and bastards can still knock your bike off, and your fob be damned.
First, let me explain what a fob is and what it does.
That fat lump of plastic with the manufacturer’s logo on it, that sits chunkily in your pocket, consists of four components.
There is a Low Frequency coil antenna, which sucks energy via your bike’s 125kHz signal, and reads the “Who the fuck are you? challenge the bike sends out. Then the UHF transmitter inside the fob sends back an encrypted rolling code signal telling the bike to relax because it’s all good.
There is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip inside the fob which stores the encrypted ID, processes the conversation between your bike and its fob, and generates the codes.
And because this shit is not actual sorcery, there is a battery to power the UHF transmitter and the chip. The Low Frequency coil does not need a battery to “wake up”.
Some fobs even have a passive RFID transponder which is like those older immobiliser chips they used to put into keys while they were waiting to inflict fobs on us.
This bullshit is what has replaced the terrible and worthless and fucked shove-the-key-into-the-slot-and-turn-it exercise. The only time that would ever fail was if you lost your key. But even if that happened a screwdriver or hot-wiring would get you home.
But if your fob eats a dick, you’re sleeping with your bike.
“Mines’s never failed! You don’t know what you’re talking about! Fobs are the best thing ever!”
You are either lying, or you’ve not owned your bike long enough.
A key, simply by its very nature, cannot eat a dick. Sure, ignition barrels have been known to fail. But usually only after decades of use, or when some cunt pumps it full of Superglue because you fucked his girlfriend.
Fobs eat bags of dicks all the time. Let me count the ways…
The number one with a bullet cause is the battery has beshat itself. The bike cannot get an answer to the question it has asked. And know the battery will die without any warning. It worked that morning when you rode to the pub for lunch. It won’t work after lunch. What do you do? You can enter your PIN manually. Oh, you don’t know the PIN? You forgot it? Sucks to be you.
Of course, that is not the only fob failure. It’s just the most common. And it can be solved, usually, with a new battery.
But how do you, on the side of the road, solve corrupted pairing and failed synchronisation? Yes, that’s right. By eating big bags of dicks. It’s all you can do, because the bike and the fob and the rolling codes they use to speak to each other, now sound like an electronic version of a Pentacostal congregation shrieking in tongues. You will need to repair and re-register the fob. Maybe you can do that while you’re waiting for an Uber.
Moving on, we come to the scenario where the fob is fine, but the security antenna in your bike has pissed its pants. Maybe you crimped it inadvertently the last time you were poking around where you had no business poking around. Maybe it just decided it no longer wished to perform, like a girlfriend you’ve given too much prosecco to in the hope of hot monkey sex. Have you pinched the antenna? Do you know what it looks like even? Or where it is? Have you washed your bike a billion times, you weird fuck, and the connectors are corroded? Do you know what a connector even looks like? Do you know someone with a ute? All these questions and more, will be asked as the moon comes up and you’ve missed your favourite TV show.
And we’re not done yet, baby. Anything that emits a strong radio frequency can block the fob’s wee UHF signal. Like another key fob. A phone tower. A security system. A metal structure of some kind. Happily, you can probably solve this by pushing your bike somewhere where there is no interference. And don’t swear. You will need all that air for pushing. Maybe ask your girl to give you a hand. Yes, she may have to leave the prosecco behind. And maybe her shoes if the heels are too high.
But what if your bike’s immobiliser suddenly, and apropos of nothing, decides to reject your fob like a red-headed stepchild? The bike wakes up, but the dash displays a security warning. It cranks over but won’t start. “Why the fuck is it doing this?!” you scream into the night. Well, maybe the transponder chip is damaged. Did you drop your fob in the toilet onto the tiles? Maybe the ECU is not getting the rolling code it wants, and it was expecting a different rolling code, and now you can get fucked. Call the Uber.
And lastly, you have physically damaged the fob. Water has got into it. It’s not a hermetically sealed unit, remember. Or something inside it has been cracked, busted, or wounded. You can toss your keys across the room and into a brick wall if you miss the prick you were aiming for. Your bike will still start when you shove that key into the ignition. You so much as thump that fob too hard and you’re staying where you are for a while.
And then there’s the extraneous bullshit out of the fob’s control which will nonetheless affect it negatively. Some of this bullshit is easily fixable. Some less so. If the main fuse is blown, your fob will not work. If the battery terminals are loose, your fob will not work. But then, neither will your bike. However, if you inadvertently try to use the wrong fob, and then start yelling and screaming because nothing is happening, that is all on you.
So how do you still flog a fob-controlled bike? Simple. How does a locksmith pick a lock? He knows how a lock works. If you know how a fob works, you know how to make that system work for you.
It’s called a relay attack. The bike doesn’t detect the attack because the encryption is not being broken. All that is happening is the legitimate rolling code is being forwarded. The bike sees no error and logs no intrusion. It happily springs into life.
It works like this: The thief goes on-line and buys two radio devices that act like signal extenders. These devices simply forward the signal from your bike to your fob. So, the Low Frequency Signal Extender catches the 125kHz wake-up signal your bike sends, and then it boosts it and sends it to the second device, the UHF device. Your fob has now been fooled into thinking the bike is right next to it. The UHF Signal Extender then boosts that signal to awaken the fob and capture its UHF encrypted rolling code answer, then sends that back to the first Low Frequency device. That device then sends that to the bike, your bike lights up, and off the stealing fucker goes down the street on your bike.
How do you think people boost exotic cars outside flash European casinos and restaurants? There is nothing that cannot be stolen. And there is nothing electronically protected that cannot be electronically over-ridden.
Can you understand why I just can’t smile and accept the fucken fob things? Yes, it is the way of the world, and yes, the latest “advance” in this electromagnetic shitfuckery is the small plastic card CFMOTO has produced to spur its SR-S 750 into life – and I hate that even more than the fob, because it doesn’t even have a battery I can replace.
What the fuck was so wrong with keys? How were they displeasing motorcycle owners? How were keys failing in their purpose and letting us all down? I have never had a discussion with any bike rider that began with: “How fucked are keys, aye?”
Fobs have not enhanced my motorcycle experience. They can get fucked.
