Bike Security - do expensive locks really work??

*AL*

Bike security ?

*AL* sleeps with a pillow under his gun

Buckled_Rims

supersonic wrote:

Nobody is breaking my lock:

Mmm...a couple of years ago in South Shields someone stole a few hundred metres of railway track, so I you'd probably need a bigger chain to lock up your chain

supersonic

Aye.

I'll use this one!

ride_whenever

Thermite is easy to make, lighting it is a bit tricky.

Thermate is a bit harder to find all the compounds, but will melt iron underwater.

supersonic

I got some mag ribbon ;-)

Buckled_Rims

Just out of curiosity, would a grinder be able to cut through a u-lock if the metal was coated with diamond dust?

*AL*

Buckled_Rims wrote:

Just out of curiosity, would a grinder be able to cut through a u-lock if the metal was coated with diamond dust?

Yes.

You can use a £3 steel cutting disc to cut into diamond tipped blade with great ease.

In a similar way, if you use a diamond tipped cutting blade on anything other than it's intended purpose, you can destroy it in seconds.

The diamond coating may buy you a little time, but the cost of such a lock would be so horrendous they'd probably cut your frame in half and steal the lock !

lesz42

drop the bike into a small black hole, no one will steal it then!

Radioactiveman

Briggo wrote:

Best security is to make sure you're always with the bike, I never leave ours on their own.

Sleep in the garage do you?

Diggler

Locks arent really a definitive way to secure your bike their more like a way to slow them down.

my garage was broken into 4 years ago and they took 4 bikes. they were ground anchored and locked with a Kryptonite NY lock. They ground through the anchor and took all 4 bike locked together. That to me shows that the lock beat them on that occasion (just wish the anchor did).

Again my garage was broken into 1 year ago and they took 3 bikes. All ground anchored and locked with the same lock. They got through the lock this time.

I can only assume it all comes down to what tooling they have at the time. If a dirty scum bag klnows what they are doing and is determine enough, they WILL get your bikes.

I know have a 45mm thick sectional garage door (which im told is the most secure type) with additional ground anchoring for the door to stop it being opened.
2 alarm systems, one that is contained in the garage and one with the sensors in the garage and controller in the house.
1 big ass cage locked with 2 ABUS locks with are supposed to be the best for that type of application. Also have a U lock through it too.

The bikes are ground anchored and locked with a Oxford Nemesis Lock.

I hope to be able to keep my bikes now but to be honest if someone gets in with the right gear....... I just hope ive slowed them down enogh for me to get home or someone to notice.

Something else ive found, you cant go wrong with good neighbours. My neighbours always come out if the alarm goes off and vice verser. They both have dogs too, which go mental if anyone goes near any of the garages.




If anyone manages to train those Wasps, ill take some!!!!

bobpzero

razor wire? maybe a big piece of a thorn bush in front of the shed? thankfully my bike can stay in the house.

ride_whenever

keep them in the garage with a few komodo dragon... then gas the dragons when you need a bike out.

cavegiant

It seems that people have miss-understood what I said, but in turn I could be wrong as well.

Sold secure rating system is different for motorbikes and for bikes/mopeds.

The bike rated sold secure locks are not tested with power tools.

The ones rated for motor bikes are tested with power tools,

The difference is huge.

Now I have made myself a bit clearer.

Are you saying that sold secure are missrepresenting their testing methods?

Was this a motorbike gold or cycle gold lock that was cut?

ride_whenever

Hmmmm, motorbike d-lock, totally practical for my rat bike...

Northwind

cavegiant wrote:

Are you saying that sold secure are missrepresenting their testing methods?

Was this a motorbike gold or cycle gold lock that was cut?

The one I cut myself was a motorbike gold, an Oxford Monster. Also Thatcham and ARTapproved. Snip snip, completely useless against manual, portable bolt cutters. Whether they're tested with power tools or not is irrelevant when they're defenceless against near-silent, faster attacks.

ride_whenever

The ultimate anti-lock device is the hydraulic bolt cutters. Silent other than when it does the cut, highly portable. The fire brigade jaws of life on the other hand are useless as they;re shears.

Know a fireman who tried to cut a cheap £20 d-lock with them and snapped the blades.

adzsubtract

Along with using a "heavy duty" D Lock I also use Pinhead Locks, http://www.pinheadcomponents.com/, available on all good cycle shop sites, about £40 for the 4 piece set . These lock the stem/forks, seat post and there are wheel locks too that work on all types of bike. A special coded key is supplied 1 in over 1000. Once registered other keys can be purchased. I never remove my stem bolt and use the other locks on my daily commute. They are really easy to put on, as easy as replacing a QR skewer. The only couple of minor problem I have found is that the thread on the stem lock is a little short, so i had to take 1 spacer out, and while off-road the front wheel can become loose, so I usually replace the seat and wheel locks with QR. This can be another deterant as after the bike has been taken, it cannot be sold, perhaps the handle bars, chain and rings, but everything else will take time to remove. 4.5 stars out of 5 I'd say.

nicklouse

adzsubtract wrote:

Along with using a "heavy duty" D Lock I also use Pinhead Locks, http://www.pinheadcomponents.com/, available on all good cycle shop sites, about £40 for the 4 piece set . These lock the stem/forks, seat post and there are wheel locks too that work on all types of bike. A special coded key is supplied 1 in over 1000. Once registered other keys can be purchased. I never remove my stem bolt and use the other locks on my daily commute. They are really easy to put on, as easy as replacing a QR skewer. The only couple of minor problem I have found is that the thread on the stem lock is a little short, so i had to take 1 spacer out, and while off-road the front wheel can become loose, so I usually replace the seat and wheel locks with QR. This can be another deterant as after the bike has been taken, it cannot be sold, perhaps the handle bars, chain and rings, but everything else will take time to remove. 4.5 stars out of 5 I'd say.

sorry but they are also a piece of piss to remove.

again there is no solution for not putting temptation in front of thieves.

cavegiant

Hmm,
I am now slightly more disillusioned with locks.

I guess my plan of locking my bike next to an expensive one with an even worse lock was a good plan!

Not sure what to do when I go camping though.

Northwind

cavegiant wrote:

Hmm, I am now slightly more disillusioned with locks.

The thing to do is just be realistic. I got so angry at Oxford, Kryptonite etc not so much because they weren't selling bulletproof locks- hardly anyone does- but because they were letting people feel unrealistically secure, when they weren't. They're still pretty solid locks and will deter an awful lot of thieves, but you just need to be realistic about what they can or can't do. I make a call of convenience and cost over security and use a fairly decent u-lock, a pragmasis or almax chain would be far more secure but it would cost 4 times as much, be enormously inconvenient, so I'll trade the risk for the ease of use.

The biggest thing for bike safety (other than Nick's 100% spot on comment about being careful where you leave it) is the swimming with sharks approach- go to any busy bike rack in an office or big block of flats etc, and see what the average lock quality is. In my office, my mediocre u-lock is one of the best there, but my commuter is probably worth, oh, 1/10th of the most expensive bikes and is probably about average. So if you're a thief, even if you can make off with my bike in 1 minute (you could), you wouldn't because you can take the £2500 Tarmac Expert which is "locked" with a £20 Halfords cable lock, or the carbon Boardman with the £10 Tesco u-lock.

Anyhoo. Sorry, I bang on a bit on this subject, years of motorbike use... And listening to the whole confidence trick industry. "make sure the chain is off the ground so it can't be boltcroppered", which makes no difference. "We have an anti-theft warranty" but we won't honour it if there's not evidence of the thing being physically broken- even though we know perfectly well that the locks are insecure. Etc etc. It's a crooked industry and it really honks me off.

The other thing is testing... How you do this is, you gather info on the tools used and then you test with those tools, right? NO. Not for real locks, it doesn't work. Most bike thefts are unsecured bikes- cheap cable and chain locks which can be broken with a pair of pliars or short croppers. But these aren't the tools used to break real locks.

So, you run a test with the tools that thieves use for those 9/10ths of thefts and say "This lock was immune to lever attacks" or "This lock survived 5 minutes attack with the tin snips", and you give the impression it's a good lock. Then a thief comes along with a pair of boltcutters that cost 1/6th as much as the lock and destroys it instantly- but the testers can say "Ah but so few bikes are stolen that way!". Just a statistics trick.

Most houses are broken into with bricks through windows. So if you're testing a door lock, you throw a brick at it for 10 minutes then declare it Brickproof and Sold Secure Gold, and never test it with a lockpick or freeze spray or a drill or a simple overpower attack or a bumping tool, because they're not bricks and police reporting PROVES that's what most thieves use.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

<QUICK EDIT HERE- the recent Cycling Plus and, was it WMB? Anyway, their lock tests were not in any way like this, they weren't perfect but they were just about the best lock tests I've ever seen. Ride motorbike magazine (I think it was) likewise did a real world test which resulted in them criticising 19 out of the 20 locks tested. Sometimes, they do it right... But Sold Secure and Thatcham have absolutely no interest in testing locks this way>

nicklouse

the classic for bikes is one bike locked by a rear wheel and another by the front wheel.

or one bike locked by both wheels.

lastwords

my mtb was stolen last year out of my shed, it was locked to a ground anchor with a motorcyle chain they obviously could not break the chain but they managed to get the ground anchor out of the floor i can only assume they jacked it out? Cracked the concrete base which is a garage base.

Bikes are now kept in the house

I am lucky at work there is security and only one entrance however if a thief was to get in there are plenty of people who very kindly dont lock there bikes to deter them from nicking mine

Anonymous

cavegiant wrote:

Sold secure rating system is different for motorbikes and for bikes/mopeds.

The bike rated sold secure locks are not tested with power tools.

The ones rated for motor bikes are tested with power tools,

The difference is huge.

The all important thing as far as I'm concerned is what the insurance company accepts.

There are limits to how far I'll go to protect my bike and ultimately if it gets nicked, it gets nicked. So long as the insurance pays up.

Sadly the thieves know this all too well. And they'll be back a month later to nick the replacement too.

My deterrent works on the principle of so many damn locks, wheels and other bits removed, locked to other (crap & wouldn't want to nick) bikes, and other things, such that the only solution is to nick the shed or smash the shed down and haul the whole lot onto the back of a flatbed before anyone notices. Though round my way they probably wouldn't notice, or they'd come over and help instead

Besides, they'd have to clean the bike if they nicked it