Bicycle Security V.2

[chris667]

My feelings on this are complicated. I have owned really exotic bikes in the past, but I ride ordinary ones now.

Some things I have found useful to remember:

1. Quick releases of any kind are rubbish for a bike you leave in town. The bike I use for town has nutted axles, which makes it look cheap. They are Exage hubs, made in Japan about 30 years ago. Very good quality, but they look cheap. That's an important detail.
2. If you have two locks, your bike is a harder prospect to steal.
3. Having to reattach wheels and accessories makes you vulnerable to being mugged when you unlock them. A mate of mine had his bike stolen when he was unlocking it. A group of lads just came and took it when he unlocked it. Always unlock and go as fast as you can, don't hang about.
4. Motorcycle chains are far stronger than any D-lock, but not practical to carry. If I find myself commuting to one spot in a city, I leave a chain around the stand where I leave my bike. I have a D-lock on the bike, which is OK if you're nipping into a shop for a minute. When you get to town, you can lock up with better security.
5. Really thick motorcycle chains will easily dent butted steel tubes.
6. The single best thing you can do is make your bike look like more effort and less reward compared to the one next to it.
7. A friend of mine had her Bike Friday stolen from Manchester. The thieves cut the bike stand and made off with the stand and all bikes attached.
8. I would like to say there is no worse advice than chaining your bike to a radiator. It would be easy to remove a bike attached to a radiator, and then as well as a stolen bike you have to deal with a flooded house.

Hope that isn't too ranty, but I spent many years thinking about this.

 

[CharleyFarley]

My feelings on this are complicated. I have owned really exotic bikes in the past, but I ride ordinary ones now.

Some things I have found useful to remember:

1. Quick releases of any kind are rubbish for a bike you leave in town. The bike I use for town has nutted axles, which makes it look cheap. They are Exage hubs, made in Japan about 30 years ago. Very good quality, but they look cheap. That's an important detail.
2. If you have two locks, your bike is a harder prospect to steal.
3. Having to reattach wheels and accessories makes you vulnerable to being mugged when you unlock them. A mate of mine had his bike stolen when he was unlocking it. A group of lads just came and took it when he unlocked it. Always unlock and go as fast as you can, don't hang about.
4. Motorcycle chains are far stronger than any D-lock, but not practical to carry. If I find myself commuting to one spot in a city, I leave a chain around the stand where I leave my bike. I have a D-lock on the bike, which is OK if you're nipping into a shop for a minute. When you get to town, you can lock up with better security.
5. Really thick motorcycle chains will easily dent butted steel tubes.
6. The single best thing you can do is make your bike look like more effort and less reward compared to the one next to it.
7. A friend of mine had her Bike Friday stolen from Manchester. The thieves cut the bike stand and made off with the stand and all bikes attached.
8. I would like to say there is no worse advice than chaining your bike to a radiator. It would be easy to remove a bike attached to a radiator, and then as well as a stolen bike you have to deal with a flooded house.

Hope that isn't too ranty, but I spent many years thinking about this.

Some thieves will steal anything. Last year I went out on a 20-mile run, and a couple of miles from home I saw a ghost bike chained to a safety railing by the roadside. On my way back home, I saw the wheels had been stolen. No respect at all, not even for the dead.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I spotted a double-locked run of the mill hybrid in a local-ish High St the other day. The owner had diligently locked it through frame and back wheel with one lock, plus through the front wheel with a second chain. Someone had nicked the saddle and crankset instead!
It really isn't worth risking leaving any bike on-street that is worth more than a round of drinks. My chain and Abloy padlock (forget trying to pick one of those!) cost at least as much as the bike it's securing.

 

[chris667]

Quick releases have little going for them with regards to town bikes. Another thing where the racers have ruined stuff for the rest of us by making bikes "higher performance" with features that make no sense.

 

[raleighnut]

Quick releases have little going for them with regards to town bikes. Another thing where the racers have ruined stuff for the rest of us by making bikes "higher performance" with features that make no sense.

Cheap enough to replace them with these

 

[Gwylan]

Cheap enough to replace them with these

View attachment 649499

+1
Hope it just slows them down

 

[Ajax Bay]

Quick releases have little going for them with regards to town bikes. Another thing where the racers have ruined stuff for the rest of us by making bikes "higher performance" with features that make no sense.

Chris - would you care to help us understand (by explaining) why your second sentence itself makes any 'sense'? Do you think QRs are the 'work of the devil'?
Anyway, who would run wheels of any value on a "town bike" which they are going to lock up in a place with public access?

 

[Gunk]

Cheap enough to replace them with these

View attachment 649499

I use similar skewers on my Van Nicholas

 

[chris667]

Cheap enough to replace them with these

As opposed to nutted axles, which need a tool to unfasten them at no extra cost? Why have you got to spend more in order to add that functionality?

There's nothing intrinsically worse about nutted axles. Or put it another way. Why is a quick release with an optional accessory better?

We have it all wrong in this country. If the cycling industry wanted to make bikes that were good for general purpose transport it could (just look at the Dutch!) but no, we have to buy bikes that take all their cues from racing. No mudguards. No thought about chain protection. And they look flash! All those little bits of bling are actively undesirable when you are leaving your bike in town.

What mugs we are.

 

[Ajax Bay]

Unadulterated cobblers; and people (we) are not mugs, any more than you are, Chris.

 

[raleighnut]

As opposed to nutted axles, which need a tool to unfasten them at no extra cost? Why have you got to spend more in order to add that functionality?

There's nothing intrinsically worse about nutted axles. Or put it another way. Why is a quick release with an optional accessory better?

We have it all wrong in this country. If the cycling industry wanted to make bikes that were good for general purpose transport it could (just look at the Dutch!) but no, we have to buy bikes that take all their cues from racing. No mudguards. No thought about chain protection. And they look flash! All those little bits of bling are actively undesirable when you are leaving your bike in town.

What mugs we are.

Yebbut try finding decent hubs/wheels with 'nutted' axles these days, they're only on the cheapest cruddiest wheels, What I've done in the past has been to get hold of nice Maillard 'wide flange' hubs from trashed wheels then stripped polished and rebuilt them and then get them laced up onto rims but at the time I was friends with a couple of guys at Cyclemagic in Leicester (sadly closed now) and had access to their warehouse of unwanted bikes (had a couple of frames too)
The last pair I had done my wheelbuilder (John at Bob Warner Cycles) reckoned they were amongst the smoothest running hubs he'd ever seen and asked if they were NOS and was quite shocked when I told him I'd salvaged them and rebuilt them myself.

 

[chris667]

Oh, is Cyclemagic finished? That's a shame. Roger really helped me once. Real Aladdin's cave.

It's sad really. We are sort of stuck with what we have and it's rubbish.

 

[raleighnut]

Oh, is Cyclemagic finished? That's a shame. Roger really helped me once. Real Aladdin's cave.

It's sad really. We are sort of stuck with what we have and it's rubbish.

Yep they went a while back, never really knew Roger much, my mate there was Simon (the really tall bloke)

 

[Gunk]

Chris - would you care to help us understand (by explaining) why your second sentence itself makes any 'sense'? Do you think QRs are the 'work of the devil'?
Anyway, who would run wheels of any value on a "town bike" which they are going to lock up in a place with public access?

I do!

 

[Ajax Bay]

I asked: "Anyway, who would run wheels of any value on a "town bike" which they are going to lock up in a place with public access?"

I use similar skewers on my Van Nicholas . . . . and I run expensive wheels on my 'town bike'.

Tell me you lock and leave your van Nicholas with expensive wheels routinely in a public place. Bike Security v2.