bike locks

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nick.b

Well-Known Member
Location
st neots
i brought myself a Van nich Yukon a couple of years ago for £2500, spent a fortune on the finishing kit and wheels to save these extra grams then thought bugger, to lock this safely im going to have to add about 2kg to its weight.

so, i insured it on my household insurance with no "sold secure" rating limitations and rock around with a £20 lock, thinking,screw heavy locks. if someone wants it theyll have it away anyway.

my lbs think im mad but is it just me that does this?
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Which is the £20 lock?
 
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nick.b

Well-Known Member
Location
st neots
cheap and cheerful abus coil, its not that i want it to be stolen, just see "gone in 60 seconds" on youtube for anouther reason why )
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
cheap and cheerful abus coil, its not that i want it to be stolen, just see "gone in 60 seconds" on youtube for anouther reason why )

I think that's mad personally. Yes, even something top end could be broken. However there are three nightmare stories that stick in my mind locally about bike thefts. Two of them were very high value bikes that were parked on the commute with cable locks. The really sad thing is we don't know, it could have been some completely unsophisticated opportunist thief or even child stealing them. The third story was a less high value bike parked where I sometimes park my bike, brand new, gone within a few minutes.

But you do have it insured. What do I know, maybe it's just incredibly low risk there, you know what you're doing or just very lucky.
 

RhythMick

Über Member
Location
Barnsley
Covering the monetary loss is one thing ... And a big assumption if you ask me as they have a get out if you haven't taken "reasonable steps" to protect it.

But how much of a pain in the royal would it be if it were nicked ... ?
 
Why not have a selection of locks? I have a really light, cheap lock for when I go into cafes when the bike is often in my view, a coil lock for when I leave a bike in the fairly secure bike shed at work, and a big mother of a chain for when I leave the bike in town.
 

Manonabike

Über Member
i brought myself a Van nich Yukon a couple of years ago for £2500, spent a fortune on the finishing kit and wheels to save these extra grams then thought bugger, to lock this safely im going to have to add about 2kg to its weight.

so, i insured it on my household insurance with no "sold secure" rating limitations and rock around with a £20 lock, thinking,screw heavy locks. if someone wants it theyll have it away anyway.

my lbs think im mad but is it just me that does this?

It seems to me you are taking for granted the insurance company will pay the full cost of the bike + upgrades. You can never be sure about things like that. Even if they do then your next premium will be more expensive.......

It's madness to lock an expensive bike with a simple cable...... for the sake of carrying a good lock.

I'm not driven by saving weight on my bike cause I know I could save far more weight from my body than my bike :tongue: having said that, if I go out for a ride I never take my lock cause I know I will not stop and leave the bike for any length of time, on the other hand, if I have things to do then I take with me one or possibly two D-locks. If I had an expensive bike like yours I would simply not take a chance.
 

Cyclopathic

Veteran
Location
Leicester.
I am totally at a loss as to what is the best lock to get. I have an oxford u lock which was about £22 but find it a pain to carry and use. I end up using a cable lock with 5 digit combination but know that this is far from ideal. I want a flexible lock with a combination that is also going to offer at least some protection, preferably more than the lock next to mine. At the moment I've got a fairly undesirable bike from a thieves point of view and I don't often leave it out of my sight for long but I have no idea what to get when I eventually get something a bit more flash.
Are any statistics kept about locks that we can use as a reference? It all seems so much more like an art than a science with many factors to be considered.
 
For me it's simple, if a bit of a shame - I'll never use my bike in a way that means I have to rely on locking it somewhere. I simply don't trust any lock. They can't protect components, and they can't stop the thief damaging the bike by trying to force it off.

It means I only ever get to use my bike as a utility bike if I can leave it somewhere I don't need to lock it, I.e. inside a friends house, inside the police station etc. Sad but true.
 

Cyclopathic

Veteran
Location
Leicester.
For me it's simple, if a bit of a shame - I'll never use my bike in a way that means I have to rely on locking it somewhere. I simply don't trust any lock. They can't protect components, and they can't stop the thief damaging the bike by trying to force it off.

It means I only ever get to use my bike as a utility bike if I can leave it somewhere I don't need to lock it, I.e. inside a friends house, inside the police station etc. Sad but true.
If and when I do get something that I consider decent I will probably treat it the same as you do. However I think I'll always have a more utilitarian town bike that I use for bimbling about and shopping and such that I will occasionally need to lock up somewhere. I absolutely do not want my lifestyle dictated to me by dirty scroatbags. It may be that this will cost me an occasional bike, but hopefully nothing special and not often.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
For me it's simple, if a bit of a shame - I'll never use my bike in a way that means I have to rely on locking it somewhere. I simply don't trust any lock. They can't protect components, and they can't stop the thief damaging the bike by trying to force it off.

The supposedly rose tinted one takes a much more general view on this. Trying to steal bikes is really the least of our worries if leaving them around. I suspect a fair bit of it is people just vandalising it for the hell of it. I've had a couple of incidents at work of suspected vandalism and not completely convinced the happy slapping incident I saw was motivated to steal the bike, just to smash it up and give the rider a good kicking. Similarly as I went on a nice evening cycle the other night I had a pedestrian quietly say "take the **** off". People particularly like kicking in wheels on bikes. However I have no particular desire to put people off leaving their bikes places, we need more not less cycling.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Are any statistics kept about locks that we can use as a reference? It all seems so much more like an art than a science with many factors to be considered.

The most famous which is Sold secure is merely a standard. As has been famously noted a manufacturer may not enter a lock to be tested in this process and so it may no get a sold secure rating, or it may have a gold/silver/bronze rating for a couple of years when you own it and suddenly lose it's gold rating and go down to nothing and so on.

I've never seen in depth stats about bicycle thefts and lock types. It would be interesting. I suppose it might be regarded as a pointless activity as some for potentially stating the bleedin' obvious something like - cable locks offer virtually no protection

I see sold secure as more a 'minimum' to offer a fair bit of protection against the casual thief and lower end serious thief if used with other precautions.

Like I said the worst horror stories I've heard locally have all been cable locks :sad:. That's only the tiniest of fractions of bicycle thefts though.
 

defy-one

Guest
Another thing i do is lock my bike in off roads away from the usual stands,near stations etc
My thinking being they target known bike parking areas.
Now being in a quiter place has it's disadvantages - but London is never really quiet
 
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