Locks

I have a cheap bike but I want a lock I could use on new, more-valuable purchases. Are U-locks the best? Is Kryptonite the best? Why are there so many [ see http://www.kryptonitelock.com/Products/List.aspx?cid=1001&scid=1000 ]? Any advice is welcome. Thanks.

I live in a hi-crime area by the way

mini u-lock

i carry it in my back pocket, and don't worry about my wheels because a) they're shitty and b) they're bolt on. wheel theft seems to happen out of convenience, so i figure they'll go for the other guy's wheels.

also, my bike is locked inside at night, and on a rack at busy academic health center during the day.

if i'm really serious about locking, i'll use a cable to round up the wheels and then lock it.

but if i was rolling on something nicer, i'd probably do the double mini u-lock or take off the front wheel and lock both wheels with the frame with a big lock

i use a bigger u-lock (looks like the "keeper 12") and get the front wheel and the frame. someone could jack my other wheel pretty much at will though, if i lived in a bigger city i'm sure it would be gone.

I ride my bike to work and lock it to a bike stand in the car park which is regularly patrolled by security guards. I put a U-lock around the top tube and the rack, then a cable lock through the front wheel (which isn't quick release anyway) and frame and rack and the U-lock, and then stick use another cable lock to secure the saddle. I've been working on the assumption people will steal anything given half a chance (not necessarily for profit, sometimes just for vindictiveness) since I was a teenager - me and my mate biked to the local sport centre and played badminton there for an hour, when we came out we found someone had unscrewed my light fittings and nicked them and someone had snipped his brake cables and stolen his handlebars.

rear wheel is more important/$$$ than your front wheel, dudes, just saying

Yeah, lock the rear wheel rather than front wheel, if you can only lock one.

In general, smaller locks are more secure than bigger locks, because it's harder to defeat a lock if it's tightly locked. Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit series is the strongest U-lock around, but they're expensive and very heavy. Evolution series is really secure and a little less pricey and heavy. If you want a really nice lock, an Evolution might be the way to go.

Any lock can be defeated though, so it's really a matter of mitigating the risk of theft. Good lock, good locking technique, good location, etc.

OnGuard makes some strong locks too.

I'm thinking of getting one of the Kryptonite mini U-locks (either the Evolution or the Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit), for ease of carrying, but am a little concerned about how useful they actually are because they're relatively so small. They seem popular though, so maybe it's not a problem?

Is it possible to get anything more than the frame and immovable object through one? I'm guessing not. In which case I suppose one of the Kryptonite cables combined with a mini U-lock would be a winning combo...

Anyone subscribe to Sheldon's Lock Strategy? He recommends locking just the rear wheel, inside the rear frame triangle, which when he explains it does make sense, but it feels irrationally strange not to lock the frame at all.

A lot of people with the mini U-locks use Sheldon's locking technique, which can secre the two most expensive parts of a typical bike with a small lock. I put my U-lock (not mini) through the back wheel (Sheldon style) and through the chainring/crank space (which is almost certainly a useless step - bike gone, chainring securely locked, haha - but it makes me feel better). I park my bike in a very secure location though.

I've never heard of Sheldon's locking technique being defeated by cutting through the rim, innertube, and tire. I lurk in a bike forum with all kinds of theft stories and frequent discussions of locking technique, so if Sheldon's technique was unsafe, I think I would have heard about it. Seems to work well.

I have a friend who uses Sheldon's technique who came back to find his bike still all there but the rear wheel released - obviously the thief had thought "ah-ha, the fool only locked his back wheel! ...oh." (Fortunately he didn't then smash the bike in a fit of pique.)

Thinking about it, I don't see why Sheldon's technique couldn't be slightly adapted to put the lock round either the seat stay or the chain stay on the frame en-route between the wheel and the immovable object, depending on the exact layout of what the bike is being locked to.

Even if using a mini u-lock which isn't long enough to include the seat tube in the wheel-to-stand locking set-up, in my imagination it seems feasible to include one of the stays in the equation, since it would be in more of a direct line between the wheel and the bike stand/fence etc.

^yeah I think that is true. You could even get the seat tube in the lock if you're riding a bike with tight geometry.

^^this is totally one of my fears about the Sheldon method. It works, but it looks like it doesn't, so it's kind of an invitation to have the bike fucked with.

Yeah, I read a thread on londonfgss about this, where the conclusion seemed to be that it's actually a sound locking technique, but that it looks strange and so leaves you open to people thinking that the bike isn't locked properly and so having a go at removing the wheel and either damaging the bike in their attempt or doing so on purpose in frustration when they find that easy theft is impossible.

The masterlock street is the ultimate easily portable lock. A bit more versitile than a mini D. I have one and I lock one cuff to the immovable object through removed front wheel through back wheel and on to a chin stay. No qr on the seat, but I'll accept that loosing the seat is a risk. I cut the rubber off one cuff and it fits a standard UK sign post now, although not a New york one..

previous thread where a lot of these same topics were covered:

Bike Theft Preventative measures

Thanks Steve, I'll take a read.

i like pinhead locking skewers for wheels/seat/fork... i use a new york fahgeddaboudit to lock the frame to something. we stopped selling the masterlock cuff locks at the bike shop where i used to work, because they can really easily be defeated without tools.

I can't find any masterlock cuff defeat info on the web.

Care to point some out? If this is the case it is new lock time.

If it uses cylindrical keys (as it seems to from an image I found) then it can be opened in 30 seconds with a biro...

... more like five seconds in fact

Will be trying that.

It seems kryptonite phased out cylinder keys from all or most of their range -
http://www.singletrackworld.co.uk/article.php?sid=1460

I'd heard of it WRT Kryptonie but hadn't really considered it for other brands, and idiot is me.

xpost to ed- i have never tried this myself, but the theory goes that the frame itself can be used for leverage against the link connecting the cuffs, splitting the link plates apart. i don't know of anything online, but bicycling magazine gave the lock a really bad review for this reason (although they didn't explain the problem, since they didn't want to encourage thieves). the master lock sales rep denied there was a problem except to say that you could send in the remaining cuff to get the theft guarantee or whatever.

i found the pinhead stuff pretty fascinating.

whats the best to protect a 15 mm nut on the rear? ive got a nexus hub with 15mm capnuts back there.

oh hai gaiz (4 years ago):

THREAD FOR THE DEAD DEAD BIRD

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2367/2079835636_77ef812d93.jpg