Really annoyed to hear that a mate’s garage was turned over in broad daylight yesterday afternoon nearby. All his bikes gone. A week ago, another acquaintance nearby lost most of his building and landscaping tools/trailer/land rover and that was from his his yard, at his house down a dead end lane in the middle of the night. It’s the bravado that is more disconcerting – it’s like they dont care if they get caught, because they will “defend” themselves vigorously perhaps?

Although no one expects seclusion to offer much security, I’d always hoped it would keep the nosy bastards away keep us off their radar. But I’ve got to accept I need to take better care of some of our kit. The outbuildings can not be made substantially secure, so it’s time to think about securing the good stuff inside them instead. Insurance isnt really an option as my favourite bikes are unique, even if not the most valuable.

I would like to chain the bikes together and then to an anchor. Maybe leaving a sacrificial bike for the scrotes. (sorry Stoner Jr but the islabike will be the un-tethered goat in this play!)

Where do I get a good quality chain (think Abus granit kind of chain) by the metre, but for a reasonable cost of say £10 a metre rather than £18 for a 65cm length?

Almax.

£10pm wont work.

Ive seen their videos before. Compelling.

Their site seems to be borked at the moment so cant check pricing.
My internet was borked. Off to look at pricing.

I would be suspicious of any chain sold by the metre as it means it is cut off a roll therefore will not be as strong. The best chains are cut then heat treated IIRC I would say 10% of the value of your bikes you want to lock up in security. even £18 m chain I would be suspicious of

The steel of the links needs to be 16 – 18 mm thick to foil bolt croppers. thats not the link diamter – thats the diameter of the bar they make the links from

You are not going to get opportunists – only pros so you need pro level security

Personally my bikes all live in my attic flat – I only lock them up outside when I have to and I use a D lock that weighs 4 kgs and would cost a couple of hundred pounds to buy an equivalent now

The top of the range almax chain looks OK.

And to add insult to injury, a lot of people store their bikes in the very same place as their power tools. I know of a bloke with his bikes nicely chained and locked up less than two metres away from angle grinders, drills, power saws etc. Hey Ho…

Speak to the chap at Almax, in my experience he is open to negotiating if you need a few bits and bobs. Their chains are pretty substantial.

Lot to be said for spreading the risk and not keeping all bikes in one place. I keep a couple of the most used in the garage, and a couple in the house in a back room.

Almax or Squire probably. Though there’s another option, which is go massive- most chains break in a couple of seconds with big croppers but you can go larger so that most croppers are just too small for the links. Anchor chain basically. It’ll cut faster with a grinder or similiar than an almax, but that’s not such a common attack.

(it really pisses me off tbh… Most locks, even really expensive ones, offer trivial levels of protection, it took me longer for me to find my keys and undo my old Oxford sold secure gold chain, than it’d have taken for a thief to snip it. Meanwhile testers keep attacking them with completely inappropriate methods then giving them good marks because they resisted their 3 minutes of constant karate chopping and harsh language.

Those almax should be bolt cropper proof. IIRC 18 mm bar is too big to get proper leverage with a bolt cropper

Pragmasis

http://securityforbikes.com/security-chains.php

I see they now offer a 22mm chain for securing your ocean liner!

Almax and Pragmasis are both superb.

If you can keep the chain so that it can’t touch the floor, the only option left for them is a battery angle grinder. It will still go through, but is obviously very noisy.

cheers chaps.

Yes my £10 budget was going to be a bit hopeful. Especially as 65cm Abus chains work out at 100/65 x £18 = £28pm

Pragmasis looks v promising. Will need to see what length works best. I like the idea of the noose loop.

Yes, I have a noose on mine – it means half the length of chain!

I haven’t the faintest idea of cost, but you can get steel hardened as a separate process such as by this company

Wouldn’t one big chain he a bit of a pain? It’ll be really heavy and you’ll be forever threading it in and out of all the bikes to take one out. Also if the thief does chop it they’ve got the lot. Why not one lock per bike, or maybe in pairs?

I was thinking noose chain the middle 2 or 3 bikes to an anchor and lock the outer (more often used) ones to the inner two?

Make sure that a swift hacksaw through one of the bike frames won’t liberate a couple of others to be lifted away… I sometimes do pretty much as you describe, but making sure that chain loop #2 passes through chain #1 as well as bikes.

Almax, no question. You suspect it’s all marketing hype until they arrive, and you realise that they are absolutely bloody massive. Each link is about the size of index finger and thumb of both hands made into an oval. Two 2m ones were hard work to carry up stairs.

I have two lengths padlocked to an anchor in the middle of the floor, then they go up to suspended hooks on each side and are joined again in the middle at another suspended hook. The most commonly used bikes are either side of the padlock in the middle. Bottom padlock never gets unlocked.

If I were doing it again I’d have an anchor on the floor on both sides, resulting in three padlocks so I could access the side bikes more easily.

Almax, no question

Except these are the four smaller Pragmasis chains with a 50p piece for scale.

They do a 22mm thick one too. These are 11, 13, 16 and 19mm. The biggest one weighs 8.7kg per metre!

Ok – Almax or similar sized chain 🙂

Point is they look like normal bike chains until you see how big they are. Gives you confidence.

in the same vein I checked with our insurer what cover we had.

I think I need to phone back and check, because lovely lass on the end of the line said that we were covered for up to £15k for each item. Including bikes. Each one. Given my tightarsed approach to the premium, I doubt that very much my dear. She insisted I could have 15x £1k bikes (quite possible given the On-One collection ;)) ) or 1x £15k bike nicked from the locked shed, and they’d see me right.

The Askguard bike shed looks a good option; would one fit in your garage?