We’ve got some shiny new bike lockers at work – yay! 😀

But they are designed with a slightly odd locking mechanism:

The idea is that you secure the door by slotting your U-lock vertically down through those three holes.

I’m not a big fan of that for three reasons:

1) it means the centre of the U-lock isn’t filled – making it easy for a determined thief to apply leverage to it or use a bottle jack.

2) I’d rather have the u-lock on my actual bike.

3) the diameter of the holes is 17mm, which is smaller than the shackle diameter on any of my U-locks. 😕

So any thoughts on what I should use?

Ideally I think something like this design would be good:

http://www.abus.com/uk/Commercial-Security/Padlocks/Steel/Monoblock-92/

But it would need a much longer shackle bolt as the distance from the top hole to bottom hole on the locker is 115mm. Unfortunately I can’t find anything suitable.

(and no – despite the keyhole the lockers can’t be locked with a key. That’d be too easy!)

That looks like the keyhole to an Abloy security lock on the door. I can see why your employer didn’t get the locks fitted. (Replacement keys are a faff to purchase).

Apparently the keyhole is for a master key that operates the latch without the external parts needing to move – so that they can still open the lockers if some muppet loses the keys to their u-lock or if they need to open the lockers for “security reasons”.

(No, I’m not entirely happy with that either!)

Use a U lock with one leg through the holes and the other leg tight against the door to the left of the enclosed box.
If the distance between each leg of the lock is the right size, you’ll be unable to rotate the left hand leg away from the door without fouling on the front edge of the box.
This effectively fills the centre of the u lock with the box enclosure which solves your problem.
Just find a u lock which is a tight fit i.e the gap between the legs is only slightly larger than than the distance between the left hand edge of the top of the box and the left hand edge of the hole.

D – lock for simplicity and ease of use .

The legs of my D (or U) locks are too thick for the holes so I need to buy a new lock any way to use it – so thought I’d get something that worked better for this situation.

How about a motorbike disk lock (mini d-lock type thing).

Use a piece of steel bar, bent at one end and with a hole at the other, drop it through and padlock the end.

Something like the pragmasis Anti-pich pin would work with a padlock at the bottom of it. Not sure of the diameter but you may be able to buy one and get it machined down to suit.

Thanks.

Motorbike disc lock might work.

That Pragmasis thing is waaay too big. A bit of steel might also do – but I could imagine there might be complaints if it is too ghetto looking (which it would be if I was fabricating it!)

Two padlocks, one through the top hole and one through the bottom?

Or one like this through the centre hole…

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