Is a bike lock safe enough if you are going into a shop or in town for an hour or so ?
If so which one ?
Cheers

The one your insurance company approves of.
There was a good article where NYC bike thieves systematically removed locks, people didn’t even challenge them. Loks that can be carried are vulnerable. Just get one that you get your bike replaced if it goes walkies and be sensible where you leave it.

If its a ‘pub’ bike then, yes, likely to be fine. Anything of any value will draw attention and up the chances of being nicked.

Depends on the lock and where you chain it up to. Basically, if a thief wants your bike then they will take it. The goal is to make that as hard and as time consuming for them as possible, so that the bike next to yours with a less secure lock is more tempting.

There’s some good tutorials on how to properly lock up a bike on Youtube which might give you some ideas. When I used to live in Leeds I commuted by bike and used am Abus Granite x-Plus lock on the back wheel / frame and a decent Magnum cable lock through the front wheel, all locked up inside the bike cage at work. It might sound like overkill but in three years my bike was never stolen.

Any reasonable quality D lock is decent deterrent and will take a bit of work to break, especially if you’re only stopping for a bit and the bike isn’t regularly in that place. However:

– It can still be broken but will take more time (thief will likely move on)
– It needs to be locked to something equally tough
– If the bike is bling enough the thief could cut frame. A nice full sus bike could easily be stripped and sold for untraceable parts on ebay and net a tidy sum.

Aye, depends on the lock. And how many bits it locks up. But mostly where you leave it I think.

Sadly an awful lot of locks are only deterrant to kids and opportunists, even some expensive ones- looking at the bikes parked in thd rack at my office, I reckon you could break most of the locks faster than the owner can find their keys and unlock them.

Example I always use- my brother’s got a nice hybrid and locked it with a cable lock. He lost the key, so nipped into the security office and asked for help. They came out and chopped the lock with a pair of kitchen scissors.

These thieves are missing a trick. If they put they’re skills into making a lock they’d make a fortune. 🙂

It’s the same with caravan security devices. There was a video on YouTube, of some scrotes taking a caravan, & it took them lless time to get the locks off than it took for the owner to put them on.

Depends on the bike and the lock…

Of course lots of locks can be broken – there’s only so much a lock manufacturer can do within the constraints of cost, size and weight. It’s not the ingenuity of the manufacturers that’s the problem, it’s ingenuity of the thieves and the availability of heavy duty tools designed for cutting, breaking and moving things.

D-Locks good, cable locks not good.
Mrs M nipped into the library for 10 minutes on a Sunday morning (yes, it was open), leaving her bike cable-locked. It disappeared. THe cut cable lock was left, however.

I don’t see the point of expensive locks, the difference to a thief will be marginal and at worst they’ll simply cut through your frame.

You may as well just use a common or garden £20 D lock, don’t leave any bike somewhere dodgy and don’t leave an expensive bike anywhere.

I have a £40 bike that I bought a £40 lock for.

I wouldnt put it anywhere near my road or mountainbike. Any half decent crim would allen key your forks and brakes off within 10mins.

I have a “beater” bike for going to the shops/pub etc on. I still use a decent lock on it, but I won’t cry if it gets stolen.
Any lock can be broken.

Depends on the bike and the lock…

and whatever you lock it too

I would not trust any lock on the market to keep my bike safe on the street for more than a quick stop at a newsagent

I met a professional locksmith through a London bike shop I worked at, and one of his contracts was for London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

After bikes were left for 3 months locked on the street (and the borough had flagged the bike with a warning notice) he was employed to remove the bikes by cutting the lock.

He used a cordless angle grinder and said with a fresh cutting disc and a simple jig to stop the lock moving, he would go through any lock on the market in well under a minute, including motorbike locks of any quality.

He also offered this service to clients who had lost their keys and could prove ownership of the bike, and charged £40. He said he would never leave a bike on the street, but would not tell customers how quickly he could cut their locks as they would not buy another bike, or lock again!

In a busy street, people don’t pay any attention, as the BBC found out last year when they made a programme where they stole their own bikes outside busy tube stations on main roads, and no one cared…

put a yellow jacket and hardhat on and you look totally legit, even when using an angle grinder on a bike lock.

It’s about making your bike invisible, then making it harder to nick than the one next to it.

When I lived in London, I had a Condor fixie that I commuted on, which would regularly get left in all kinds of random places, sometimes for up to 12 hours at a time. It was (still is!) a pretty nice bike – Ultegra bits, carbon forks and seat post etc. But it was grey paint, covered in black PVC tape and was never washed (and I did about 5k miles a year on it, all weather, so it was filthy!). Bung it in a rack with a load of other bikes and it just blended in and became completely un-noticeable. I also used an Abus X-plus 54 lock with a square shackle. Not un-breakable, but it would have required either a sodding big set of croppers or a battery powered grinder. Unless you knew what the bike was and wanted/needed that particular one, it would be easier to pinch something else.

No way would I leave either an MTB or a semi-nice roadbike out though.

@JonEdwards

that is what my locksmith friend said, make your bike a PITA compared to other bikes locked next to it, or make it invisible by getting rid of its identity.

Having said all that, its amazing the sh*te that some people will steal.

When we had the Freeborn shop at Esher our mechanic Joe had a paint smeared beater bike to roll back the hill from Sandown to the train station after work.

In the morning he’d push it up the hill, as it could not be pedalled. Had a reasonable lock on it, it still got nicked!

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Gone-in-60-secs-theft-video-2012.html

If they want it, they’ll have it.

Buy the lock that satisfies the insurance company, usually a certain level of Sold Secure, but don’t for a second believe that these are locks that aren’t easy to break with the right tools.

And pub/shops, take a bike you can afford to lose.

It’s just so sad that you can’t pop down the shop without worrying about your bike that is chained up out the front. In a perfect world it would just be to easy.