Three bike thieves discuss the best locks and how to beat them

If I was a bike thief, I’d put on bike kit and steal mountain bikes by the dozen from races and trail centres. But there’d be a lot to be said for hitting offices too- you could have walked away with any number of £1000 cycle-to-work bikes from my old office, with no more than wirecutters.

Wasn’t their a bike thief who was caught by a group of mountain bikers at one of the trail centres doing exactly that.

I’m not sure how many times he fell down the stairs before the police arrived. Clumsy fellow.

chunkymonkey :

Somafunk – could you let me know what the Onguards are like quality wise when you get them? I have four ground anchors in the garage but use a poor quality lock and chain, bit silly really! They look good and for the price will get a couple if they are decent enough. Cheers.

They arrived today, i didn’t realise just how heavy they’d be – especially the Pitbull mini u-lock, although i use the term “mini” as in its descriptive blurb rather than actual physical size and heft.

The combination lock at first appearance looks quality and very well made with an easily fingered (Fnar…Fnar) combination barrel but on closer inspection IE : when the lock is open and looking into the female barrel you can see the rotating lock mechanism/numbers is plastic so a few carefully placed hammer and chisel blows or a hammer/screwdriver would shatter the rotating numbers and then the lock would pull open.

The chain is very heavy and seems to be well made, good full length covering so nae chance of damaging a frame/wheels etc.

So not a great lock for total piece of mind but decent enough for an easy to use (nae worrying bout lost keys) about town lock. If i was buying again i’d forgo the combination lock and buy the version with a tiny shackle lock. In fact i may decide to take a cutting disc to the combination lock and buy a small shackle for the chain instead.

The Pitbull Mini U-lock is well engineered but very heavy – I certainly would not want to carry this using the supplied frame mount on my Ti framed bikes, in fact it does not fit the seat tubes on any of my bikes – I’d only use it on pig iron steel tubed town bikes.

Well protected locking mechanism with sprung jaws so it would be awkward to drill, the shackle is very heavy and plastic sheathed, i tried to cut it at the very bottom of the exposed section with a tungsten carbide coated hacksaw blade and it did succeed in marking the surface but i imagine it’d take quite a while to cut through so i’m happy with that – I was tempted to try the angle grinder with some of my Krononflex cutting discs but i suspect i’d cut though it very quickly so i didn’t bother satisfying my curiosity.

The braided cable is well made and entirely sheathed in plastic, quite light so i’ll use that with the combination lock if i’m heading over the town or to the pub – to be honest i stay in the arse end of nowhere and i’ve left my bikes sitting outside the shops or mates houses for hours and i’ve never had a problem – everyone knows everyone else (small town mentality) but that’s not say i haven’t been complacent with my trust.

Better to be safe n’ secure than losing a bike.

Pen for an idea of size.

Sprung loaded lock jaws

Many thanks, Soma – I’ll be putting an order into Amazon tomorrow 😆