Just had my locks angle ground off up on kingly street, an abus steel o flex 100cm and a very old long d lock.
Luckily got the bike back, but now need recommendations on new locks preferably something I can get this weekend as I'm into work on the monday and want to ride there.
Any and all help gratefully received.
I'm off drinking now I've overcome the fear that was my bike being stolen, but then returned to me. so will attend to your responses on the morrow.
many thanks in advance....

Sounds like you're a lucky man!! glad the titanium beast hasn't been lost for good..

Please fill us in on the story.

drinking with friends out in the two floor bar on kingly st, left bike double locked outside club on the other side of the road, and man with angle grinder went through both locks, came out to check bike was still there to discover bike wasn't. Fear in heart, where's my fucking bike went upto bouncer outside club to be pointed to man who pushed up doors of big garage/warehouse area to show bike safe and sound minus locks. Sign saying don't lock bikes to these railings not in direct line of sight so locked bikes to railings unaware said bike would be angle ground away at property owners convenience. So bike is now in my fucking house and locks are now required so bike can be ridden from house to various locales in london.

thats shit....but it could have been someone nicking it..although you have lost 2 locks you haven't lost your bike...i suppose you should think yourself lucky.

Lucky? What's so important about that fence that bikes cannot be locked there? Safety issue? What?

What's the legal with this? If I put a sign outside my office that says "No Cars" and then tow away the next vehicle that happens to park there.. isn't that called theft?
Even if the car is returned, what if I decided to smash in the windows to allow me to put it into neutral first? Isn't that called 'criminal damage' - even if there was a sign saying "No Bikes"?

its not your office.....neither is it cb's fence.....if someone locked their bike to my fence i would cut it off

If someone cut my locks off I would brake fluid their car.

"If I put a sign outside my office" - anyway it IS my office, now get back to my question.

wow you own an office......how much did that cost?

420,000lbs

less arguing more info about which locks I should purchase, I need a d lock, plus one I can wrap around my waist, any suggestions, anyone, anyone, bueller....

i got a kryptonite new york chain, which though heavy as fuck, sits comfy around your waist. fucking expensive in the UK though (about as much as my crap bike). its also long enough to go round both wheels if youre locking it to something quite small like a bike stand

i use abus flex thing (get 100cm for waist?) and mini-d. £50-60 total. now, back to the arguing!

no it's not

£14.99 (Inc. free postage).

Can't go wrong, mate.

whoops ... you can buy it here :

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/M...?modelID=19088

When I used to work at Two Floors, many moons ago, someone started stapling threatening bits of paper 'round by bike whenever I changed it outside what's now Tantra, or that railed rubbish area on the corner. Eventually some dude from above Tantra came out and yelled his head off at me. Fearing that he might key one of my beloved bikes I switched to locking it up on Ganton St, or Broadwick (where some prick pinched my back wheel after bothering to undo my lugnuts). Out of interest, anyone know what the deal is with cutting through locks like that is legally? Destruction of personal property, no?

The café on the corner of Wardour and Old Compton always moan that I'm not allowed to chain my bike to the lamppost outside. (I ignore them: public property?) Which brings me to those fucking posts on Brushfield St, near Brick Lane, with some horrendous sign by the East London Space Management Corporation, or summink, warning that bicycles chained to them will be removed & impounded. I mean, wtf?! Bikes take up almost no space, are environmentally friendly, and blah blah blah. Surely they should be trying to get more people on bikes, and rewarding those of us who don't drive everywhere. Bet they're in the TFL's pocket.

Sorry for kidnapping your rant, Cornelius. Haven't been in for a while, but Condor often do discounts on those Kryptonite mini jobbies, don't they? Not so cheap, but decent enough. Thinking about angle-grinding their fence yet? I know a guy...

i completely agree with you addie.....tell the cafe people to fuck off as that lamppost has nothing to do with them.....as appose to the railings that Cornelius locked his bike to which belonged to someone else....maybe the sign wasn't in direct line of sight but that is no excuse and obviously something the owners didn't care about.

i use a trelock pk610 cable lock:

along with a D-lock: either another trelock, or an abus:

trelock: abus:

but what i also try to do is lock it up with other people so there are multiple bikes and multiple locks all together, providing more of a deterrent (but also more of an attraction, i guess)

This thread has reminded me of this site which was 'big' in the London cycling world a few years ago :)

I have one of the Kryptonite New York Chain s (a metre long version) theyre not /that/ heavy, and the key has a nice little light on it for something. Dont get old stock though, the ones from about a year or so ago had locks that could be opened with a biro.
And Re. the angle-grinding, I had to angle-grind mine a few months ago as the key broke in the lock (oil your locks!!!) and it was attached to this massive lamp-post and my bike, in whitechapel. Luckily there is a bell-maker's near and they helped me with the angle-grinding, it took 20 minutes tho. Not many people carry angle-grinders too. I heard that you can freeze them and smash them - dont know if it's true. Hacksaws and bolt-cutters dont even scratch the metal on a kryptonite though, theyre great...as long as you dont have to cut through one, as it is a complete pain in the arse to do.


...one bad thing is that the protective cover comes off pretty much straight away, but it can be replaced with a mtb inner-tube (*top-tip!!*)

i use a kryptoflex to secure my back wheel to frame and then a kryptonite ny 3000 which i i absolutely love.

probably going to get a mini kryptonite which will take up less space in my bag than the kryptoflex.

invest in good locks! a guy i know had his mtb stolen in leeds city centre and when i asked if he had a good lock he didnt have a clue about whether locks were good or not DICK!
i have good locks but i cant really do anything about the cunt who keeps leaving our bike cellar open at my halls.

Similar problem at my uni with the bike store. It's on swipe card access, except people just hold the door open for anyone to let in or out even though there's a sign from the Met on the front in massive writing saying "DO NOT LET PEOPLE TAILGATE YOU INTO THIS AREA!"...

I saw a big chain in a hardware store for €30 and a Master Lock for €20, I think that might be my next investment.

I am sure it doesn't need pointing out here, all the locks mentioned above will only stand up to - at best - 60 seconds to 2 minutes of attack before a thief can walk off with your bike.

tynan - even the kryptonites? by crikey, what do you use - the ebola virus?

there's a kryptonite chain on gumtree for £50

why get a kryptonite?

go to a hardware store, they'll cut you any length of hardened steel chain for much cheaper.

..i think locks are one of the biggest cycle cons around. Motorcycle locks go for INCREDIBLE amounts of money. Any they don't even hold up. Remember the Almax guy bolt-cropping those chains on youtube in seconds? And they were all sold secure gold rated.

I use a Kryptonite New York Lock - not the Fahgeddabout it, but the bigger version designed for 'Powersports', the M-18-WL. It weighs a ton, but I tend to leave it where I lock the bike during the week and take it home at the weekend. It has an 18mm thick bar and says "You might want to consider trying to steal some other cycle nearby" to anyone who cares to listen. Add to that the lightweight Abus Granit Futura I have clipped to my frame, and a Kryptoflex cable to keep the wheels safe. I also have a spare Abus shielded cable that I use when I have left the NY Lock outside work. The chains look the business, but I was put off them when someone posted a video of some guys with a bolt cutter making short work of pretty much all of them on this very forum.

The top of the range Abus square section D locks that d0cA recommends also look pretty good, and they're probably lighter than the NY lock, but they don't look quite as scary.

Totally agree with bobby on the lock-oiling issue, particularly if the weather ain't so good.

...the biro/kryptonite lock-pick :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl1gsW3KcBU

- couldn't find any using bolt-cutters, they didn't work at all when I tried, but then I'm not the strongest chap on the planet. Some people break the D-locks by putting a length of scaffolding pole in and levering them apart. But if you choose the right thing to lock to then there's no space left in the D to get anything in-between.

One of the best bits of advice I heard was (fairly obviously) that if you know someone who's had a bike nicked then don't buy the lock they had.

...I sometimes see just locks attached to railings with the 'private property no bikes'etc signs, I assumed caretakers just cut thru the bike and leave the lock as some kind of threat... just paranoia? anyone heard of this happening?

Someone did that pen trick on my d-lock, about a year ago.

I wonder how many people had had bikes stolen by thieves who were wise to it? Kryptos were bic-pickable for years until the info was released online.

Fuck the lot of them.

I use a big fat abus cable and a kryptonite mini but i would NEVER leave my bike outside, out of my direct line of site ANYWHERE in london. in brick lane i have caught someone tagging my bike twice, and the same goes for brixton (2 bad areas i know). But yeah, the best way to not getting a bike stolen is to always be able to lock it in areas away from the public. Not exactly helpful, but any lock will be fucked in a depressingly small amount of time.

I swear I've said this so many times on here.

Chains
If you really don't want your bike being nicked, don't buy a chain. You can get through them with bolt croppers, if you have the big ones that have levers that are over a metre long. Croppers like that cost serious money, but if you're a serious bike thief, you'll have probably nicked them anyway.

Chain bought from a locksmith
How does the locksmith cut the chain to the length you want in the shop? With bolt croppers. Not even big ones either. If you really want to buy chain from a locksmith, get them to order you a length that has been made to length, rather than cut (my friend's Dad was a locksmith and ran his own business, he did that).

Almax chains
The Krypto chain in that video was "donated". How do you know it was really a krypto chain in there? Kryptonite laughed their heads off at the video, they mentioned it on their blog.

Bic on Krypto locks
Doesn't work on any of the new Krypto locks. That bic thing was on the net years ago. They all have disc locks now, which are very difficult to pic, but not impossible.

Cable locks
Again, no. If you peal back the amour on the cable you can get to the cable core then crop it.

D Locks
1) Car jack in the lock.
- Nope, if you lock your bike up properly. Fill the d-lock as much as possible so that a thief can't get any tools in there. Failing that, buy a small d-lock like the krypto new york fahgettaboudit or evo mini.

2) Pick it.
- Nope, if you lock up the bike so that the key hole is facing down so that they can't look into it easily. Facing it down also stops, in the unlikely event that a thief got liquid nitrogen, them from spraying it into the lock easily.

3) Smash it hard.
- Again, don't leave the lock laying on the ground or anything hard.

Freezing locks
Liquid nitrogen is really expensive to get. BOC gases aren't going to sell it to anyone either, I see the vans rolling into my department at uni quite often, and the machines that use it cost a fortune to buy and run. It's so unlikely to happen.

Street furniture
Lock to something that would be a pain in the arse to cut through, or where there are loads of people in a well lit area.

Lock through wheels.
Even if they cut through the furniture, then they have to break the lock anyway - more effort. If you're a bike thief, are you going to nick one expensive bike or several average ones?

What do I do?

Out, leaving bike for a few min:
Krypto New York 3000 + Krypto evo cable through front wheel and saddle rails.

Leaving bike for an hour:
Above, plus Krypto Evo mini locking front wheel to street furniture.

All day at uni:
Krypto New York 3000, Krypto Evo Mini, and for a little extra deterrent a Abus chain I leave in the bike store. Then Krypto cable for saddle :P

Over the top? Maybe. I just don't want my bike nicked.

Don't forget this....
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html

I lock through the rear stays as well, because my dropouts on my roadrat are spaced 130mm and with the krypto mini you can remove the wheel, because it's so small, and then take the lock out at an angle through the stays. Plus it fills the lock more = harder to get tools in.