BikeRadar lock test: £11,000 of locks destroyed - the results

BowSideChamp

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Leaving aside your locking strategy, having bike insurance won't do anything to prevent theft.

Yes nothing can prevent a bike from being stolen. Bolt cutters can defeat almost any lock and what it can't can be cut by an angle grinder. The only measure to ensure that you are not out of pocket is insurance.

tomasrojo

You can save up the cost of a new bike, putting what you would pay monthly to insurance into a 30-day notice account. If you use a gold-rated and a silver-rated lock intelligently, you will be able to save a grand or so by the time your bike is stolen.

In fact, though I am sure that at some point one of my bikes will be stolen, it hasn't happened yet in decades of parking in all sorts of places. Did have a front wheel stolen once, so I made sure to secure that since then.

As for bolt cutters, the best gold-rated locks are defeated by 1m-long bolt cutters or longer, which are rare. You can pretty much discount them, at least for now. The higher-rated locks also hasten the wear in angle grinder discs, so unless you've got a great bike, they probably won't bother wearing the disc for yours.

Slydice

They put the results on a table and uploaded it as an image to imgur:
https://imgur.com/Hlbrlov

endacl

FWIW, my anecdotal experiential review... I’ve been using a combination of the Krypto NY Fahhgeddiboutit, Abus Bordo x plus folder, and aux cable for years now.

I’ve never come back to the bike to see evidence that anybody’s even tried their luck. And I’ve locked my bike up in some pretty dodgy locations! What I have seen, though, is other bikes having been stolen from those locations. I’ve noticed bikes being stolen that have been well-locked with crappy locks, and badly-locked with good locks. No lock will make your bike 100% secure. But good locks used properly will make it vastly more secure than all the others.

To paraphrase the old joke, I don’t have to outrun the lion, I just have to outrun you.

rubadub

tomasrojo wrote: »

As for bolt cutters, the best gold-rated locks are defeated by 1m-long bolt cutters or longer, which are rare. You can pretty much discount them, at least for now.

If you see them cropping good locks they are almost using the ground or something else for leverage. i.e. 1 handle is on the ground and they are putting all their weight on the other, often half jumping up and down and "shocking" the handle. This is why locking technique is so important. Keep the chain up high and wrap it around so it is taut (not slack) and they cannot pull it down. However being taut makes it easier for grinding.



I am happy enough with my NY standard D, key is a bit crap. The onguards are very good value and have better keys. A big plus of the NY is that it is easily identifiable to thieves, I imagine many might not know the better scoring abus and would go attack a bike with it before the yellow NY.

See his hopping technique

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuTrVoo3OV0

if you can impart that force holding it with 2 hands you should not be robbing bikes, you could make a living winning strongman contests.

tomasrojo

Yeah, it's a bit like the gold-rated locks and people being shocked they can be opened by skilled lock pickers (given a fair bit of time). If you're a skilled lock picker there are soooo many more valuable things you can steal than a bike.

tomasrojo

Suzuki_TL1000R wrote: »

It can be broken open simply by just twisting a steel bar thru it tho ffs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he5EsREkZe4

I came across a review of the Litelok and I remembered this video being posted here.

The reviewer at thebestbikelock.com tried to replicate the lock breaking in this video and he couldn't do it. He thinks it's a very secure lock.

http://thebestbikelock.com/best-chain-lock/litelok-review-lightweight-and-high-security/