Alan, I think you're being a bit unfair to a new member. I think it's pretty obvious from his posts that he's not an ***** alter ego; he's even said he'd go the Fahgettaboudit route again. Not something you'd hear from *****. I think it's pure freakish coincidence that his bike was stolen and he posted when he did. And it's a good reminder that any lock can be defeated if the right thief comes along.

I feel the same way. In fact, my extremely ugly beater-- naturally acquired ugliness over years of abuse-- is next in line for a beauty makeover. It's going to be stunning when I'm done with it.

CCTV footage ...

file: https://www.filecrunch.com/file/~3qxz5o
player: https://www.americandynamics.net/supp...ayer_3143.aspx

I had to install and reboot to get it work properly. You should get the timecode at the top left corner, starting at 0950 and ending at 0952 - it looks like it skips, but I am told that is the motion sensor, and the time code does skip with it.

If anyone can get this into an AVI that would awesome, I really want to put this on youtube for maximum exposure, this guy should not get away with this either now or again.

Alanbikehouston - yes I was offended by your comments, but lets put that behind us? I am not a troll, I am tired though now

Jon

I downloaded both, but don't know how to get the player to play the file...

drag and drop the img file onto the player window worked for me

Jon

Mod note: He is in Chicago. Lighten up, guys.

+1. Sometimes coincidences just happen. You might notice that Jon's writing, unlike that of our ***** friends, lacks that certain crazed tone/tempo.

I can't get it to work, if somebody could convert this to a web viewable format that would be great!

"It is possible to modify a high quality older model bike to appear to be worth $20 "

Take your seat post with you. Additionally skewers are also easy to take with you. MKS removable pedals.

If you bought a canvas wheel cover you could take the front wheel and store it at work.

Groddy but possible is take the chain with you.

The final frontier is etch your name and/or cell# on parts. Rim brake arms are a cheap obvious part.

I'm glad somebody finally said it!

Plus everything he says is logical and sensible. The guys giving him the hardest time don't understand metals or cutting them at all. Anyone who has worked with metals and cutting or machining it or designing things out of it knows that every single word he said makes perfect sense.

Welcome jonnyboy77 I know everything you say is accurate, so do lots of others just reading, and not posting.

I guess I'm just real slow. I'd have thought a power cutting disk would make a cut about 1/16th of an inch wide, and leave the cut metal bright and shiny, not a cut half an inch wide that is corroded and rusty. To me, a gap half an inch wide suggests the lock was cut twice: two cuts made 1/2 inch apart. For the metal to be so corroded, it would suggest that the cuts were made days, or weeks before the video and photos were made.

But, YOU are a metals expert. So, recreate this for us. Get an old, cheap Kryptonite u-lock. Correctly lock it to the rear wheel of a bike, and fill the interior of the "U" with a wide, beefy locking post. Cut a gap of 1/2 inch in just one leg of the "U". Then, try to slip the rear wheel through that half inch gap.

And, take photos of the "cut" that show whether the interior of the cut section is "bright and shiny" or corroded and rusty.

If YOU can duplicate the OP's claims (correctly lock a Kryptonite lock around the rear wheel and of bike plus around a wide locking post...and "steal" the bike in under two minutes...and the interior of the shackle is "instantly" rusty and corroded...well, you would be right, and I'd be wrong.

The editors of "Cycling Plus" run tests of locks every year and publish the results. They wrote that it was NOT possible to open a CORRECTLY INSTALLED high-end Kryptonite U-lock by cutting just one side of the "U". In their tests, it was necessary to cut BOTH sides of the "U", IF the "U" has been properly filled by the rear wheel and a wide locking post.

If a lock was sitting on a workbench, I'd think you could cut just one leg of the "U" and then rotate the shackle until the gap widens. But, if the owner is using the "Sheldon Brown" method, the interior of the "U" is filled by the rear wheel and a beefy, wide locking post...rather hard to see how the rear wheel can be "slipped" through one half inch gap.

The other "odd" thing about this story. The OP claims the video shows the crook stole the bike is less than two minutes. The editors of "Cycling Plus" wrote that they attacked a similar Kryptonite lock using power tools with new cutting blades. Based on their results, and the need to cut both legs of the "U", it would take far, far longer than "two minutes" to open this lock with cutting tools.

Lastly, virtually every "hoax" that has appeared in the Forums over the past several years involves a new member who makes surprising or controversial claims in just his first or second post. If the OP had been a member of the Forum for a couple of years, and had posted in dozens of threads NOT related to Kryptonite locks, I'd be a bit less doubtful about his story. But, he is making these claims in just his SECOND post ever.

A lightsaber will cut through a U lock in like 2 seconds.

I'm just sayin'.

Why didn't you go learn about grinding and cutting steel the last time I mentioned it? Don't you live in a big city? This is common stuff. You invest the time to learn, I have the knowledge already, it's up to you.
There's no reason for me to teach the internet to cut a lock. That's not helpful for cyclists.
With the yellow pages and a phone you could understand in one afternoon if you really wanted to learn something.
The number of posts does not change anything in this case. It's just a guy that got a lock cut. Go find a machine shop or a welding shop and see this yourself. Go to the local fire dept. and ask them to show you how they get into chain locked buildings that are on fire. Use you computer to learn about grinding and cutting steel. First hand experience is a great way to understand something.

What the heck do you imagine these locks are made of ? Kryptonite?

Chuck Norris can do it with intimidation alone. The lock gets so scared it breaks itself.

Most non-stainless steel alloys will rust heavily within 12 hours given the OP's listed conditions (high humidity and/or rain.) Especially if there's rough pitting/scoring from being cut, and quicker if there's any mild acidity to the exposed surfaces. "Instantly" is a bit of a stretch for visibility, but the rusting does begin in that short a time. It just usually takes a few hours before it's visible.

/Manufacturing engineer, re-design and fabrication. I'll post degredation vs. relative humidity and temperature charts if you really want to know how fast different steel alloys rust.
//Seriously, this is grade-school science fair material. Steel wool in tap water, salt water, vinegar, and water with baking soda.

Yeah, but it's tough to carry Chuck Norris around in a messenger bag.

Done. Used CamStudio to do a screen recording while it played. Source file isn't the best quality, so here's my first conversion of it with the default settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtXJ7hH518

That coulda been Jimmy Freakin Hoffa for all we can see in that video. It doesn't look like it was secured in the "Sheldon Brown" method either.

I did learn one thing though always park where the cam can see you. Parking behind a bloody pillar was mistake #1

Yeah. It's not so much the fitting him in there, I mean, if you tell him he's going to get to kick the crap out of a bike thief he'll totally fold himself up and climb into the bag. It's the weight of the enormous steel balls that's really the issue here...

I stand corrected, he is not a typicall tool a bike thief would carry.
But hey, anything could happed. After all this is the interwebnetworld!

Wow. I'm really sorry to hear about what happened. That never would have happened in Las Vegas...

Perhaps it would be better in general if locks were made of harder to cut materials such as Ti or a cobalt derivative (such as talonite or stellite) as opposed to fast rusting mild steel. Not only will the locks themselves be lighter, but it will take specialized saw blades (which aren't cheap) to cut through these materials as the saw teeth (usually bi-metal blades) will easily bind since these materials cannot be cleanly cut via saw. The only downside will be that the lock will probably cost as much as a bike, but this might be mitigated a bit if a lot of locks are sold.

Another idea is to fill each lock with some kind of noxious pressurized gas guaranteed to explode if the lock wall is cut. Or some sort of add-on device that will electrify the lock if the lock wall is ever broken.

My stepdad who has been welding for over 35 years agrees with you, Clifton. I can attest to the high humidity of a Chicago summer.

These locks aren't made of plain old carbon steel. There's a lot of steel out there, and the good locks are made out of some of the tough stuff. Very few steels (I work with the stuff) cannot be cut with hardware store-available tooling. (I've come across one example, but it's extremely brittle) If I remember, I'll see if I can go after my New York u-lock with the hardness tester at work, that'll be some good info.
The heavy rust is actually a good indication: Steel dust will rust up like that given any motivation at all. Cutting that lock took a fair bit of work, the cut shows a lot of impatient seesaw action with the saw. The surface of the cut also suggests that the material was removed very slowly, that saw wasn't knocking loose nice clean chips, more like little grainy specks, I'd bet. And over enough time to reduce at least some of the kerf to powder, which would produce that rust right away. You can even see the rusty dust worked into the plastic of the lock.

There's not much room to make these locks more difficult to cut. The material needs to be ductile enough to form, and must be possible to cut with reasonably standard tooling in order to create the functional details. Titanium isn't exactly hard to cut. Although it's softer than steel, it can work harden and dull tooling easily, but with the right tooling and cutting speed it cuts like butter. Whoever cut this lock wasn't deterred by a dull tool anyway, that lock was the end of the blade very early in the cut, he just kept going and scraped through with what was left. And although Stellite alloys would likely devour the average hardware store sawzall blade, would stellite roundbar survive a forming process? And even if an uncuttable lock could be created, would a thief hesitate to cut a $3000 frame to make off with $1000 worth of components?

Maybe locks should be filled with sodium. Might incinerate the bike, but it might incinerate the thief as well!

Sorry about your bike theft Johnny. That sucks, and I really knows what it feels like to be left high and dry with nothing but a cut lock left behind (you'd think the *****holes would take that too, but go figure). Clearly this guy was a pro who most likely had been targeting your wheels for a some time. I bet the vid shows him casually walking up and cutting the lock as if it were his own and he had forgotten the key. Sadly, we live in a society where people tend to be conflict averse and therefore avoid getting involved in OPP, even when it involves a blatant crime like this.

If you reinvest in a new bike, I may suggest packing two kryptonites next time. Reason being, a cheap battery operated sawzaw or handheld grinder with a diamond blade attachment runs low on power after cutting through one krypto, at which point the thief either has to pack a second battery (highly unlikely), a second saw (even more highly unlikely), string out a power cord w/extension (desperate), or go home, recharge, and return for the second cut (even more desperate).

In short, off the top of my head I recall reading that one krypto has a deterrent rate of about 95%; two have a statistically higher rate of 99.99%. Then again, if it's either a personal grudge or somebody is determined to break the locks, there really is no fullproof way of stopping them.

I agree with this, but what I still can't wrap my mind around is WHAT exactly that guy was USING to cut the lock (according to the video). If it was a sawzall, that cut is ~ 1/4" wide, like ABH said, so I, too, highly doubt it was a sawzall. Besides, to use a sawzall, the object you cut needs to have good resistance, otherwise the reciprocation of the blade will drag the lock around making it impossible to cut. That means the OP locked his bike such that the lock was so stationary that the vibration from a sawzall did not move it around much; however that still does not explain the width of the cut. Then there's the theory of some sort of battery operated hand held grinder, but every grinder I've used throws sparks, and I didn't really see any sparks flying on the video, though I admit the thief is hidden by that column. I suppose he could have used his bag as a cover to catch the sparks, though. Lastly, both a sawzall and grinder will make noise as someone already mentioned. Too bad the camera doesn't pick up sound as well.


The hope is that if the thief is some sort of druggie, he would not be spending his easy earned cash on cutting tools and carbide blades - unless he's somehow able to steal those as well. If one lock is able to defeat, say, 3-4 blades, then you make the thief have to carry around tons of blades plus extra batteries, and you make him/her have to stay around more than 2:40 minutes in order to get a bike. Plus you also make the thief have to acquire the right tooling. I am fairly sure that there is no portable, battery operated hand held machine readily available that someone can buy off the shelf to cut Ti or Stellite! A tool using grinding discs, maybe; but that would certainly be a battery drain if the hand held tool could even generate the power.

But if the thief, then, goes into the component business by just cutting your frame, then you're screwed anyway. At least that slimeball will have to carry around a broken frame! (That is, unless he gets one of these bags.)