Hey Crawdaddio:
Ever heard of Head padlocks? I bought on about 1985 at a U Haul place when I was moving and wanted a padlock for the truck. I didn't know anything about them, it jut looked sturdy and saved me a trip to go buy a lock somewhere else. I tried to get another key made for it at a locksmith (I think it was AAA in Glenview) and the locksmith told me he couldn't duplicate the key because it was a high security lock. He did seem pretty impressed by it too. Is this a good lock?

Sorry, I haven't heard of "head" brand locks.
If he told you it was a good lock, it probably is.
Got a photo?

I'll get one for you. The keys got a dimple in it along the groove, and the locksmith said that's part of what made it more secure.

I'm looking into buying a bicycle, and it seems I would be best getting a decent lock with my purchase. I've handled the Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit chain lock, and the thing, it felt, weighed close to ten pounds. I want to be safe, but, honestly, I don't see myself lugging around ten pounds of steel just to lock up by bicycle, and, if it's what I buy, I'm almost certain I'll ride less often (not something I wish to do).

Are there any other "good" options? Yes, the bike will sometimes be locked up outdoors in a large city, and, from what I've read, a thin "cable lock" probably will be too flimsy to rely on.

Would a high-quality U-lock be good? Would a Kryptonite U-lock, for instance, be as strong as one of their chains? How would the weight be?

Thanks much.

Check out these sites for independent tests of locks.

https://www.stichtingart.nl/sloten_resultaat.asp - Check 'Foto's tonen' for pictures.

https://www.soldsecure.com/search/ - Search under 'bicycle gold' for the highest quality locks.

If you only want to carry one lock, I would recommend the toughest, smallest, most expensive Kryptonite U lock that you can swing.
Use the Sheldon Brown method:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html

Or, if possible (by using a larger U lock), lock around the back wheel as above AND the seat tube.

Depending on your bike and locking options, you might not even have to up-size the lock. I was surprised, since my mini evolution looks so small, but I can usually lock around the rear wheel and the seat tube (or at least one of the stays if I'm lazy) without any problem or wrangling to make it fit.

Thanks. I'm not comfortable with Sheldon Brown's method: fine, you can't get the wheel through the rear triangle, but I don't want a thief to dismantle the former to find that out, and leave me to reassemble my bike: I'd rather go around the rear wheel and part of the frame.

I was considering the Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit U-lock, but the thing is tiny/ I just wonder if if the New York Lock STD is as tough to break as the chain+lock.

Thanks again.

The Kryptonite NY M-18WL lock uses the same 18mm diameter and material shackle as the NY Fahgettaboudit but is listed as having interior dimensions of 4" x 10.25". I would think the high grade hardened alloy of any of the Kryptonite NY locks would be harder to cut than a hardened chain due to the larger diameter.

Sounds good. I'll probably go ahead and get a Krptonite U-lock. Thanks, all.

Yes, absolutely.

There are many psychological and economic studies that are publicly available that have studied this very phenomenon.

Quick unbiased example.

Line up 8 women of varying levels of beauty. 1 of them needs to be a 3%er, exceedingly and noticeably attractive, and she needs to wear a little make-up. For a control, Put them in a room where they can't see who is observing them so they don't signal with body language. Ask 100 men which female they find most attractive. The number who will pick the 3%er tends to lie around the 91-97 margin.

Now do the same experiment with bikes and bike thieves. I'm sure the margin will be similar.

Humans seek things, whatever these things might be, that express/signal high quality. We are genetically predispositioned to act like this. Signals of low/high quality and level of desirability correlate. High quality things tend to be scarce. Why would a thief risk retaliation/harm/criminal-justice for a low quality item when the same level of risk could be applied to acquire a higher quality item?

Yes, absolutely.

There are many psychological and economic studies that are publicly available that have studied this very phenomenon.

Quick unbiased example.

Line up 8 women of varying levels of beauty. 1 of them needs to be a 3%er, exceedingly and noticeably attractive, and she needs to wear a little make-up. For a control, Put them in a room where they can't see who is observing them so they don't signal with body language. Ask 100 men which female they find most attractive. The number who will pick the 3%er tends to lie around the 91-97 margin.

Now do the same experiment with bikes and bike thieves. I'm sure the margin will be similar.

Humans seek things, whatever these things might be, that express/signal high quality. We are genetically predispositioned to act like this. Signals of low/high quality and level of desirability correlate. High quality things tend to be scarce. Why would a thief risk retaliation/harm/criminal-justice for a low quality item when the same level of risk could be applied to acquire a higher quality item?

A POS bike locked up to the same pole as mine was stolen today; the cheap cable lock was cut. The high-end U-lock securing my much more expensive bike was left untouched.

Count your blessings that the thief was not carrying the right tool to break your lock.

I actually worked for Kryptonite for three months in their customer service department. It SUCKED. I went into the job thinking that it would be a really cool place to work...probably a ton of bikers who were all super healthy and into the job for more than just a pay check.

The reality was nothing like that. It was a super uptight office environment, mistakes were not tolerated, and no excuse was given, unless management screwed up, than well you know....things happen.

No one else biked to work, and most of the customer service department couldn't begin to relate to the customers, because they were all caravan driving soccer moms whose only contact with bicycling was when they yelled at the kids to get their K-Mart brand hot pink/white bike off of the lawn.

While working there,

-I've seen locks that were returned due to the warranty agreement that had been cut through with a torch. We used to receive at least once a week by mail.

-If you live in a high crime area, I wouldn't trust the U-Lock alone. They had by far the highest failure rate of any Kryptonite lock, outside of the crap that Kryptonite made for the big box stores.

-I frequently talked to customers in the Metro NYC area who wouldn't use anything less than the Motorcycle grade locks to secure they're bikes.

-The biggest idiots to deal with were the people who bought their Kyrptonite lock from Walmart, the Kryptonite locks they sell at Wally world are not the same locks they sell in a bike shop. They are a different low quality product line.

The worst were the people that buy the re-settable combination lock with the cable.

A vast majority of the phone calls regarding that lock is how to reset the combination if it's locked and can't remember the combination that they set. There was no way of resetting the lock. You can only reset the combination if the lock isn't actually locked. If you can't open the lock, you can't reset the lock.

People, particularily men, couldn't grasp the concept of why it might be a bad idea to design a re-settable combination lock, that would actually allow you to change the combination WHILE the lock is in use. If that was the case....it MUST be defective

The stupid lock caused more heart ache for people.


-Coolest customer ever was a Texan who had moved to New York City. He called at least weekly to fill out the insurance paperwork to have his bike replaced. He wasn't a scammer either. He lived in a bad part of NYC and just couldn't keep a bike, no matter what lock he used to lock it up. So he bought the Kryptonite locks and filed a claim for the theft. Kryptonite never paid out a large amount, but it was enough for him to go Wal-Mart and get another bike.

Everybody in the department knew his story by heart.

I think he was using the NYC Chain lock at the time and thieves still cut it. He had gotten so sick of his bike getting stolen that he only bought Wal-Mart quality bikes. Since he only had them about a week the quality never was really an issue. And he told me that he was sick of constantly replacing a good bike, so he always bought junkers.

He was never even mad about it.

-Dealing with people who had bikes stolen wasn't usually pleasant. Most people were pretty short tempered, even when they did stupid things with their bikes. Like using a NYC chain lock to lock a bike to a chain link fence....

And than complaining when their claim was denied by Kryptonite. Due to the fact that the lock didn't fail the fence did.

Yes you are culpable as to what you lock your bike to.

-There were people who scammed or tried to scam the warranty policy, they'd get a Wal-Mart bike stolen and yet file a report for a top of the line road bike. And to think Kryptonite wants to see a receipt for that $3,000 bike...hmm.

Oh yeah and...

Kryptonite only makes about 6 key patterns, per lock style, if that. So your Kryptonite bike lock key probably fits quite a few locks on other bikes.

With the barrel keys, like they use on the U-Locks, they only use maybe three different key patterns.

Sounds like BS to me. What exactly do you base this on?

I seriously doubt that. There are 100s of thousands of possible key codes. Lock manufacturers/distributors usually break them up by region. So, if there are redundancies, they occur in completely different sections of the country/world.

Thanks for the first hand account of what your job was like though. Good to know what their customer service is like.

Gee only the fact that I was the person that filled the key orders for them. There were THREE boxes that contained the keys when I went to fill the orders for the barrel keys, one series of numbers was found in box A (for instance serial numbers that end with 0000-3333), one series of numbers were in box B (3334-6666), and the last series were in box C (6667-9999).

So a full serial of 123456667 and 2341566667 both took the same key, based on the last four numbers being 6667.

I don't care what you've lead yourself to believe and I don't care if you believe me, I'm telling you what I saw.

As someone said, you would THINK that they have thousands of key cuts....but it's not so. They thought they were being clever by hiding the information within a code. And, than they change the key cut for the various groups every so often, which does throw in some variety,


For instance, they might change the cut for a group every year, so a serial number that ends in 6667 for a lock that was manufactured in 2007, might have a different key cut than a serial number that ends in 6667 for a lock that was manufactured in 2008. But they only purchase huge quantities of limited key cuts.

They mass produce thousands of locks per year and ship them all over the world. Just by virtue of the fact that product is shipped far and wide, that thins the odds of someone actually stumbling upon two bike locks from the same year, that are in the same number sequence group even more.

Add the factors of a occasionally varying the key cuts, the fact that the product is widely dispersed, and that most people aren't going to start randomly trying other bike locks on the street with their key.....than WHO is going to notice.

If it hasn't been noticed by now, than obviously they're system works.

And the serial number information was just an example of how they match the key based on your serial number, not the exact system that they use.

Again, the standard key locks offer more variations in key cuts than the barrel cut keys.

And, I should mention though, some of the their higher end locks did have custom cut keys. But Kryptonite isn't going to burden themselves with the expense of specially cutting keys for mass produced locks.

It seems like that would be fairly easy to check - just take my key to the LBSs around here and see if it fits any of the other locks. Maybe once the semester is over I'll do that.

Different locks are a variable. You didn't control for the same kind of lock in your red herring example.

It may be BS...but it wouldn't surprise me if true. I bought a Yakima lock system for my bike rack and when I wanted to have all the locks keyed the same...I learned, as did my LBS, that every Yakima lock in the shop was already keyed the same. I tried my key in a friends lock, and, you guessed it, it unlocked his as well. I have since gotten rid of my Yakima stuff. I'm getting rid of all my Master locks as well after reading this thread and watching some vids on YouTube.

This thread has been a real eye opener.

Thanks
Mikey

hey, crawdadio, how are the abus granit series in your opinion?

Real life example. Bikes aren't women, no matter what you snuggle up with at night.

What? This has NOTHING to do with Kryptonite.