I’m looking for ways to prevent my seat post and wheels from stolen, and come across this product from Decathlon. Anyone know how and why it is anti-theft?
I don’t know what “locks with a special key” means. Does it mean that each set has a unique key so that if I buy two of these they would have different keys and can’t unlock each other?
by Ok_Principle_9986
5 Comments
Not a unique key per pack. Any bike shop would have the key as well.
Not hard to defeat, better than a quick release or Allen key, but may make it inconvenient for a basic easy opportunity thief. There are more expensive and secure versions of this from makers like Pinhead, but same idea
I have a set like this. The “key” is like a 5-sided Allen key, so like others said, not unique, and not particularly hard to defeat. But it makes it inconvenient enough for a thief that they’ll hopefully look elsewhere.
They can be defeated with pliers. Just clamp on the non drive side end hard and turn. Boom you’ve got yourself a free wheel! I know that because I took wheels from a clearly abandoned bike that way.
What we would do in San Francisco back in the day, is make sure we had bolts instead of quick releases, then, we would super glue ball bearings into the Allen key head. Does that make sense?
https://preview.redd.it/993399buldme1.png?width=992&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ea3e73c1b1458cc9cbcc02bd4b41b6847eceb44
Like this, now find a ball bearing that fits into this, and super glue it in. We would do this on everything, wheels, seat post, bars, stem, the entire bike. If you ever need to disassemble the bike, a solvent will get the bearings out in no time at all.
Boom, theft proof.
Edit: Bonus, its kind of hilarious to imagine someone taking some tools to your bike and then being like, “wtf?”
Edit Edit: Also, those keys for the anti-theft system are not unique at all. At the shop, we have a key ring with all of them so we can service bikes without needing to get keys from customers. Our shop could steel all your shit no problem at all. Also, you can just buy replacement keys. So, someone who *really* wanted to steel your shit wouldn’t really have a hard time doing so, all it would take is some casing.