Motorbike padlock and chain advice

eidolon · 6 Jan 2010 at 13:22

Ok, two questions here. First one is sensible, second is stupid for forgive me.

1) Can you recommend me a half decent padlock and chain to prevent opportunist thieves. My bike is only a 2006 CBR125 so not top of joyriders list and it's already got a Meta M357-TV2 and Smar****er tags. All I really want is to deter anyone from being able to basically push it away so probably only spend around £50ish. I know that even the best locks can be broken in 15 seconds but I just want to deter the opportunist.

2) Ermm......how am I supposed to fit the chain/lock? Do I feed it through the front/rear wheel and attach to a lamp post or what?

eidolon · 7 Jan 2010 at 12:47

Whilst I fully understand that most chains can be reasonably easily defeated I think I just prefer to secure my bike to something immovable. It's only a 125 so it's pretty light and could easily be lifted away. If it was chained to something solid they'd have to bring a set of good bolt cutters and that kinda thing is usually spotted by people.

eidolon · 7 Jan 2010 at 22:52

If I had a Ninja or R1 then I'd definitely spend the cash on a really good, heavy duty lock but my bike sadly is just a little CBR125 so it probably hasn't got enough power to lug a 2 stone chain around

I did a test fit and managed to just say fit a 1.2m Oxford hardcore XL chain under the pillion seat, I don't think anything bigger would fit. I would've got the Oxford but the links looked like they'd been cut with a hacksaw and re-welded, really poor quality.

eidolon · 7 Jan 2010 at 23:26

I'm not too worried about home, the bike is garaged which is protected by a good set of locks and I live in a nice enough area so hopefully it shouldn't be an issue.

I'm only really bothered about when I'm at work as it's not the best part of Bristol and I want to lock my bike to something solid.

eidolon · 8 Jan 2010 at 14:27

My office is less than 10m from where my bike will be parked which is covered by CCTV (which I can watch from my desk). I've already got the Meta alarm/immobiliser so I reckon a reasonable chain/padlock should be fine.

eidolon · 1 Mar 2010 at 12:53

I went for a 1.5m Oxford Hardcore XL. It probably puts of most opportunist thieves but if I had a more expensive bike I'd have invested a bit more.

Fits under my seat perfectly too so that's a bonus.