Protect Your Bicycle Seat from Thieves

Okay, you don't want to give-up using the quick release on your seat post and you don't want to buy the Pinhead locking skewers. But, you still want to keep your seat safe from theft. Some ways people cope with this common problem are to either take their seat with them when they park their bike - which forces them to readjust the seat when they put it back on - or they can try locking the seat to the frame with a cable lock, which is only effective if a potential thief doesn't carry a $20 pair of bolt cutters, which some of them do.

So, how to solve this problem?

Here's a which I recently discovered: use an old bike chain.

Now, your bike chain is the primary means for your bike's locomotion with every turn of your pedals putting energy through your chain and pushing you forward. Even though bike chains are built to be tough, they don't last forever and you can use and old bike chain to protect your seat from thieves.

Here's what you need:

1. a bike chain, which you can get at a bike store, if you don't have one laying-around. Mechanics may have a pile of old chains which they can scavenge for parts when they need them;
2. a chain tool;
3. an old inner tube;
4. some electrical tape;
5. a zip-tie.

Directions:

1. Using your chain tool, remove one of the pins that holds the chain in its loop;
2. loop one end of the chain through the rungs underneath your seat and through the upside down V portion of your frame formed between your seat post and seat stay. How much slack you keep on the chain depends on how often you adjust your seat, if at all. Try to keep it as tight as possible;
3. Remove the extra portion of the chain with your chain tool, so your chain is long enough to go from frame to seat and back again in one loop;
4. take your old inner tube and measure-out a portion long enough to cover the length of the chain in one loop, with a little extra so the two ends will overlap. Cut off the extra portion.
   Put a bit of oil on the chain to protect it against rust.
5. Put the chain inside the tube and loop the whole thing between your seat and frame.
6. Using your chain tool, reattach the two ends of the chain so it's in one loop again.
7. Using your electrical tape, tape the two ends of the tube together, so the chain is completely covered. The oil on the chain will protect it from rusting for awhile, but this isn't a weatherproof seal.
8. to keep the chain from moving-around back there, use a zip-tie to secure the two sides together as tightly as possible.

This will not protect your seat from a thief with a serious pair of bolt cutters. But, it will protect it from most thieves, who usually don't carry them. Besides, a bike chain is much harder to cut than the typical cable lock, so it may take a bit more time for a thief to cut through it. Most thieves may decide that taking your bike seat involves too much time and work, so they may move-on to a much easier target.

Duane Browning

Bike Locks: What to Use & What Not To Use

Most of the bikes I have heard of being stolen seem to have been secured with cable locks, instead of a U-lock.

Yes, cable locks are lighter and easier to carry than a U-lock. But, a cable lock is so easy to cut with a $20 pair of bolt cutters that you may as well put a "Steal This Bike" sign on your bicycle. Seriously, despite knowing this - and you do know how easy they are to cut - so many people insist on using them that I am surprised that even more of your bikes aren't getting stolen.

U-locks are heavy and they can be a pain in the ass to carry, but using one of these can protect your bike from theft a lot better than any cable lock I have ever seen.

Remember Adchoppers? In case you don't, here's a history lesson: some idiot thought that it would be a great idea to lock a couple dozen Schwinn Stingray bikes to bike racks around the Downtown, Waikiki and University areas with signs on them for people to advertise their businesses. He thought that it was such a great idea to have a bike locked to every single bike rack on Bishop Street and lots of racks in Waikiki that it just couldn't go wrong and he'd have people paying him over a $100 to place their ads on his bikes. I think it was $125 per ad, per bike. He almost never had any ads on them and his bikes were vandalized almost from the beginning by people angry that he was using-up half the available bike rack space all over Downtown.

To make matters worse for himself, he used cable locks. Not the cheap ones, but they were thicker than the usual ones you see. Still, they were cable locks and most of his bikes ended-up getting stolen. He finally wised-up, removed the bikes he still had left and forgot the whole thing.
The lesson here is that a cable lock might seem convenient, but they are just cheap pieces of shit whose only selling point is that they are lighter. Not more secure or even as secure as U-locks, just lighter. Even bike shop owners admit that cable locks don't protect your bike like a U-lock does, but people still want them because they are lighter and they are cheaper.

Get wise to the Real World, people! Buy a Kryptonite or OnGuard U-lock to secure your bike. They may be heavier and more expensive, but they are a better guarantee that your bike will still be there when you go back.

An even better choice is a Kryptonite Chain. Way heavier than a U-lock, but it's even harder to cut than one. Some people have issues with the little U-lock that comes with it, but I never had a problem with it.

You've got to stop letting thieves steal your bike just because you don't want to carry a heavy lock around. Be smarter than the thieves and you can keep your bike.


Duane Browning