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Steve, I'm unconvinced.
especially not with a 'thin' 19mm chain like Almax's
and
FYI RiDE magazine did a locks & chains review with proper testing earlier this year and scored our Protector 19mm identically to the Almax Series IV - we both got joint first place
When you refer to your competitor as having a "thin" chain, yet it is the same thickness as your chain and you both scored jointly first place in a review... then you've put your comment in a negative light. It doesn't read as impartial from the outset, and I get that... why would it be, as you'd like to sell your product.
So on that footing your comment feels like it's trying to dissuade me from purchasing something from elsewhere, unfortunately that single word 'thin' taints the rest of the reading even though you've put good info into the comment.
But let's look at the PL362 and your claim that it is incompatible with, and provides enough space for bolt cutting, around the Almax IV 19mm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUGpQPujiEM&t=4m5s
Looks like the PL362 fits the 19mm Almax really well, and without offering enough space for a good enough pair of bolt cutters to get in and attack the padlock. I'm with you that the 16mm chain and this lock are not a good pairing, but the 19mm chain and this lock look good.
It is important that the chain link fills most of the space below the shackle on the lock, unless the shackle is as thick or thicker than the chain link.
My emphasis, but the PL362 has a 25mm shackle and the chains I'm looking at are 19mm.
To offer a comparison video with:
- A different lock
- A different chain
Well, that is not a like-for-like comparison.
I'm only wishing to protect my very lovely custom bike against 3 things:
- Bolt cutters
- Pickers (though there are few of these in the wild)
- Part strippers
For the bolt cutter protection either the Almax chain or your Protector 19mm chain would be up to the task, and I considered both equally.
For pickers, the Abloy remains unpicked, and the Squire has these YouTube videos. I figure that the bodies and shackles are equally difficult to bolt cut (lack of space, shrouded shackle, high hardness) and that from a bolt cutter perspective the Squire is as good as the Abloy.
But when it comes to pickability, even if I ignore the YouTube evidence as suspect, which key pattern did I trust to be more unpickable?
The Squire key:
Or the Abloy Sentry key:
I'm far more convinced about the Abloy ones. Even if everything else is equal, and ignoring doubt raised by YouTube videos of Squires being picked, the key of the Abloy is the thing that leads me to believe that the risk is mitigated to a greater degree with the Abloy than with the Squire.
So I'm sided with the Abloy PL362, and I circled back around to chains. There are videos and blogs showing the PL362 being well-suited to the Almax chain, fitting snugly and solidly. I couldn't find any to demonstrating that the Pragmasis chain is equally well suited to the PL362.
BTW, you could improve your product description here by providing measurements of the internal space in the links, the width of that space... as the reason I have chosen the Almax chain is because I could find info, and see in a video, that the lock was compatible with the chain without offering an additional attack vector (space for bolt cutters).
The final part of my equation is just a motion alarm. This will only ever be locked outside my office, under my window. Anyone that touches the bike is going to have me there in 30 seconds, but watching them within 10 seconds. So I feel somewhat confident that no-one is going to strip parts, without moving the bike, in the time that they have available to them.
I can't do anything about angle grinders, but that's the nature of the game. At least those are noisy.
- A different lock
Velocio-
Hi Velocio,
Sure, I want to sell my product, but more than that I want proper information and to allow people to make reasoned decisions. I will actively encourage people to buy products from other companies if I think they are better suited to their needs.
I said 'thin' re Almax's chain because it is less than 19mm across the 'flats'. It is not round but is slightly square. This gives them a commercial advantage in terms of campatibility with the standard SS65CS lock as their chain fits and ours doesn't so we have to get Squire to make a special version with a slightly wider opening (only 1mm clearance, though). However, my point here is that their flattened shape means there is more clearance inside the opening on the PL362 lock, and that could be significant for croppers and grinders. With the SS65CS, it is insignificant, but the PL362 is a different thing altogether.
You say the shackle on the PL362 is 25mm but that is actually the vertical clearance, which is not that important. The horizontal clearance is my main worry as that is 30mm, so lots of room for croppers or grinders to get in there next to a chain link. I was also talking about the thickness of the shackle itself, which is only 15mm (so far less than the 19mm chain). Hence our concern that the shackle is very exposed and at 15mm thickness could be a major weakness when partnered with a 19mm chain. I would not do it if I was you.
The video you quoted is made by a chap called Adrian Weber. He has also made several videos on our chains and other products, e.g. :
You could ask him what he thinks about the chains in comparison and whether the shackle clearance on the PL362 is a concern.
The Squire keys you photograph are the Quick-Change/standard profile. I think Squire dropped the QuickChange option last year. We never used it. We don't use the standard profile and our 'restricted' keys are different. However, these Squire keys are 'conventional' profile keys and I would agree that the Protec cylinder (which is the one to have in the PL362 - beware not all PL362 have the same cylinder inside!) probably is harder to pick. That is theoretically speaking as we've not heard of anyone ever picking either of them, including 'Bosnian Bill' who has done a lot of work with Adrian - search YouTube for l-o-t-s of videos from someone that really does know his stuff and can pick almost anything and his videos are genuine! We checked the restricted cylinder with Adrian and with Bosnian Bill before we switched to it last year. As far as I know, he has never been able to pick it. Even so, picking virtually never happens in real life: Thieves like far more reliable types of attack, such as hammers, croppers, jacks etc. Hence, the concern about shackle vulnerability is a far bigger issue than the pickability of high-grade cylinders in our opinion.
I'm not sure why you found it difficult to find the dimensions on our chains as we quote this for our whole range:
http://securityforbikes.com/security-chains.php#linkdimensions
Does that give the information you were after?
Personally, I'm not convinced of the value of 19mm chains on bicycles in general as the advantage they give over 16mm is basically down to angle grinder resistance, and realistically an angle grinder has a chance of getting through anything. The usability disadvantage of a 19mm on a bicycle, however, is huge. I'd rather see a 16mm chain looped through multiple parts of the bike than a 19mm just around the top tube, for example. We have seen multiple cases where frames are cut in order to separate a chain, and the bike is gone. Your multi-part strategy should have a major deterrent against attacks like that and I applaud that type of approach. Every deterrent is a good deterrent :-)
Does that help?
Pragma
I'm Steve at Pragmasis. There are lots of lock-picking videos on YouTube but you can never tell which are genuine from those where people have doctored the cylinder inside in advance (e.g. these locks have removable cylinders so it's easy to take out half of the pins, for example, and then make the video), or where they're practised for ages with that specific lock, or where they've got advance knowledge of the profile of the key. Squire have checked into several of these claims and have never come across anybody that can pick an unknown SS65CS lock in a realistic situation like those videos suggest.
Independent of all that, we actually use a different cylinder inside the SS65CS and SS50CS locks anyway. It is a 'restricted' cylinder that has a much more convoluted keyway and we've not heard of anyone, ever, being able to pick it. We switched to that cylinder last year and Almax are now using it, too. These locks are not 'accessories' that are trivial to pick.
The PL362 is an excellent lock, but not with these chains, and especially not with a 'thin' 19mm chain like Almax's. There is far too much clearance on the shackle so someone with bolt croppers can gain access to the shackle beside the chain. The following video (in German) demonstrates, albeit with a smaller Abloy 'PL342' lock and a smaller chain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiaOSf2sQxM
It is important that the chain link fills most of the space below the shackle on the lock, unless the shackle is as thick or thicker than the chain link. This is why neither Almax nor we sell our 16mm or 19mm chains with the PL362. FYI RiDE magazine did a locks & chains review with proper testing earlier this year and scored our Protector 19mm identically to the Almax Series IV - we both got joint first place.
If anyone wants to see any of our stuff in the flesh, we will be exhibiting at the Cycle Show at the NEC in September and we'd be very happy to show you what our stuff is like.