WE all know that most motorcycle thieves don’t carry lock picks, a hacksaw or bolt croppers with them. For most, the tool of choice is the cordless angle grinder. It’s lightweight, mobile and, in most cases, fast.
That’s why the weapon of choice of thieving scum has been the target for security manufacturers for some time now, and this might just be the breakthrough that’s needed.
Before we go into this in detail though, it is just a bicycle lock, although it’s fairly easy to imagine the idea could be up-scaled to offer a solution to motorcyclists too.
The lock is made by a start-up called Hiplok, which is looking for crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The video you can see below has been filmed by Cycling Weekly, and while not totally scientific in its execution, the reported results to make it interesting to watch.
While trying to crack the hardened loop of the Hiplok, the pedal pushers manage to eat through five angle grinder discs, and they are using a mains powered grinder for the task. These will typically have more power and torque than a cordless grinder, but more importantly, they can maintain the same effort for a much longer time. The whole task was also carried out with the lock fixed in a vice, a luxury a roadside scum bag wouldn’t have.
Hiplok testing their own device against a conventional D-lock.
The secret to the lock's resistance is a graphene reinforced ceramic composite core. The patented material is designed to eat up angle grinder discs like a knife through butter. It’s even claimed to have the same results when tested against carbide tipped drills thanks to the formula.
We’ve reached out to Hiplok to see if they plan to expand the design to cover bikes (and let us have one for a destruction test), we’ll let you know what they come back with!
