The first time you see the Cordalock, you might not be sure what it is. It looks like some kind of bike lock, but it also doesn’t look like any other cable lock you’ve seen before. However, it is definitely a bike lock and it offers cyclists something no other bike lock in the market does.
You know how some thieves, when they have a tough time breaking through your bike lock, will simply steal an unsecured wheel or a saddle, leaving the rest of your bike or e-bike in place? Yeah, that’s annoying. Well, this bike lock puts a stop to that by securing not just the frame, but both wheels and the saddle, essentially giving you multiple locks in one.
The Cordalock is a cable lock with an unusual design that puts up to three round clamps along the cable and a central locking mechanism. To use, you loop one side of the cable around the front wheel and use the clamp to secure the lock in the loop onto the cable. You do the same thing on the other side, then pull at the furthermost clamp to loop it around the saddle. Once all that is done, you put the key in the central mechanism and turn the dial to apply tension on the cable and lock everything securely in place. According to the outfit, the clamps won’t be able to open when the cable is properly tensioned, effectively securing the whole thing
Even better, cutting one part of the cable only destroys that part, with the other sections still remaining secure. That means, when a thief manages to use an angle grinder to cut through the loop on the front wheel, that’s all they will have access to since the rear wheel and saddle loops are still secured, making it a pretty powerful deterrent against bike theft. The outfit says people can get creative with how they secure the bike using the cable, too, although looping around the two front wheels and saddle seems to be their recommended configuration.
The Cordalock has an exterior made with protective textile sleeve, which keeps it perfectly flexible and gentle to the touch. The sleeve is abrasion- and UV-resistant, too, which should help reduce wear over time. Underneath, though, it gets a braided stainless steel core that’s covered in bullet-sized hardened steel rings whose tops and bottoms nest against each other when the cable is tensioned, making the whole thing especially tough to cut through. In a video demo, they showed the cable being cut with a Makita 840W angle grinder at 11,000 RPM. While it eventually did break, it took the grinder over 24 minutes to finish the job, so it will take an incredibly patient thief with all the time in the world to actually get through this thing.
Aside from the standard three-clamp lock, they also have a simpler two-clamp version, which only secures both wheels and the frame, so the saddle is compromised. If you’re going to splurge money on a good bike lock, might as well protect everything you can. According to the outfit, the two clamp version weighs 4.6 pounds and the three clamp model weighs 6.1 pounds.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Cordalock. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $181.
