Poll: Car Anti-Theft solutions

What do you all use too keep your ride in your driveway? Any unique and fool proof solutions?

 

garage

 

Well, a simple trick I used and a friend of mine did on his Mustange is pull that center pin out of the inside of the cap on the distributer that presses against the rotor for spark to the coil. That ****er won't ever start and it's gonna take a theif forever to figure it out.

But that only works if the ******* doesn't have a trailer.

 

A baseball bat with long nails driven through it!

 

Nothing can stop a professional but I have two hidden shutoff switched. One for the ignition and one for the power to the battery. I tie the pit bull to the bumper on full moon nights.

 

I leave it many pieces as I can in the garage...

I also have an alarm, motion detector floodlights, and 2 b***et hounds who are light sleepers. I also have 3 P.O.S. daily drivers parked outside. The Turdvan(tm), the 'fridge, and the G.F's Saturn Lezmobile.

 

battery shutoff switch.. and I usually drop the suspension down (air ride) so the truck sits on the pavement and the robber couldnt move it if he wanted to..

later sawzall

 

On a car belonging to a friend in Queens, NYC I used a three-way switch for the shutoff switch: Run, Off, and a wire to a horn relay hooked to the biggest set of Caddy horns in the junkyard.
Don't EVER park in Queens--that poor car had FOUR steering columns destroyed by thieves--it never went, anywhere, though. I think I could still change a G body GM steering column with my eyes closed...

 

I made a big heavy bar that I attatch to the rear end at the u-joint. A great big lock and a confined space means that the car can't be moved without jacking it up. On trips I back the car in a spot and hope that I would hear the tires squeal if it was draged.

 

a loaded 12 gauge shot gun is always a few steps from my bed.

 

I like the idea of rigging up a fire suppression system with CN tear gas (or the legal equivilent). Nice, non-lethal, and effective.

 

i read somewhere about hooking the door switch for the lights thru another 3 pos switch hidden in a fenderwell thats hooked to the horn. that way when the switch is set to the "horn pos" when the door is opened the horn sounds emediatley.

 

run your battery through a voltage amplifier and hook up an insolated aligator clip to under the door jam. Works good to keep cats off the car too

 

Both times my stereo was stolen it was because I got lazy and thought......I'll lock the doors later.

1st time it was done by someone, we're ***uming, was a stereo installer somewhere. They never destroyed anything. The guy had tools, diked the wires, left the coverplate for the opening etc.

2nd time was a neighbor kid and I caught him later with some of my stuff....he saw the berry house over that one. But, he destroyed the dash. *****.

I kick myself for not locking the cars.
I have since installed 4 security lights on various areas of the house, took down the stockade gate, so I can see out from the garage door, bought a German Shepherd, and installed an alarm on the house.

They say thieves hate noise and light so I try and accomodate them. Sorry this is a little off in left field...

 

All my neighbors are scared of me. Seriously, they are.

When I'm somewhere else, I don't care. It's well insured and I don't leave too much attractive **** in it.

On the old cars - that's different. My old cars have never been hit, and I leave them unlocked. Good karma maybe? Luck and more luck? I travel a lot, and have traveled my entire live - even pre driver's license. Only had 3 break ins. In '99 a bum slept in a VW camper parked in front of my home, in '90 a '67 Surburban 4x4 ski vehicle loaded with climbing, ski, and kyaking gear was stolen in Brooklyn (recovered with minor window damage and no gear a week later), and in '86 a rental Toyota had it's trunk popped in Manhattan. Oh, someone left a parking lot bumper scuff on the front quarter of my '89 Merkur XR4Ti back in '82 or so. That's it for vehicular transgressions against me.

If I had a '55 Chevy or a '68 Camaro, or any early Mustang I might be more worried. Those are much more popular cars that are more generic and easy to part out. I think I'd make sure I had garage parking at home and work, use an ignition disabler, and purchase a LoJack if the cost of replacement warrented it. If it's worth that much, then I'd have it insured, and claim the discount offered for the LoJack.

Other old car stuff? Haven't done this, but make sure the ignition in the dash is bolted in with security bolts, not hex heads or normal screws. If the wires are accessable by reaching under the dash, make a plate that shields the wires and/or a clamp that makes it difficult to unplug them fromt he back of the ignition.

I've been un-nerved by the number of old cars that have dashboard ignition (like '67 Chevy trucks) that all I have to do to start them is plug the ignition wires into a cheapo vintage-VW keyed ignition that hangs under the dash. That and a slim-jim could mean by-by truck.

 

Kill switch wired in a VERY well hidden place to the battery.

If someone wants the car bad enough they'll get a tow truck and drag it down the street. Park with your wheels turned....

-Dane

 

Interesting reading the posts so far. No one seems to use car alarms? A kill switch for the battery does seem the best. That way they can't make the starter move at all. What kind of switch could handle the amps?
I personally am more worried about when I go to the store or something more than at home. The car is in a garage when its at home, but I would like it to be a daily driver as much as possible. The down side of the 57 Belair is its a likely target for theft.

 

Well, in my experience the most targeted vehicles (thankfully) aren't our cars, but newer cars like Hondas & Cadillac Escalades. About 90% of the stolen recoveries I've looked at had one thing in common - the mode of theft was simply breaking the steering column cover so that the ignition apparatus could be manipulated without needing the keys. Most every modern car thief goes through the steering column.

The solution? I've only seen a few of them, but they work. It's basically a steel sleeve with a locking mechanism & a hinge so it splits open. You close it over the steering column, lock it, and leave it.

Recently one of my agents in Chicago recovered a vehicle with one of these devices & had to remove it in order to have ignition keys made. Now keep in mind that this is a guy who is in the business, and it took him a week to figure out how to remove this device. He finally ended up getting a diamond tipped blade to cut it off, and he said it took quite a while.

Outside of parking in the garage, or parking it in the immediate vicinity of a capable guard dog, I'd say this is one of the best things I've seen. Say what you want about shotguns & whatever, but I used to pull 5 to 10 cars a night and rarely got caught by anyone, and I was using a tow truck most of that time!

 

The down side there is that the ignition is in the dash of a lot of these older cars. Doing the rewire on this thing I am finding that things were so simple back then, VERY easy to hotwire if you wanted to!

 

On steering column approach on late models: with the three-way switch above, the car stayed where it was even though on at least three occasions the ignition/start switch was fully operable through the destroyed column--that suggests that the switch set on horn mode did its job of rattling the thief's cool after he thought he was about to score, but it also means that I should have had some sort of primary system meant to stop said thief from wrecking the column in the first place.
What should I have had? I never considered alarms, because I knew they did no good in NYC, but I really don't know what serious thieves actually do about alarms.
I suspect home made solutions here would be good because thieves know the ins and outs of commercial systems. How do you approach the problem of discouraging entry so the thief can't get to the job of figuring out your tricks or simply breaking stuff??

 

I'm hoping to run the original ignition set up in my '36? There is really no way to protect that is there?

Where is a good place to put the kill switch that is accesible enough that you don't get lazy, but hidden enough that it's not obvious? That's always been a dilemma of mine.

 

I keep everything really dark - and I cover the drive with banana peels, and I leave rakes and what not in the yard.

When I hear the wackiness start, I flip on the lights and laugh and laugh. Oh, it is great!

 

I put a toggle switch out of sight for my electric fuel pump. A Thief can start the car but only get a few feet and the carb runs dry and will not start.

 

OldCarPilot, you don't want the kill to disable the starter. Just the ignition! That way the crook will crank and crank and crank trying to get your heap started and hopefully not know to look for an ignition cutout. If he knows right away to look for it, I think it would be easy to spot, particularly in our bare-bones cars.

Good places to hide a switch? Hide it in an existing knob or switch. Make it so the door has to be locked to start, or you have your foot on the "dead pedal", or you have to push the modified cigar lighter in, or open the ash tray, or or or...micro switches can be our friends! Don't make it so that you have to hold down a momentary switch behind the p***enger's seat to start. That will get old fast, and it's obvious to anyone watching what you're doing.

 

i'va got a factory battery cut off from a late model mercedes. it has a big plastic key that you can remove and take with you. it's hidden under the fenderwell. i run my constant hot for the radio straight to the battery. the cut off hooks directly to the battery and you hook the battery cable to the other end. couldn't be simpler

 

Never... ...Ever!... Stop driving.

Also, I fart a lot in my cars so I think ne'er-do-wells (and my dearest friends) avoid them for fear of olfactory degradation.

(In all seriousness, if they want it bad enough, they'll get it... I park my most valuable cars, 10 feet from my bedroom window with my dog in between. The less important the car, the farther down the driveway it goes.)

 

for 50's/60's cars wire from coil to dist, splice into cigarette lighter, car cannot start without pushing in lighter, pull lighter after parking car breaking the connection

 

Alarm system, motion detector lights, gated drive, locked garage, and lots of nosy neighbors for the hot rods,

a large dead fall over the cars in the drive,

and when I go the store I take the battery in with me.

 

Bigiron...that was the crude alarm I rigged up on one of my old Chevelles. Once "armed" the door jamb switch set off the horn. Low-buck and simple...all I could think of as a 16 year old car guy!

One toggle switch and some wire is all ya need!

(Well, and a horn that WORKS...along with functional door jamb switches! )