Quick - easy way to temporarily disable a Pug/Citroen 1.9TD

That's the one. Take out the main fuse. No-one will be carrying a spare 'just in case'.

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Ebodsky" saying something like:

Depending on how accessible the fuel line to the filter is under the bonnet, you could fit an inline fuel control solenoid or simply a manual lever valve.

Waste of time - your car is fitted with an immobiliser, and won't start unless the chip in the keyfob is registered with the immobiliser.

The code from the key isn't scannable from a distance - the transmitter/receiver antenna is mounted on or near the ignition key barrel, and only works over a short range.

/john

The message from "John Kenyon" contains these words:

This is why thieves (except the organised "stick it in a container and get it out of the country" sort) avoid modern cars. Bastards all go for things like my Monty.

Thats what someone said about my last car. It as a Punto and had the chip in the key. I left it parked outside my house one night only to wake up and discover it gone the next morning. I had all three keys and it was never seen again.

Not having the "chipped" key does not stop the "organised" car stealer taking the car....... We have in the past recovered cars for finance houses by simply plugging in a ECU from a similar car which we have the keys for......the newer cars however have maybe a two or 3 stage immobiliser which requires the ecu to match a RIM module in the pump which has to see an immobiliser module before it lets you start it up.... so newer cars definitely are harder to steal....... don't think a Synergie will be top of their list somehow..

JK

Not a lot will stop a car being towed away etc. Could be someone wanted the car for spares.

A funny thing Guy, I was only thinking about this the other day as I'm owner off a (very tidy) H-reg Astra 1.7 non-turbo diesel, so under 'normal' circumstances hardly the sort of vehicle that anyone would choose to nick. However if this petrol thing does - as some have been predicting - get out of hand, with its over 60 miles per gallon and the possibility of running on home-made bio-diesel, perhaps it could soon become a much more viable proposition (yes I know they really would have to be desperate!). How can this type of engine be immobilised, as by all accounts with older diesels it appears to be a bigger problem stopping them than actually starting them.

Not knowing your car, but knowing your intentions maybe you could try what I did with an old car when I had to park overnight in the grottiest area of Milton Keynes.....

The entire gearstick is a bayonet fitting in a chevette - fitting/unfitting took about 3 or 4 seconds - my car was still there in the morning!

Adam H

The message from "Ivan" contains these words:

Much the same was crossing my mind! It's not like there's bits of ignition that can be removed. Perhaps the best idea is a mechanical fuel tap in the line from the tank. Trouble with that is that the vacuum from the pump may well be enough to flatten the filter etc.

You could take the steering wheel off, and carry that around with you.

Bob

No thanks!, it's already a big enough ball-ache carrying around the detachable front of my radio\CD player, let alone the steering wheel. Anyway the ingenious little scroats around here, would probably wind-up using something like a couple of pairs of extra-large Mole-grips clamped to the steering column as handlebars!

incidentally.,my mates B reg astra was drained of fuel last week. Appararntly you can just reach under the car and pull the pipe out and syphon it off. He got a few yards, wondered why it stopped, and then saw a trail of liquid leading back down the road...

Happened to me three times with my old D reg Astra estate, on one occasion they took a gallon and left the rest of a full tank to run down the gutter.

By the way on that occasion I didn't inform the police, as unbelievable as it may sound I had previously heard someone on a radio phone-in claiming that he was actually presented with a hefty bill after the local council and fire service became involved in the cleaning up operation...as he was the actual 'victim' of the crime I could well believe it!

The same thing happened again overnight in my driveway, but they did push a piece of stick into the pipe to stop the rest of the fuel running away, I found out when I ground to a halt at about a quarter mile away on a busy main road!

On the third occasion I caught them red handed, as I had fitted an alarm, camera and a floodlight, their excuse for being in my driveway with a petrol can at around 9pm was that their car had run out of petrol and they were about to knock on my front door to ask me if I would be kind enough to run them to the nearest garage!

1) Make the stop solenoid on the diesel pump and its wiring tamperproof. 2) Insert a switch/keyswitch/immobiliser circuit in the wiring to the stop solenoid, which is held at +12v whenever the ignition is on. If you break that connection, then all you can do is crank the engine, but it won't fire as it won't get any fuel. This is exactly how the Peugeot immobiliser works on the XUD9 engine.

Step (1) is required as the easiest ways to bypass are to either extract the solenoid, remove the plunger & spring, and reassemble, or to connect the solenoid dreckly to the battery. The engine then has to be stopped using the stop lever on the pump, or by stalling the b'stard.

/john

fitting/unfitting

My favorite one with my old 1.3 Escort was to pull out the vacuum servo pipe from the inlet manifold - it had come out before and immobilsed me for half an hour at one point, so I suppose it would have stopped a clueless scrote in their tracks.

/john

The message from "John Kenyon" contains these words:

Swap the plugleads around.

Thanks for the info, looks like something that I would contemplate if push comes to shove. Will oil prices start to drop back again in a few months time, or as some have predicted the days of cheap fuel are now behind us and from now on the trend will be upwards?

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Ivan" saying something like:

Dunno.