Help, car experts - please help

Right now my 02' Taurus is secure, locked inside my garage. The problem is I plan on moving and where I live it's rare to find an apartment with secure garage parking. Most parking is on the street and if you're lucky you might get a space in an outdoor parking lot at ground level. Carports are also popular here and garages are a very rare find unless you own a house that happens to have one on the off chance.

I plan on moving to "Old Town". It's this part of town that has some historical significance to it. Plenty of 2 or more story buildings of mix use. IOW Buildings with small shops at ground level and apartments, condos or office space on all the above floor. There are no parking garages and in any case most parking is going to be on the street or in a portion of a block that has a small public parking area.

I really do want my car to be safe and so I'm trying to figure out all the ways I can make the car harder to steal. I've been doing my research and the consensus says that if somebody wants your car bad enough than it's theirs.

The car is a 2002 Taurus. My qustions are: What is the computer chip inserted under the dashboard in order to start the car called? Imobilizer? How exactly does it work and are they effective/worth it? Do they shut off the fuel pump or ignition?

The club isn't not very effective from what I hear, what about the other anti-theft device that locks onto either the clutch or the brake? Are those overhyped?

I had a closer look at my car and have found out all sorts of ways the factory car alarm can be defeated. Aparently the ignition key only has a magnet in it! Can you believe it? Only a simple magnet inside the key and Ford calls it an Immobilizer.

The Hood cable can be pulled from the front of the car. All the theif has to do is break away the plastic grill in front of the radiator in order to pull at the cable. Not even that, the theif can probably fish in there with a tool to pull at the cable and open the hood and disconnect the battery to stop the car alarm from sounding. My guess is the siren for this cars alarm does not have it's own self contained battery?

From what I have read on the internet the car theif can use the buddy

trick to easily defeat the car alarm. One theif stands in front of the hood with wire cutters while the other one breaks the drivers side window and unlatches the hood. The theif with the cutters then cuts the wires to the battery. From there the theif who smashed the window can open the car door without the alarm sounding. From there they can take anything they want out of the car and they can put the car in neutral in order to push it just enough to tow it. Also the car has button locks on the doors, all is needed is a switchblade or a screwdriver to break the locks and unlock the doors. Which could be done instead of breaking the window. I wonder which is more expensive to fix? Probably the broken lock.

Is it possible to remove the cable for the hood latch and install a lock and key right there on the hood itself somehow?

What are the best immobilizer systems that money can buy? The ones with a computer chip in them, are they all they are cracked up to be?

I also read that lowjack is easily defeated too if the theif has a lowjack detector they can find it and snip the wires. They can also put the car in the back of a truck lined with lead in order to stop the signal from getting to the GPS. So low jack is out of the question.

Is the BOOT trick a good idea? The kind that parking enforcement uses? Or can the metal for it be frozen and broken apart easily?

I'm still investigating theft insurance and how much that would cost. I really want to keep all my options open. The car only has a factory stereo in it, my main concern is the whole car being stolen and striped or trashed/vandalized. There is no theft insurance right now and how horrible would it be to be making monthley payments for a car that you can't use because somebody stole it and sold the parts on the black market? Airbags are a big thing being stolen right now. The car can be broken into just for the airbags. 4 of them. Driver, passenger front and side airbags inside the seats themselves.

Help, help, what are the most cost effective measures I can take? What needs to be modified about the car to make it harder to steal once the only nighttime parking for it is public access street parking?

Reply to
eastwardbound2003
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There was a show on TV a few month back where they had a Lincoln Navigator, with the factory anti-theft system and every anti-theft system on the market, parked along side the NYPD substation on the south end of Times Square. They told two former car thieves if they could get the car without bring suspicion to themselves, in less then ten minutes, they could have the car. They disabled the GPS trans ponder, got under the car cut the battery cables pulled the car up onto an unmarked flat bed and drove off in about five minutes. LOL

mike hunt

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

Reply to
DustyRhoades

Where are you moving to that you feel your car will be a prime target? Take heart in that no one steals Taurus's. You're obsessing, get a steering wheel lock and park on the street like everyone else.. Talk to the local police and ask about auto theft in the area.

Reply to
Eric Toline

target?

No, it's not obsessing. And it's insulting that you would be projecting that.

Any car can get stolen. A car theif will steal anything they can get their hands on, it's the nature of the whole thing.

You may think that the most stolen cars are only the most expensive sports and luxury cars. Which is wrong, check the statistics. In North America the primary stolen car is a hum-drum "Toyota Camry", also on the list was the Camero, Civic, Accord and Taurus.

Theifs will still easy targets, and they will also steal cars that have parts that they can make money off of. The Taurus is one of the most common cars out there and so there will always be a market for replacement parts for them, especially when it comes to things like airbags.

I don't want my car to be the easiest car to steal out of a lineup of cars parked on the street. A theif who see's that my car is more work to steal next to another car that isn't will pick the latter of the two.

In Mike Hunts scenereo, the theives cut the wires to the battery from underneath. There should be alarms that have self contained power sources that should sound if there is a disruption to the power supply. And yes, I did mention the part about the GPS Transponder (lowjack) being something that can be disabled. Which is a sham because people spend so much money for the monthley service fees to have on on their car.

Also my car doesn't have theft insurance yet, so tell me what the f*ck am I supposed to do with making monthly payments for a car that is nonexistant because of some tweeker shit face who thought he/she could use more dope money riped off my car?

Obsessing huh? Bear in mind that most street crime is drug related and many areas in North America have a major "Meth/Speed/Crank" problem.

And if you knew shit about drugs you would know how the above is differet from addicts who abuse lesser drugs like pot and alcohol.

Reply to
eastwardbound2003

target?

No, it's not obsessing. And it's insulting that you would be projecting that.

Any car can get stolen. A car theif will steal anything they can get their hands on, it's the nature of the whole thing.

You may think that the most stolen cars are only the most expensive sports and luxury cars. Which is wrong, check the statistics. In North America the primary stolen car is a hum-drum "Toyota Camry", also on the list was the Camero, Civic, Accord and Taurus.

Theifs will still easy targets, and they will also steal cars that have parts that they can make money off of. The Taurus is one of the most common cars out there and so there will always be a market for replacement parts for them, especially when it comes to things like airbags.

I don't want my car to be the easiest car to steal out of a lineup of cars parked on the street. A theif who see's that my car is more work to steal next to another car that isn't will pick the latter of the two.

In Mike Hunts scenereo, the theives cut the wires to the battery from underneath. There should be alarms that have self contained power sources that should sound if there is a disruption to the power supply. And yes, I did mention the part about the GPS Transponder (lowjack) being something that can be disabled. Which is a sham because people spend so much money for the monthley service fees to have on on their car.

Also my car doesn't have theft insurance yet, so tell me what the f*ck am I supposed to do with making monthly payments for a car that is nonexistant because of some tweeker shit face who thought he/she could use more dope money riped off my car?

Obsessing huh? Bear in mind that most street crime is drug related and many areas in North America have a major "Meth/Speed/Crank" problem.

And if you knew shit about drugs you would know how the above is differet from addicts who abuse lesser drugs like pot and alcohol.

Reply to
eastwardbound2003

Likely 99% of the lenders out there require fire, theft and collision on the vehicle. What kind of knuckle head would risk saving a few hundred dollars on insurance and possibly lose it all in one event ? If your budget is that tight you better go back to riding the bus (was your last / recent transportation a yellow bus ?). I park my cars on the streets of Boston, Hartford, Albany, Buffalo, you name it and they've never been bothered.

Happy modeming, Bill

Reply to
berkshire bill

I'm thinking theft insurance is your only hope for a little sanity.

Reply to
Scott M

On top of that "Lowjack" does NOT use ANY GPS based system. It simply "Squaks" a alphanumeric code on the simplex frequency of 173.075Mhz. It does NOTHING until triggered by a law enforcement agency.

Reply to
Dr. Rastis Fafoofnik

A few things come to mind here and the first one is to buy theft insurance, I'm surprised you don't already have it. Second is that the chip in your key is NOT just a magnet, in fact if your car is stolen it most likely won't be driven away but rather towed. The factory antitheft is hard to defeat short of using a tow truck. And last, don't leave valuables in plain sight. Thieves won't think twice about breaking a window to steal a nice CD player or whatever and they don't care how much noise your alarm system makes. Bob

Reply to
Bob

Forget the Club. On a TV show it took all of about 13 seconds to saw throught the steering wheel & slip the Club off & toss it on the back seat.

My dad had made a block clamp device that fit on the steering shaft under the hood on his 91 F-250. It kept the vehicle from being steered.

A 3/4" bar about 8 inches long was welded to a Square U shaped block with a hole in it. The block would slide over the round steering shaft , the shaft had a flat cut on one side. The 3/4 bar would hit on the A-Frame and inner fender body or wheel well ( forget which one ) but it kept the vehicle from being steered.

2 Holes drilled in the end of the block allowed a big padlock to be installed, the lock prevented the block from being removed from the steering shaft. Later on some more steel was welded to it to prevent a pair of bolt cutters from getting near the padlock.

The big drawback was raising the hood to install or remove the device while somebody could watch what your doing.

A friend of my dads built some kind of skid plate device that was anchored to the floor.The plate was mounted to a ball bearing roller track. What it did was it block the gas & brake pedal. To lock and unlock it you had to reach behind, and in between the backside of the plate & floorpan. No way to get any cutters or toole behind it.

Not sure of the method anchoring to the floor. This was on an old 1970 Eldorado. The car was broken into a few times but never taken, once they saw what they were up against, they exited the vehicle.

As other posters have mentioned no amount of protection can secure a vehicle if somebody wants it bad enough. All they have to do is wait for you to come by with the keys and show your thier nice shiney revolver.

========= Harryface =========

1991 Pontiac Bonneville LE 3800 V6 ( C ), Black/Slate Grey _~_~_~297,024 miles_~_~_

~_~_~_~_U.S.A._~_~_~_~_~_

~~~The Former Fleet ~~~

89 Cavalier Z 24 convertible 78 Holiday 88 coupe 68 LeSabre convertible 73 Impala sedan
Reply to
Harry Face

In the event your car is stolen, stripped and found a few days later let the insurance company pay you off. Then go out & buy another vehicle.

If I knew back in 1986 what I was going to encounter over the next few years I would of junked my 78 Olds when it was stolen & recovered.

1). Missing from the vehicle were:

A. 4 wheels, spare & jack. B. Radio. C. Dashboard trim panel. D. 1 Brake drum. E. Battery. F. Personal property in glove box & trunk

More than likely C & F were flung out the window or off in a field somewhere.

2). Visible damage to the vehicle was:

Steering column broken open. Trunk lock pulled out.

Holes punched thru rocker panels to jack car up using Bumper Claw Jack.

Both Doors dented from jack handle hitting doors during jacking.

Radio wire harness cut.

3). HIDDEN DAMAGE or Damage you find about weeks / month's / years later.

Damage to upper radiator pipe where hose connects. Mine Leaked. Cause of leak, Battery dropped on upper hose connection to get better grip under the battery when after removing from battery tray. You had to palm the sides due to close quarters.

All kinds of Noises, Rattles or Squeaks. Mine turned out to be both front coil springs broken. Yes, Broken. About 4 inches from end of bottom coil. What the hell do you do to a car to break a coil spring?

4). Six months after theft - Transmission fails. Cause - Gear with splined shaft through the center was all cracked around the splines in the gear, - Cause - From doing Neutral Drops when thief was joy riding.

9 -12 months later - Bald front tires, Cause - Alignment was off due to Frame being bent in three places. Can't align front end.

========= Harryface =========

1991 Pontiac Bonneville LE 3800 V6 ( C ), Black/Slate Grey _~_~_~297,024 miles_~_~_

~_~_~_~_U.S.A._~_~_~_~_~_

~~~The Former Fleet ~~~

89 Cavalier Z 24 convertible 78 Holiday 88 coupe 68 LeSabre convertible 73 Impala sedan
Reply to
Harry Face

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