vehicle theft prevention
 

In lieu of one of our own turbo miatas getting stolen (now recovered) I'm thinking of ways to prevent theft on our cars.

Maybe a fuel pump shut off with a remote, that you can just switch off when you leave the car parked?

Maybe an ecu switch, that cuts all power to the ecu? Also on a remote for convinience.

What ideas do you guys have?

Currently the only theft prevention I have is close to no exterior mods, and a very ugly color (crystal blue metallic)

depends entirely on your area and what resources you have or need.
garage is #1
everything else is a work around

NRG quick release hub. I just got one.

Mine is #beRussian
anyone silly enough to get into my garage/back yard aint gettin out.

:)

You can get crafty on a number of things...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FbF3p1950lw/hqdefault.jpg?

ECU disable would probably be the best as there isn't a switch somewhere to hide.

Or you can setup something like the mad max 18 wheeler that requires a 'code' to be entered... number of possibilities.

Just which one do you want to have to deal with each time you go to start it is the answer. Or Garage.

You know, people think I'm pretty silly walking around with my steering wheel but there is little chance someone will drive off with my car.

You can use alarms, kill-switches, ECU disables, etc. None of them will prevent the car from being grabbed by one guy with a self-loader in ~30 seconds. Decide what your personal balance is between security and convenience and then insure your car for replacement value.

Plenty. Several implemented on various cars over the years. None of them have ever been discussed in a public forum. If you have good ideas, implement them and keep them to yourself.

coolstorybro/
One of my dad's best friends, back in Russia, rigged up a harpoon in the drivers seat of his car. if the car was opened and you tried to start it without disabling the device, it would shoot a nice 8-10" harpoon, into your anus. some stupid crackhead actually tried it, and ended up in the hospital for months. the owner of course got hit with jail time, but man I don't think anyone ever tried to steal his car again ever in his lifetime.
/coolstorybro

I may hide a fuel pump defeat device somewhere at some point but my main theft deterrent will be an alternative MSQ that I can load in via android tablet (via bluetooth) when away from my car during extended periods. I may even hide a "tile" or other cheap tracking device as well if for no other reason than I can have a way to remember where I parked.

Once I go to a dual port waste gate I also would like to create a valet map for the same purpose that prevents it from going into boost and maybe lowers the rev-limit.

Also, one of my strategies is being inconspicuous. With the 6ULs and possible future hood vents that strategy is rapidly becoming obsolete.

Mine has an ignition key with steering wheel lock. Not sure how secure that is.

Park it in the garage, don't drive it to sketchy places. I include Buttonwillow in this list. :)

--Ian

"No Start" Relay, "No-Start" Intelligent Relay System, Vehicle Theft Deterrent

Agreed upon insurance value.

I have my clutch interlock switch hidden in a place only I know about.

If they want it that bad, they can have it. I've got theft insurance. I've made peace with the fact I'd never get the amount of money back that is equal to what I put in.

Pull a couple relays and pocket them.

On my car, I can just plug in the TPS in and that shorts out Vref and makes it so the MS doesn't work. :facepalm:

With MS3-Basic, I've not figured out how to use table-switch to change rev limit. If you know a way, please share.

Buy enough insurance and don't worry about it. If they realize the car won't start, they are likely to start trashing the interior.

I left my BRZ in downtown Tulsa, from Sat afternoon to monday afternoon, in the bar district. No problems.

Not table switch. My plan is to keep an android tablet in the trunk and just do a wholesale flash of the ECU to a map that has a different hard rev limit.

Though, you may be able to do something with launch control.

If a theif wants a car, he/she will do anything to get it. No matter what anti-theft system youre running. Its unfortunate, but it is the truth. With some of our cars being nearly 25 years old, there's not a lot you can do to prevent it, without spending a butt load of dough.

Exactly. Only thing to do is make it inconvient enough that an opertunistic theif won't want to spend the time to get it.

Remove steering wheel and take it into the house. It won't stop a guy with a tow truck but it will keep it from being hotwired and driven off.

Until he cases your car, buys a wheel with the same QR, and drives it off anyway.

I am a big fan of hidden kill switches.

Make a removable rack for the megasquirt?
Use an oddball non NRG quickrelease?
Just run a switch to the ignition coils, interrupt ground?
Use your brake switch as a relay trigger for the horns?
Turkey Call on the blow off valve?
Bike inner tube on the muffler tip?

At least it would draw more attention than the traditional alarm

Blue strobes in the park/tail lamps that activate when car is tampered with. That's sure to get law enforcement attention

Yup, cheap and will deter the people looking for easy targets since Miatas are easy to steal. Having more than one is good too. Toss in a well hidden gps tracker in case they tow it or push it with another car.Sometimes they will leave the car for a day or two in a secluded area to make sure there's no GPS/Lojack before tearing it apart. Nice simple solution without going too crazy. Doubt the thieves stealing Miatas use tow trucks, there's much more lucrative vehicles that can be stolen with a tow truck.

Alarms can be effective but not the basic $150 installed one from a car audio shop which can be easily disabled by most thieves.

As mentioned before, nothing you do will stop the guy with a tow rig from taking your car. But if you have a locator device of some sort (e.g. Lojack) you still have a chance if you can get popo on the case in time. Even in a car as small as a Miata there are still places to hide such a device. But make sure you rig up a backup battery for it!

We can talk all day about kill switches and removable steering wheels and whatnot - professional thieves don't care though.

I leave my Subaru in gear in addition to the parking brake. Then theyd just use a flat bed.

And if you remove all four wheels and put it up on cinder blocks a thief will bring four appropriately sized wheels, a jack, and lug nuts and steal your car. And if you remove the battery, they'll just bring one of their own and steal your car. And if you remove the engine, they'll bring one of their own along with a hoist and two gallons of coolant and steal your car. And if you have a kill switch they will bring a trailer or dolly with a cheap boat winch, a floor jack, and maybe two plastic trays from McDonalds and steal your car.

I thought we were talking about opportunistic thievery and not well equipped professionals. Well equipped professionals wouldn't waste time with cars as inexpensive as Miatas. I bet most pros are stealing Vettes, M3s and P-cars at a minimum and going up from there. The punks that stole the Miata were joyriders. It was a 1.6 car for cryin' out loud. Nobody serious steals a 1.6 car!

Most pros steal things like late model Accords, Camrys and F-series trucks. These are stripped for their parts and find a ready market.

These 10 cars, trucks were the most stolen last year

Honestly, we're already doing a lot of theft prevention by driving cheap, old cars with manual transmissions. Buy insurance and move on.

Those tow trucks are really aimed at drivers doing repo work. People who are behind on their car payments try to be creative to prevent them from getting towed, and being able to swoop in and grab it quickly is a big safety win as far as the driver is concerned.

--Ian

A '96 Accord isn't exactly "late model".

Modern cars have the anti-theft systems built into the ECU. If it doesn't get a proper cryptographic challenge/response from the key, it doesn't run the fuel injectors. They basically can't be stolen without either having the key or tow truck, there's nothing to "hot wire" because all of the anti-theft logic is built right into the ECU. With proper cryptographic security design (something which VW apparently managed to screw up), eavesdropping on the communication between the key and the car won't tell you anything useful either.

AIUI, these kinds of features have drastically reduced the theft rates for cars made in the last decade. It's apparently at the point that if someone reports his car stolen but still has the keys, then they take a long hard look to see if he's engaging in insurance fraud.

Theoretically you could add this kind of security to a Megasquirt. Attach a bluetooth module, write a small protocol stack, keep a shared key on it and your smartphone, have the MS send a challenge request when it's starting, write an app for the phone to generate the response, and if it doesn't get the right response then no fuel. Of course you'd need a way to stop someone from simply reflashing it... :)

--Ian

I've thought about that using a microcontroller of some sort, arduino or raspberry pi. Raspberry Pi would be double-cool because it can run tunerstudio (just keep the tuning computer in the car?) but the boot time is not good enough for using it to start, and I'm not sure if the power draw is low enough to keep it always-on.

It's good to have at least a small cheap layer of security to prevent the basic joyrider or thief. It's very easy to steal a Miata, so nothing wrong with throwing some small change at it and less than hour of your time, especially if you have aftermarket parts and plenty of time put into it. Sure insurance may cover it, but it's going to take time out of your day, receipts and they may not cover all the aftermarket parts. And time spent working on the car is all gone.

You know, that would be a cool system... I wonder how difficult it would be to make a device that checks bluetooth for a registered MAC address before allowing the car to start? You would need to find a way to quickly register a phone... might need a way to program a custom PIN to really lock it down.

DUH, I knew I read this idea somewhere... Turns out it was like two posts above this one:

Good thing you can't spoof a MAC.

Don't see this being an issue with anyone trying to steal a Miata

If you want it to actually be secure, you use a cryptographic shared secret. The MAC address is a slightly more nerdy version of the hidden kill switch that you have to know to flip to turn on the fuel pump. That's not to say it's useless, it depends on your threat model.

--Ian

Then there's always the RFID key option, either home-rolled or a kit. I think that's what OEMs have been using for the last few years.