Anti-theft other than alarm?
 

I'm asking here so not every joe blow can see it. Now that I've got more money in the car than the car itself is worth, and every assclown with a "sporty car" is trying to race me I'm more security conscious (read: paranoid). I park my shit on the street. Interested to know what I could do besides a quick-release or an alarm. Something like a kill switch hidden somewhere super secret, etc.

When I had my Bipes on my first miata, i took the power wire you splice into for the ECU and put a real low-pro black switch on it..then "hid" the switch on the passengers side center console in the little rectangle that pops out with two nuts behind it... Really hidden/out of the way and still very easy to get to. Had one problem with it while it was there when a passenger hit it going down the interstate, scared the shit out of me until I realized what had actually happened.

Are you more worried about stealing complete or stripping? I'd guess The Club would still be a viable option. Kind of a pain storing it in a Miata, though, shy of putting it in the trunk as opposed to dropping it in the back seat. It does offer a visual deterrent that might keep a window from being broken or a top slashed, though.

I find that both The Club and a 5BC fire extinguisher fit neatly behind the passenger seat- the extinguisher lying flat on the floor, and The Club at a diagonal. One added bonus to this mounting location is that the handle-end of The Club, while not ideally balanced, does make an effective close-quarters weapon should the need arise. It projects further than a knife and can also be used to open windows rather quickly from the outside.

As to preventing someone from driving off in your car, let me suggest that the oil pressure sender in '95+ Miatae is a simple closure to ground when oil pressure is low, and open when pressure is high. Said closure might be tapped in an inconspicuous place (such as behind the instrument cluster) and used to drive a relay which, when de-energized, opens some vital circuit or another in the ECU harness. IOW: a thief hotwires your car, and it starts, and then immediately stalls. He re-starts it, an it runs for a moment, then stalls. A professional mechanic in a garage would be daunted by this, much less a car thief on a dark street.

trunk monkey....

Unplug the MS and take it with you.. :)


Sadly nothing will stop someone from scooping it up with a flatbed though.. No car is impossible to take, no matter what you do.

Edit: For a no-start anti-theft system I used to sell this gizmo called Powerlock. That device uses a non-removable hardened magnesium collar around the starter power lead which is basically a solid state digital relay. The system had 2 totally different "keys" one was touch based and the other transponder based. When you got into the car you'd simply touch your "key" to the reader which reads the 128 bit encrypted code, then sent an encrypted digital signal to the relay allowing it to start the car. The transponder based system just used a touchless keyfob.

I sold them for $400.00 installed and the company had a guarantee.. if a thief stole your car, they'd cover 100% of it. Not sure if that company is still around, I just didn't have very many customers. In the 10 some years they were in business at the time they NEVER had one reported theft of a vehicle equipped with the system. I thought it was fantastic, but left one small issue.. "hot wire" the ignition to Run, roll down hill, pop clutch.

You could make it look just like a Geo Metro....?

Idk if this is what you mean but there are something like microwave radar thingys on ebay for convertables, also if your cars a manual, thats pretty anti-theft in its self.

For part one of that statement.......WHAT? And explain part 2.

i assume anyone stealing a car can drive a manual transmission, especially if the car is targeted because it has known performance modifications. Joe, that idea is kind of what I'm aiming for but I have a 94. Maybe something hidden in plain site would be cool too, like wiring the cruise control button as a kill switch since I never use cruise control.

Go to a hydraulic supply store and pick up a shut-off valve,mount it inline on the fuel line under the hood.

When you park the car,you simply pop your hood and turn the valve to "off" positon.

Then that ONE night you're too tired from work to pop the hood and flip the valve is the ONE night someone tries to steal your car... that and this will be pretty obvious to anyone that is smart enough to stake out a car at least once before stealing it.

I like the cruise control switch idea. Total plain sight, yet not even remotely obvious. Maybe a combination of switches?

Wire a switch onto the main injector fuse line, flick the switch ->
Thief hotwires your car, and it starts, and then immediately stalls. He re-starts it, an it runs for a moment, then stalls again, and again, and again etc.

+1 trunk monkey

Well then I guess your shit out of luck then,cause if your too tired or lazy to flick a switch.

To the OP,I usually pull the fuel injection relay and disconnect the coil pack if I plan to park for a few hours.

maybe cruise control, defog, and cig. lighter. I'd feel like 007:bowrofl:
looks like fuel cut or ecu cut is the best way to go from what reading I've done, but I'm an electrical meganoob.

I hear good things about ravelco http://www.ravelco.com/

I recently helped install one of those clifford alarm systems in a friends car. It has a sensor to detect shaking of the car. It has a dial switch to determine the sensibility. On the lowest, we were able to just bump the car with our hand to trigger it. It sends all data to your little car pager. We "somewhat" tested the range and it worked from this parking lot outside this worked to the other side of the building with tons of equipment and cement walls in the way.

I highly recommend installing some kind of switch. I say make a switch to the fuel pump. If the car should have enough fuel to start and move a little, then the car will stall in the middle of the road and the police will eventually give you a call.

I read an article one time, some dudes got busted for trying to steal a car because the didnt know you had to depress the clutch to start it. And

http://imagehost.vendio.com/a/117312...crwoave_AD.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/alarm...spagenameZWDVW

I dunno if it works or anything Im not affiliated!

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume the microwave thing does NOT work very well if at all.

As for the guys that got busted for not pushing the clutch in, if they were that stupid they would have gotten caught soon enough if they didn't get caught over that anyways...I mean if they didn't know that they obviously didn't know how to drive clutch so what were they planning on doing once they got it started?