This happened to my neighbor this morning....

"Locking" lug nuts. Won't absolutely stop the thieves, but may encourage them to move on to an easier target.
 
EdFred said:
I think what we are missing, is that someone stole the cinder blocks to put under the wheels. So somewhere someone's foundation is missing 4 cinder blocks.
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Funny how there is never a shortage of cinder blocks around for thieves to use.
 
N747JB said:
Ford tailgates with the camera built in are very popular targets, to replace with a new one you have to order almost every part individually! It’s around $4,000 painted!
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Don't they automatically lock now though? I had a 2007 F150 and I had my tailgate stolen in the NAU parking lot. Blew my mind. I mean, it was a university parking lot with tons of people around walking to and from class. I started locking my tailgate after that.
 
denverpilot said:
Nah, they’ll be out handing out tickets to the people just trying to get the repairs done on the bullet-ridden carcass of the vehicle that was stolen and shot up, last week. Hahahaha.
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We lived at Ft Leavenworth at that time. They had an auto shop for anyone to use, you could reserve a bay and use whatever tools you either brought with you or borrowed from the shop. We were taking his truck there so we could get a torch to a tie-rod or whatever and try to straighten it back out as best as possible. The city cops were the ones that recovered the truck. The MP that stopped us was probably only a year or two older than we were. I got stopped several times by MPs on that post, but it seemed they were normally more wondering, "WTF is happening THIS time?", like the night another buddy and I, busboys/dishwashers at the O-club, were driving an old beater truckload of ice from the O-club to the E-club late at night and the steering wasn't working right. We were weaving around and he thought we left the club drunk. (heh - I had a bloodsoaked apron wrapped around my hand where the other guy slammed the ice-maker door on me. We made a good impression on the MP.)

Good times.
 
Zeldman said:
Just simpler and quicker to steal the entire vehicle most of the time.

Back in my racing days we noticed a car, late 70s Camaro, on the side of the road missing wheels, seats, A/C compressor and carburetor. It sat there for a month, so I asked a police buddy of mine about it. I gave him the VIN and it did not come back as stolen.

So that car was removed from the road and into our shop where we made a race car out of it.
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I think in the old days that was the case back when stealing cars was a lot easier. Now with the advent of computerized whatever, it's become a lot harder to steal a car. Yeah, you could pretend to be a tow service and steal it that way, but that requires a more significant investment to make that happen. Nowadays with rims costing so much, it makes a lot more sense to just steal those.
 
Matthew said:
We lived at Ft Leavenworth at that time. They had an auto shop for anyone to use, you could reserve a bay and use whatever tools you either brought with you or borrowed from the shop. We were taking his truck there so we could get a torch to a tie-rod or whatever and try to straighten it back out as best as possible. The city cops were the ones that recovered the truck. The MP that stopped us was probably only a year or two older than we were. I got stopped several times by MPs on that post, but it seemed they were normally more wondering, "WTF is happening THIS time?", like the night another buddy and I, busboys/dishwashers at the O-club, were driving an old beater truckload of ice from the O-club to the E-club late at night and the steering wasn't working right. We were weaving around and he thought we left the club drunk. (heh - I had a bloodsoaked apron wrapped around my hand where the other guy slammed the ice-maker door on me. We made a good impression on the MP.)

Good times.
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LOL. Ahh MPs. A whole different kind of cop boredom.

Have a friend’s kid who I know well who did that job. Also trained dogs for ‘em. Marine.

He enjoyed pulling over a very much speeding Navy Admiral once who got all sorts of ticked off.

Maybe enjoyed it a little too much. :)
 
Security cameras are cheaper than a new set of shoes.
 
FORANE said:
Security cameras are cheaper than a new set of shoes.
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I've always wondered whether signs like these are effective.

protected+smith+and+wesson.jpg
 
asicer said:
I've always wondered whether signs like these are effective.

protected+smith+and+wesson.jpg
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They are. A thief now knows that once you are gone, he can pick up some of the most easily portable and high value loot known in the business. Most gun 'safes' are tin cans that are rated for less than 5 minutes of hand tool resistance. A drill and a sawzall is all they require.
 
weilke said:
Most gun 'safes' are tin cans that are rated for less than 5 minutes of hand tool resistance. A drill and a sawzall is all they require.
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Where I come from those are called gun cabinets. I have one mounted in a wall and it can't be seen when the bedroom door is open. I keep the home defense in that one only when I am at home. When I leave the house it is empty and open. And yep, someone with a couple good sized screw drivers would have it open in a minute. Which is 59 seconds slower than my dog could chew threw a human leg.....:lol::lol:


My gun safe would take a lot longer to open, and several people to try to move it. A very experienced locksmith that was well recommended by the FBI took almost an hour to get into it. I know because it had the electric lock mechanism. The linkage stripped inside so there was no way to open it. It cost me 600 bucks to have the locksmith open it and fix it for me. And he did not do it with a drill from Walmart or a sawzall. The drill bit cost almost as much as I paid for my safe, and I bought it used.
 
Zeldman said:
Where I come from those are called gun cabinets. I have one mounted in a wall and it can't be seen when the bedroom door is open. I keep the home defense in that one only when I am at home. When I leave the house it is empty and open. And yep, someone with a couple good sized screw drivers would have it open in a minute. Which is 59 seconds slower than my dog could chew threw a human leg.....:lol::lol:


My gun safe would take a lot longer to open, and several people to try to move it. A very experienced locksmith that was well recommended by the FBI took almost an hour to get into it. I know because it had the electric lock mechanism. The linkage stripped inside so there was no way to open it. It cost me 600 bucks to have the locksmith open it and fix it for me. And he did not do it with a drill from Walmart or a sawzall. The drill bit cost almost as much as I paid for my safe, and I bought it used.
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Next house, no one will even know it's there. Submit one set of plans to the township, and build to another set.
 
overdrive148 said:
Same apartment complex as me within maybe 500ft last week:

j1nGb4s.jpg
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Well, if they were factory wheels, that’s a GXP model. However, I don’t know that there’s a big market for ‘05-‘08 GXP wheels, lol. They aren’t particularly wide and are staggered sizes (fronts wider than rears).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
EdFred said:
Next house, no one will even know it's there. Submit one set of plans to the township, and build to another set.
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I have seen a few houses with a hidden basement that was really cool..!!!
 
CC268 said:
Don't they automatically lock now though? I had a 2007 F150 and I had my tailgate stolen in the NAU parking lot. Blew my mind. I mean, it was a university parking lot with tons of people around walking to and from class. I started locking my tailgate after that.
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Yes, the newer ones lock when the doors lock! We still seem to see a few stolen every year.
 
Bill Jennings said:
At least they had the decency to leave it on cinder blocks. They could have just dropped it on the ground.
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Which is exactly what they did with my dad's car when I was a kid. Stole the wheels, left it on the brake rotors/drums in the driveway.

He put a motion alarm on the car (cops told him that - at the time - crooks would steal the tires, and come back a couple of days later and steal the new ones)... once the neighborhood kids found out, they'd come by at night and jostle the car.... threw a bale of hay on the hood one night.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
They even stole the coolant gauge - which was a mechanical unit which doesn't work if you separate it from the line going to the engine (that line is filled with fluid to make the needle move).
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Like the temp gauge in my 1954 Buick Special. When that thing broke off at the sending bulb I just replaced it with an electric one, mounted under the dash. Oh, the good old days when there was room under the dash to mount stuff...
 
Ghery said:
Like the temp gauge in my 1954 Buick Special. When that thing broke off at the sending bulb I just replaced it with an electric one, mounted under the dash. Oh, the good old days when there was room under the dash to mount stuff...
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There probably is a picture that exists somewhere of that dash, but for the most part it's only in my memory. I liked the mechanical gauges because they were simple and required no wiring other than the lights. Of course there are pluses and minuses that go with the mechanical gauges, and one minus was that when that line broke for the coolant temp gauge, it just didn't work. Another one was that if your oil pressure line broke, you'd lose all your oil. That happened to me once, but fortunately I didn't blow the engine. I also had a vacuum/boost gauge (even though it was a naturally aspirated engine, I had dreams of forced induction one day).

If I go through with this Cobra build, I'm thinking similarly simple, although I'll probably complexify it a bit to have a few niceties.
 
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