RyanA

After seeing the continued stolen car posts in here, I feel like I need to say something. Yes, I know it is blatantly obvious that security CAN be cheap but it seems like many of these posts about stolen cars have the excuse of "I could not afford an alarm because __________" Sorry, but for less than $10, and a little bit of your time, you can really do your part in pissing off a thief. The longer they are in the car, the longer you have to get a little target practice in. Anyway, here are a few quick ideas off of the top of my head that are cheap and effective means of protecting your property:

1. Get a $1.49 switch from Radio Shack, the local hardware store, Home Depot, Lowe's, or anywhere else that sells a regular on/off switch. Cut a wire that is important (fuel pump feed, ignition coil feed, main relay feed, etc) and put the switch in there. HIDE the switch.

2. Relocate your ECU then go to a junk yard and get a junk ECU and harness that is cut. Install the section of harness so it looks legit. Then, no matter how much time a thief spends trying to apply power to a wire, they won't figure it out. Put a switch as described in #1 on the real ECU harness power feed. Just cut the switched ignition power and the car won't start.

3. Same thing can be done to a main relay. Relocate the real one and put a dummy harness in with a dummy main relay in the stock spot. Use switch as described in #1 to interrupt power to the real one.

4. Mechanical fuel shut off. Cut fuel line and put a 1/4 turn valve in there to completely turn the fuel supply off. Hide it, too....

5. Unplug your distributor and put a dummy plug back in it if you are going to park for an extended period. Tuck the real plug where it can not be seen. Looks hooked up at a glance but it's not....

6. Simply unplug your starter signal wire. It's just a 1/4" female spade so it's already "quick disconnect"

7. Interrupt the alternator charge wire with a PAC80 relay or similar. Even if it does not keep them from stealing the car it will limit how far they end up being able to drive. Especially at night...

8. Hide an old Ford style starter solenoid under the battery tray or underhood fuse box. Put a kill switch on the solenoid feed that you can flip a switch and interrupt. Unless the switch is on, there will never be any power that goes to the starter but the starter will still click, making the thief think your starter is junk.

9. Go upstream of your clutch switch and cut the wire in half. Put an on/off switch on it so the starter will not engage (clutch has to be pushed in to make starter turn over...)

10. If you have a stock radio in your dash but your one you use down by the cup holders (96-00's), you can open up your factory radio and solder into the faceplate buttons. You can make it where a series of buttons have to be pressed at the same time for the starter to engage (Like AM/FM button, preset 1 button, and preset 6 button at the same time). To be a real dick, simply hook the rest of the buttons up to run your horn relay. That way, if they hit one of them wrong, they honk at you to let you know they are outside playing. You can use a factory radio harness and just cut traces at the board so they are dead and solder your wires from the buttons to the plug. Re install so it looks factory and you'll have them messed up for a while. you can obviously use the radio to control many things so use your imagination.

11. Same thing as 10 but you can use the hazard switch as an on/off switch.

There are many other "budget" means to protect your car. Don't use the excuse of "I could not afford security" after your car gets stolen. ANYONE can AFFORD an effective security measure. Anything you can do to make it harder for the thief is to your advantage. The longer they are in the car, the more apt they are to leave or get caught.

jamelin

dam man thats some sick **** with the factory radio

chinkstahh

wow props on this writeup. never even thought about relocating and adding a switch to the main relay.

Arthas

sticky please

jamelin

definately sticky material lol

mortificationrock

Thats some crazy ****....too bad my **** was already stolen. But ill keep all this in mind when i get my ferio

srt4mike

x3

fryguy190

X4

some very good ideas. i have already installed switches and an alarm in my baby.

but you can never have to many.

ckycampmember

x5

#10 is the funniest **** ever.

NACvicSi

Good ideas. These are some good common deterrence that will **** off the average thief. Another good friend: train horns. The average human ear drum will rupture at 140-160 db. Train horns can go well over this. One inside and one out. Guaranteed to wake your whole block up and and a nice surprise if they are in the car.

NACvicSi

PS: This is assuming you have an alarm to wire them into.

omgwtfbbq

If you have an auto, you can cut the neutral-park switch wires @ the shifter and wire a switch there also.

IF you have a manual, you can wire it @ the clutch pedal switch too. It's way up there in the dash, so can't be seen as easily as the fuel relay.

D16SiHatch

have you seen a legit train horn system in person. they are massive, let alone mounting the airtank/compressor. no way you'd get one of these in the engine bay. and about the only way you'd have one in the car is if it was chillin in the backseat taking up all useable passenger space lol.

NACvicSi

Actually yeah I have. I'm not necessarily talking about the ones off a train. I'm talking about the ones marked as train horns, and they come in different sizes. Hell I seen a mini one mounted to the side a motorcycle.

majrneo

that is like the perfect crime stopper, i thought about that once not too long ago, but when i looked at the price of those horns, i rather go steal one off a train, hahahah

but definetly funny as hell

NACvicSi

Yeah at $300+ for a decent setup I would only do it in high theft areas.

g230sport

car came into work that wouldnt start unless the cruise control button was pushed in... i want to do something similar to my car, whats involved in doing something like this?

RyanA

Someone said earlier that you had to have an alarm for any of this to work. That is not true. The most you will need to do any of these is some solder, some wire, and either a switch or a relay. NO alarm required. Also, if you DO have an alarm, you do not want to add these to the alarm but add them as separate small systems. The point is to have as many separate security measures as possible. They call this layered security.

Unfortunately, the typical alarm installation takes a thief about 10 seconds to "disarm". If you put an alarm in your car and you want it to be effective, here are a few things I used to do:

1. DO NOT PUT THE ALARM RIGHT BY YOUR STEERING COLUMN!!!! This is the most common place that it is put and thieves know it. Consider alternative locations. Here are some places I have put alarms: Under the center console, behind radio, where the factory alarm goes on the 96-98 Civic (on top of the factory radio, then radio is bolted back in the car like stock), under a seat then covered by a factory cover used for modules on other cars, inside of a door then run all wires through the door boot, on hatchbacks, behind one of the rear panels, under the back seat, in the trunk. Once again, your imagination is important. Try to think where a thief would look and DON'T put it there!!!

2. Mount all relays associated with the alarm in different spots. Some thieves try to listen for relays clicking to know where to pull a batch of wires so you don't want to have a bank of them where they can just get all of them at once. Also, DO NOT mount any relay near the alarm unit as you do not want to attract attention to it at all.

3. BEFORE you even start the install, prep the alarm. Figure out what wires may be going to the same areas. Batch those wires and tape them together. The point is to make your wiring blend in with factory. Most factory wires are taped and then loomed. By doing this, you are making it harder to distinguish between factory wiring and alarm wiring.

4. Run wires in the same loom as factory wires. Run the wires with the factory wires then tape over the stuff, maintaining the factory taping pattern.

5. At the end of my car audio profession, I started using a label maker to mark what a wire did. EVERY wire coming from the alarm was black. Run all of the wires then, as you attach each one, remove the label and make the termination. Code Alarm, in the early 1990's had an alarm they called the New York. It was exactly this same thing. All wires were black and had tags that were removed as each wire was attached. On another note, I used to be on Code Alarm's R&D Team....

6. Consider multiple kills. What I mean by this is even though the wire is called a starter kill wire, this does not mean that this is all you can use it for. You can use the starter kill output to run a relay. That relay can then be used to trigger multiple relays (you have to do this because the typical alarm output is only capable of about 750 mA current draw. The relay "bounce" current required to energize multiple relays will easily exceed this.) and do starter kill, main relay power kill, ECU power kill, etc. You can use as many automatic interrupting relays as you want. Just make sure to hide them and mount them in separate locations as said earlier.

7. Consider finding a dummy alarm box and mount it in the "old standby" location right by the column. Zip tie it in there so it looks legit. The thief will assume that the alarm box in plain sight is your alarm. They'll grab it and try to jerk it out. Make it so it can be easily pulled out. If you are a really nice guy, you can put a big white label on the back and write the thief a little note that says something like "Wrong one. YOU JACKASS!!!"

8. Someone earlier said something about train horns. While they are any alarm installer's wet dream, they tend to be much too expensive and much too large to fit in many Hondas securely. An alternative is to mount one or 2 sirens INSIDE the car. Put one on the driver side, right where the thieve's head will be. Kinda sucks having a siren shouting in your ear.... LOL.

9. DO NOT just mount your siren under the hood!!! A thief will just open the hood and tear the siren out. You need to have it HIDDEN. IF you get under a Honda/Acura, there are many panels that are removable. You can put the siren behind the bumper, on the radiator support under the impact bar, under the gas tank filler neck cover, somewhere under the car in general usually works. A good measure is to put 2 sirens under the car. Use the same one so they kind of blend together when the alarm goes off. This makes it harder for the thieves ear to figure out there are actually 2 sirens. By the time they eliminate the one threat, there is still one left.

10. If you use multiple sirens, it's a good idea to use a relay. Take the siren output and put it on terminal 85. On 86, put the opposite polarity of the siren output (if the siren has a + output, put the other side to ground. If the siren has a - output, put the other side to +). Terminal 87 goes to + and terminal 30 will be the output to the sirens. AT THE OUTPUT of the siren, you need to fuse each siren. What this does is makes it where if the thief tries to short one siren wire, it will only pop the fuse for that one wire. It makes it where he has to find each siren and disable each one. DO NOT make anything easy for them!

11. Make sure your light flash output is fused!!! An old thing thieves used to do is break out a parking light and short it. Then, they'd set off the alarm. If the light flash output is not fused, the main fuse can blow. If the main fuse blows, you no longer have an alarm...

12. GET A BATTERY BACKUP!!! If they want to shut your car up, they will just cut the battery cable. Having a dedicated battery backup on your sirens will keep the music playing...

13. Consider additional sensors. Glass breakage sensors and pressure change sensors are very effective if adjusted properly and they won't false like a perimeter sensor.

14. Do not make your perimeter or shock sensor so sensitive that your alarm is always falsing. An alarm that false alarms a lot gets ignored. Some of my last alarms don't even use shock sensors anymore. If one of my systems goes off, there is SOMEONE IN THE CAR!!! I started doing this because thieves would ride by on bicycles and slap cars to figure out which ones had alarms. They would then continue setting the alarm off until they saw that the owner finally gave up and disabled their alarm. BAD MOVE. Many alarms now allow you to disable sensors while arming. For instance, on a DEI alarm, if you press the arm button once, it arms the alarm. Press it once more and it disables the shock sensor. Press it again and it disables the multiplex input that typically has a perimeter sensor hooked to it. When you disarm the car then rearm, everything is armed again.

15. An alternative to no shock or perimeter sensor is to put a switch on the trigger output of them. By doing this, you can disable the shock sensor in a high noise area. You can also shut down the perimeter sensor in a high traffic area.

16. The ultimate security measure is to use normally open kill relays. Although you can make a circuit to make a normally closed system into a normally open system, it's really easier to just see if the alarm you are looking to purchase supports a normally open starter kill relay. With this type of system, if the alarm is disabled, the car still will not start.

17. Use a factory switch to disable the alarm, not the regular pushbutton. If you want to keep the push button, hide it, too. Make sure to extend the wiring to it so it's not the typical 24" or so from the alarm unit.

These things should help you get a nearly bulletproof security system on your car. Unfortunately, if a thief REALLY wants your car, they will get it. Whether they roll it away or simply show up with a tow truck and hook it, they will get it. You are just trying to keep the little guy thief from getting your car. Fortunately, most thieves ARE little guys and this will keep your car YOURS for a lot longer. You may have to replace panels, etc, but you will still have a car to replace panels on.

RyanA

This is every easy to do and only requires a relay. If you would like to do this, PM me and I'll tell you how.

BTW, I will not reply to ANY PM asking how to DISABLE any alarm or security measure so don't even ask. I guess I forgot to mention: I HATE THIEVES!!!

Arthas

The hidden siren worked for me. My car was broken into a few months back and they tried to steal my radio. They popped my hood and couldnt find the siren so they just gave up and left. My radio was bolted on so they didnt take it, but the faagots did break my climate control.

RyanA

Yeah you just have to look at the glass as half full. You ended up with a car in the driveway but a broken climate control. Not a siren in your driveway and a missing car or stereo. Making sure everything is mounted securely definitely helps when someone wants something. If the radio was not properly mounted, you'd probably still have smoked climate controls but also a missing radio.

gunmetal si

MAn, dnt u got work to do? your mind is one fooked up processor

tsdenny

good info

RyanA

Yes, actually I do... I need to make a manual LS1 harness into an auto harness and I have to check out a hatch that may have busted the splined collar in the LSD... Probably should do something today. LOL

DC2-ProdUcTiOnS

iTrader: (2)

sticky vote #6.......

great write up