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boon

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Posts posted by boon

    Anti-Stolen: Tips and tricks for keeping your car safe

    in Stolen Vehicle Register

    Posted

    Updated 07/04/11!

    Without giving up ALL the secrets, which would basically create a scum-bag how-to, here's some tricks I've learnt that will help to slow down potential car thieves. If you combine a few of them, you should be able to keep your car safe from most things short of a determined bunch of guys with a flatbed truck.

    Before anyone starts about giving thieves ideas - 99% of them already know the techniques I'll discuss countering, they're pretty basic - if you know them too then at least you can better defend yourself from them.

    I will add to this over time...

    Nothing will absolutely STOP a car thief, as everything here can be worked around given time. The key is to make it such a pain in the arse for them, with so many sirens and flashing lights, that they give up, or preferably don't mess with it in the first place.

    1. Protect your bonnet!

    Most thieves these days don't go for your window or door first, they go for the bonnet. That's where they'll find what they need to disable a poor alarm install - the battery and the sirens.

    If they can get your bonnet open without an alarm going off, that's half the battle gone their way already.

    -They usually go through the grill. Either poking around with pliers or they'll just smash the grill with a hammer to get at your bonnet release cable. There's not a huge amount you can do to stop this - some people relocate the cable, or run it through a piece of thin rigid pipe to prevent it being messed with.

    -Your bonnet sensor is probably in a dumb place. If your alarm doesn't have a bonnet sensor, add one. At the very least they can usually be tacked onto the door sense circuit. If it has one, it's probably on the radiator support, or maybe above a headlight. This is a silly place - they know you'll probably have one and can smash your grill (or use a variety of other dirty tricks) and get at the switch to prevent it going off. Mount it to the firewall or right up the back of the engine bay. If you've already got one, don't move it - buy another one, they're cheap as, and wire it in parallel. This has the added bonus that if they find one, they'll probably go right ahead and open your bonnet, resulting in a whole lot of screaming sirens. You could even get super creative and stick it on top of your intake manifold.

    -Test and tune the bonnet sensor. Do you know that your bonnet sensor is actually working? They can get dirty contacts etc over time. Next, does it go off if the bonnet is just popped, or only if it opens? Most of them have a plastic pin, you can trim it down until it goes off if your bonnet lifts even a tiny little bit. You want it to trigger as soon as they pull the release cable.

    -Make it hard to open your bonnet. Realistically, we don't open our bonnets that often. Get a cheap bicycle chain lock and find a way to attach it to your bonnet and something solid in the engine bay, like around the intake manifold. Shorten it so that you can juuust get in there to remove it (remember to take it out when you send your car to get serviced...)

    The idea here is that the scum can't get your bonnet all the way open to get at your battery and sirens. Some brave thieves will persist if they can get your bonnet open and deal to the siren really quickly, either by silencing the siren through their nefarious ways which I won't go into or cutting your battery wires and hoping it's not battery backup. If they have a bonnet that will only open 10cm and the car is screaming and flashing enough to wake the dead they'll probably put it in the too-hard basket and run off. I don't care about dirtbags knowing this trick - not many of them carry boltcutters and even if they do this should buy you enough siren-seconds to get out of bed, call the police and grab an old 5-iron or 4x2.

    2. Know your alarm.

    Don't trust that the guy who put it in had a damn clue what he was doing. My V7 didn't have the driver's door hooked up when I bought it, load of good that is.

    If you're getting one installed, ask if you can watch them do it. The longer it takes to install, particularly hiding the brain away, the longer it will take to steal. If you can get your brain out without removing any screws, massive fail. Wrap the loom around the dash bar a couple of times - that way if they somehow find the loom (it should be taped into all your other looms) and give it a pull the brain won't fall down into the footwell. Zip tie it to 2000 things up in there. Wrap the whole brain in like 100m of tape and zip-ties. A lot of them take about 3 seconds to open with a flathead screwdriver, and if that happens it's game over (mind you if they get to the brain you're probably screwed anyway).

    Take the time to find your brain and see if you can follow the immobilisers (if it's a 5 star it should be a black-wire loom)... if they've cut the wire in 1 place then attached the immobiliser wires on either side of it then they don't know what they're doing. This actually makes it EASIER to hotwire your car.

    Don't bother cutting the starter. A lot of people do but what's the point? They'll just push start it 50m down the road after rolling it down your drive. Use the cut for something else. Get creative.

    Same goes for the siren. People make them accessible so they can get to the key cut-off (retarded thing anyway) but really it just means that the scum can rip it out in seconds and throw it in a bush or other nefarious siren defeating tricks. Put it somewhere horrible. Underneath the topmount is a good place on Subeys.

    If you can have an auxilliary siren, put it (or even better, a couple) under your dash. That way when the scumbag sticks their head under there it's blaring in their face.

    Swap the LED for a generic red one. A lot of alarms have quite distinctive LED module thingies but damn, that just tells the bad guys what kind of brain you have. Why tip them off? Having an LED is good though, it will put off opportunists and crackheads.

    Don't bother with glassbreak sensors on a Subey... any crim worth 10c won't smash the window, they'll snap off your monsoons then pull the glass out at the top. Get ultrasonics instead. And if your alarm has a shock sensor, turn it all the way down. You want your neighbours to pay attention if your alarm goes off, not ignore it because it's probably falsing AGAIN. I personally can't see the point in shock sensors, most of them won't go off if you break a window anyway.

    If you reckon you'll never, ever need a key disconnect your door locks so they can't be screwdrivered. Some people I know glue a 50c coin over them too, just to stop them even trying.

    To be continued...

    TM Member selling stolen subaru parts

    in Stolen Vehicle Register

    Posted

    1. Soak steak in something nasty, antifreeze maybe?

    2. Throw at dog

    3. Come back in 20 minutes

    And yeah, the old cut the handbrake and roll them out the way technique is not exactly new.

    Pro-tip: When taking your car to any service type place, give them your spare alarm fob. Most alarms will only allow 2 fobs to be coded to them, and they drop the one that hasn't connected in the longest time. So if you come back to pick your car up and your usual fob doesn't work any more you know they've probably coded another one to it... so take all your wheel-nuts off when you get home that night :)\

    But yeah, for all the elaborate schemes people have, if some scum wants it they'll take it.

    I reckon about the safest you'll get in a practical manner is a locked, alarmed garage with your car locked and alarmed inside.

    If you're super super paranoid, switch off the breaker to your garage door opener and put a bolt through the manual door release thing. Even if it won't stop them completely, it'll slow them down enough that hopefully they won't bother.

    If some bastard really, really wants it, they'll take it. The key is to make it SO hard for them that they don't want it that much any more.

    Tints failing W.O.F

    in Legal

    Posted

    Yeah small mechanical workshops are the key.

    VTNZ failed my GF's car for rear brake balance... we got it adjusted, took it back and they said it was worse, but the front was better? WTF...

    Took it some place that doesn't have a w*nked out rolling road for brake balance... passed first go. Stupid...

    Fuel injection setup help please, a/m not standard

    in Engine Related

    Posted

     BLAZD said:

    STM only changed one of the fittings, and its a 20 buck one, so doesn't really bother me haha

    but if they said its the best option, im going to go with them for the sake of a few bucks

    can fully see the point though on diff setups, the Y fittings are allot bigger

    Probably because your fittings were sh!t chinese ones and they were going to snap and Falgoon your car?

    VF banjo bolts!!! wat a mystery

    in Engine Related

    Posted

     pappu']

    [quote name='boon said:

    I recently changed from a VF30 to VF34 (BB center) - didn't change banjo bolts and I don't have any issues with it pushing oil.

    /quote]

    hmm from what i have read its vf34 similar to vf22 bring BB so same oil needs..

    but u already had the restricted banjo bolt in the vf34 yea? or did u put the vf30 one in there?

    how much of a difference did the vf34 make on the vf30

    The VF34 came with no fittings so we just used the ones that were on the 30. Doesn't smoke or anything. Reading on the 'net it sounds like the VF30 has a pretty restricted bolt anyway.

    VF34 runs great. Boost comes on maybe 400-500rpm earlier? Car also drives smoother although it now has virtually no engine braking in 4th or higher, probably also due in part to the rest of the exhaust though.

    GD adjusties into a gf8?

    in Brakes, Suspension and Steering

    Posted

    You have to change all the top hats. The rear ones are the same except one bolt is like 1cm further away on the GD.

    The front top hats will fit but if you have adjustable camber plates they are on the wrong angle. The holes are completely different though so if you're keen I'm told you can just re-drill them.

    You can even re-drill the strut tower in the rear but your cert guy will probably make you tack a body washer on top of the hole.

    Proposed rule change - re. stale tags

    in Wellington / Kapiti

    Posted

    I propose changing the rules so that after a person gains the current 'tag' by posting their car in the location, they have 1 week (or something?) to place a new tag or the photo of their car in the previous location is deemed to be the new tag and other people can then go and pursue it.

    Otherwise the 'game' can be effectively broken by someone gaining the tag and not placing a new one for a considerable amount of time.

    I mean, I know people are busy but if you're going to go to the effort of collecting the current tag you should at least have time to go make a new one.

    Your thoughts?

    young teenagers doing skids on the streets

    in General Vehicle Discussion

    Posted

    I'm only juuuust past being a teenager and the only times I've ever really lost traction have been on snow...

    Can't see the appeal in wrecking your car doing burnouts and I'm well informed that AWDs don't drift. Besides the fact that understeer scares the living shizzzzzzzle out of me.

    That said, I'm not at all averse to giving it some far-right jandal when the circumstances allow.

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