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I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen some
by Waterluvian 3y ago
I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year and every time he would find it abandoned a km or so away when the gas in the line ran out.
I drove in it once to get lunch and near the beginning the car begins sputtering and he's like, "oh right, you're thirsty" and reached under and flicked the switch. So understated, I still laugh at the memory.
- Ancapistani 3y agoSuper common in simple vehicles used to "run into town" in rural areas. We call them "kill switches". My previous vehicle was a '97 Jeep Wrangler. There were two kill switches installed when I bought it: one down by the driver's seatbelt latch for the fuel pump, and one reachable by inserting your finger into the opening for the 4wd shifter the disabled the starter. Neither was easily visible.
- technothrasher 3y agoYup, I put an ignition kill switch in my old Triumph Spitfire behind the dashboard when I was living in a not so great part of town. Just had to reach my hand up behind and flick it. I didn't hide it too hard, figuring anybody that tried to drive away in my Triumph and couldn't get it to start would figure it was just being a typical Triumph.
- idiotsecant 3y agoI did similar, except wired into the ignition circuit and with the control being a little cheap ebay RFID thing with the sensor on the underside of the dash. I kept a little RFID tag on my keys, chuck my keys up onto the dash when i'm ready to go and the truck is started with a pushbutton. I also put a cheater switch in the glove box in case i forgot my RFID tags. In my case it was motivated more by maintenance headache - the mechanical linkage that went from the ignition switch to the ignition control device at the base of the steering column was busted and I was too cheap to buy another one and it was a pain to replace. Project trucks that nobody can drive but you are the best trucks, IMO.
- Karellen 3y agoHey! How do you know how to do that? Nobody can start this car but me, butthead!
- hammock 3y agoWatched this movie last night :)
- Scoundreller 3y agoI guess this works if you don’t have immobilizers. In Canada they’re mandated, so the ECU is expecting some kind of digital signal from the key before turning on (but sometimes you can just shuck the rf chip inside they key and glue it in the right spot, or uncode it from the écu).
- idiotsecant 3y ago1996 ford pickups have about the simplest ignition wiring you could possibly imagine. I wouldn't even dream of doing this on anything new enough to have an immobilizer.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> I wouldn't even dream of doing this on anything new enough to have an immobilizer. It would work great on many Hyundais built as recently as last year!
- pavel_lishin 3y agoMy car in high school had a similar system. The radiator fan didn't turn on automatically, so my dad wired it directly into the AC controller. (The AC also did not work. It was not a great car.) If you got in the car, and did not specifically turn the AC to the correct setting, the car would overheat about a mile down the road. Luckily for me, I never had a chance to put this into practice, because nobody stole my car. Unluckily for me, there were several times where I forgot that I had to do this, and my car overheated about a mile down the road.
- tadfisher 3y agoSounds like a recipe for blowing head gaskets!
- hodgesrm 3y agoOr destroying the pistons. I did this once. It was a long walk as in many kilometers from where we broke down to Mannheim train station so we could get home. Normally you could hitchhike but it was late at night and for some reason the locals didn't want to pick up a couple of scruffy looking American GIs.
- mikestew 3y agoThe radiator fan didn't turn on automatically, so my dad wired it directly into the AC controller. All that trouble, rather than run to NAPA to spend $12 on the thermo-switch that would be easier to install than hacking into the A/C controller. Yeah, I've known some dads like that.
- derefr 3y ago"Run to NAPA" in what car? Presuming the nearest auto parts store is more than 10mins down the road (probably much more), you won't make it there without first doing something hacky. And then the stupid solution is already working, so...
- rmbyrro 3y agoBut then you have no story to tell! What a boring thermo sensor lol
- gorkish 3y agoOur local police department had a guy get his squad car stolen TWICE during traffic stops, and they installed an ignition interlock switch on their entire flee to prevent it happening again. Also they relegated the guy to motorcycle duty after that. Another story is once my friend called me for help because his car would't start. I looked it over; tested his battery etc, but it wouldn't turn over. I asked him if he had an interlock of any sort and he said no. I didnt do any more investigating since the car was still new, so I showed him how to push start it and drove it over to the dealer. Come Monday morning the dealer called him to ask where he had put the interlock loop that he had pulled out from under the dash. "Oh that thing? Yeah I thought that was weird." SMH
- the__alchemist 3y agoWow! Who steals a police car, and with the cop nearby? Would love to hear more.
- x86x87 3y agoYou wouldn't steal a car! https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg
- red-iron-pine 3y agoi wouldn't. but i'd totally download a car
- JohnFen 3y agoI'd download it, but my 3D printer doesn't have the print volume to make it. :(
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gorkish 3y agoIt's not as exciting as you might expect-- group of meth heads on the street he was attending to, and one insane lady just hopped in and drove off.
- titanomachy 3y ago> The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year Damn, I thought I lived in a bad part of town.
- Waterluvian 3y agoMind you it didn’t have doors that locked and you started it by twisting a screwdriver.
- pjot 3y agoDuring the summer when I was 16 I bought a pair of subwoofers and promptly installed them into my mom's Honda Accord. To make it so that she could drive without bumping Delilah, I wired them to the defrost switch. It wasn’t long into winter until I was forced to take them out.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoMy family's little econobox had a few interesting 'features': The slushbox would shift into high gear and lug the engine unless you drove it like you stole it. The ignition didn't really need the keys unless you purposefully locked the steering column The exhaust split down the middle, giving the car a great sporting growl, and last but my favorite, the radio would often lock itself to the particular station and volume you were last playing. Sorry mom, hope you like metal at 11!
- progman32 3y agoIn one of my old cars I reach down under the dash and partially unplug the clutch switch. Prevents any starting because the car thinks you've forgotten to press the clutch in. You'd need to know that one connector is a bit too far out, super stealth.
- QuarterReptile 3y agoYou had the thief at clutch, of course. But I love this idea.
- nephanth 3y agoDepends on where you're living. The US is the only country I've been to where automatic transmission are so ubiquitous
- gadders 3y agoIn the UK in WW2 for a period of time everyone had to disable their vehicles when unattended by removing the rotor arm https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/47622/ https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/47622/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chiph 3y agoA local Chevy dealer once got a Silverado pickup with the 454 (7.5 liters) V8 in it. As an anti-theft measure, they disconnected four of the spark plug wires when they parked it on the lot. It got stolen anyway - it turns out that a 454 will still run on half it's cylinders.
- jakogut 3y agoSeems it would be more effective to slightly disconnect the coil wire, in addition to being less work to reverse.
- doubled112 3y agoNow many Chevy V8s do this by design while you run down the highway.
- tveyben 3y agoWhich just highlights that if you do something - do it 100%, don’t just do it half-hearted…!
- dahwolf 3y agoWhen I was younger here in the Netherlands a lot of us had tweaked motorcycles/scooters that would go much faster than the allowed cap of 50km/h. Many had a "cop switch". Cops suspecting you messed with the engine would put the scooter on a test belt to measure its maximum speed. The cop switch would instantly cap it to the allowed speed. Mine was hidden in the left mirror, a minor adjustment would activate it.
- jeremy_wiebe 3y agoSounds like a VW: behaves differently under test.
- aodonnell2536 3y agoSchrödinger’s Volkswagen
- JanNash 3y agohttps://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen
- acomjean 3y agoMy last century GTI had kill switch (it was one of those circular keys and a spring loaded button) under the steering wheel. The engine would turn like it was trying to start, but it wouldn't unless it was unlocked. The other thing the switch did which I didn't realize at first was lock the hood. I bough the car used and trying to lift the hood initially I thought the latch was broken..
- dtgriscom 3y agoI wired the cigarette lighter socket in my old MR-2 so that, if the lighter wasn't pushed in, the fuel pump would work for the first half mile. Then, the gas gauge would go to zero and the car would stall. Bonus: I kept a second cigarette lighter in the car with its heater removed, so I could leave it in the socket and there's no way to disable it (unless you brought your own cigarette lighter). Of course, my system was just a bit flaky, and time and again I'd be on the highway, desperately pumping the lighter trying to keep the car going. I ended up yanking the whole shebang. Same car had an alarm system, which over the years got triggered several dozen times by yours truly. The one time someone else triggered it by bumping my car, I came outside and thanked them.
- phendrenad2 3y agoI believe this is a story told by comedian and author Adam Carolla.
- x3m157 3y agoI used to drive an old ratty Subaru Impreza which was at one point meant to become a racecar (it never did) so the previous owner had removed the key ignition system. Never had it stolen because in lieu of a key it used an obscure sequence of flipping unlabeled switches in a specific order (power, fuel, ignition, then crank) to get it to start. Security through obscurity!
- Johnythree 3y agoMy old Landrover had a tap to swap between the two tanks. Leaving it in the center position saved the day a number of times.