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Car Security

I once converted a new Jeep for a (then) chief of Yorkshire fire brigade. He kept a broken steering wheel lock in his Jeep, when I asked why he kept the broken lock he said it was because it was a good proxy for a baseball bat type weapon, except unlike a baseball bat it wouldn't be considered a weapon by other authorities because it was an item expected to be carried in a vehicle.
 
You could wire a switch to the ignition fuse to turn the circuit from positive to negative and hide it somewhere.
 
I've got one of these:-

Can recommend.
Small, cheap, very easy on/off.
This type is ideal, its main job is deterrent as @Lpgc Says it should be quite difficult to start with the factory security anyway. Whilst camping or canoeing the Elgrand sometimes gets left in secluded places so its just a little peace of mind.
 
There are all sorts of very inexpensive ways of disabling your car (disabling the engine making it so that nobody could drive it even if they had your key) yourself without spending any more than a couple of £s.

Examples - Make a cut in the easily accessible (under bonnet) positive feed wire to petrol injectors / make a cut in the feed wire to the petrol pump. In these examples you could just fit a female 1/4inch jackplug socket in the wiring break and set it up so the engine won't run unless a male 1/4inch jackplug with shorted terminals is inserted (to electrically bridge the wiring break). I used to do exactly this on older cars (pre-1998) that didn't have chips in the ignition keys. You could even do this on wiring to key engine sensors such as the crank sensor. Thieves might know aftermarket off-the-shelf immobilisers but they could not anticipate such DIY immobilisation methods - which makes simple DIY immobilisers possibly more effective than expensive immobilisers!

But post 1998 cars have chips in the keys making it extremely difficult to start the engine without the key anyway. So if you want added security on top of the already very substantial security you could take it the other way and prevent a thief from being able to steer the car even in the (extremely unlikely) event they managed to get the engine to run without the key, could fit a steering lock and/or wheel lock.

The simplest way of disabling an old petrol car with sparks distributor was to remove the rotor arm from the distributor ;-) The only other ways would be to disrupt the negative/positive to the ignition coil but thieves with a bit of time might check for that... While even if they realised the car had a missing rotor arm they'd need the exact correct rotor arm to get the car running.

Depends on how far you want to take it and how great you think the risks are... Nissan made E51's with keyless entry and keyless ignition for convenience reasons, not quite so convenient when you have to insert a jackplug in a socket, remove steering wheel lock and wheel lock before you can drive away yourself :laughing:
Can a kill switch be setup on a fuse or something like that, from inside the car?
 
Can a kill switch be setup on a fuse or something like that, from inside the car?
Yes could do.

In the engine bay under the engine trim cover at the front right of the engine (as you're looking from the front, so passenger side on top of the engine) there are two wiring connector blocks. One of those blocks has 7 wires, as you look at it from the front the top left wire is red, this is the positive feed wire to petrol injectors. If you cut that wire the engine cannot run. You could cut the wire there and extend 2 wires (one from each side of the cut) into the cab, connect a switch to the 2 wires in the cab and the engine won't run unless the switch is turned on. But this would be a slightly dodgy way of doing it, you wouldn't want a short on those wires to the metal body of the car or anywhere else. So a better way would be to use a relay to switch the connection on those wires in the engine bay and have wires in the cab that control the relay. If a dual throw relay were used it could be wired so when the switch in the cab were off the engine could run, switch in the cab on the engine couldn't run, this might be a better way of setting it up than having relay on = engine can run. With the injectors disabled this way the ECU will throw error codes and turn the engine warning light on (for disconnected injectors) if anyone tries to start the car but this won't affect how the car runs long term and the errors and engine warning light will self clear over the period of several engine starts and engine run cycles.
 
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Considering that my E50 is currently a two tonne lump on the drive with an elusive fault that has even gate-crashed into my dreams, if I woke to found that thieves had taken it, I would quite honestly give them a round of applause.

Our Elgrands are totally worth nicking. Spread out over two or more containers, they become car parts and not whole cars, possibly avoiding certain whole vehicle taxes in the destination country/ies. I had a friend from Zimbabwe who told me that he had to take that approach with 4x4's that he would buy at auction here. His dream vehicle was one which could carry enough gear to allow him to do any repair on the road, so a generator, welding unit, compressor etc. The Elgrand fits that description and then some. Sad to see him go back. The UK Government offered him £300 and a one-way flight home and he accepted.

So yes, review your security situation.
 
Thanks to all of you Elgranders who have commented on this thread. I just got mine, and wanted to know what to buy for the steering lock - as you say - as a deterrent. Got some good ideas from here cos the stop lock doesn't list the Elgrand. THANK YOU 😎😎👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
 
It's not really going to be a target for thieves. They aren't worth that much, there is a limited market for them as a whole. Parts would either be hard to sell or we as a club would know if a unknown person started selling cheap parts from stolen vehicle. If someome wants to go for a joyride they would probably steal something fast
Good point 👍 I agree on this. Don't think it's really a thief's type vehicle.
 
The only thing they will gave is the cats, there was a few targeted around the Hampshire area a few weeks ago
 
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