I searched our site and threads I created in the past. I couldn't find any previous threads on this.

So, does your Olds have an alarm. Has it ever gone off and scared away a "would be" car thief?

Does your alarm go off at 0530 when your going to work and **** off your neighbors? That's what happened to me this morning. My alarm on my 96 Olds and my 20 F150 ALWAYS go off at the worst of times. Just because I carry the keys in my pocket.

FWIW, here's a similar thread on GPS trackers.

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...racker-155402/

 

My opinion is that alarms are worthless. Has anyone ever called the cops after hearing an alarm? If you want the deterrence, get the decals and maybe a blinking LED. I'm a much bigger fan of hidden disabling devices.

 

I believe in car insurance.

 

Agreed, car alarms are IMHO not worth the dough. I'd rather get a steering column lock/cover (Car-Gard, etc), or the famous Air-Bag Club. As a means to slow down a potential theft.

At the Hurst Olds Nationals back in 2007 I won one of those Air Bag Clubs, the ones with the extra bar that was supposed to curtail someone stealing your air bag in your steering wheel (this practice was a problem in the 90's). I use it on either my 1994 or 1996 Cutlass Supreme. Nice, but I rather doubt anyone wants the air bag from those cars anymore.

 

I saw a thing on the new Ring dashcam the other day. It's motion activated, so you can ride along with the rollback driving away with your car .

 

I would like to rig up a poisonous gas that would cripple and blind the occupants when the car is stolen or carjacked

 

I have old Chapmans on a number of vehicles. . Locks the hood and disables the starter. I think these were excellent. Back in the day, also prevented missing batteries.

A kill switch prevented my SRT Durango from going missing about a month ago. Of course a new window was req'd. Shame on Dodge for making key fobs so easy to clone.

 

I do not believe in alarms. I believe in secure parking and not going dumb places at dumb times with dumb people to do dumb things. I also believe in disabling vehicles.

 

I ended up in some sketchy spots during Drag Week. I pulled the ignition relay, radio face, turned off the fuel pump and clutch start safety. Plus, it's a stick, so I got that going against the younger hoodlums.

 

x2

I don't have an alarm in my 71 but have considered installing one. Best not to put yourself or your classic in a bad situation.

 

No alarm, doors to the Olds are unlocked at home, locked when out and about. I do have an ignition cut off when I feel the need.

My car is only special to me and I value the windows more than the cheap radio.

 

When my cars are in storage I disconnect the battery, more for fire prevention than theft prevention. No current, no (chance of) fire. I tend to worry about anything that might cause a short, like a varmint chewing through wires, etc.

I'm in the Insurance business so this stuff tends to keep me up at night more than the next guy. Unnecessarily, probably.

 

same here. I have heard car alarms going off and wishing the car WAS being stolen, just to silence the damn thing.

I agree, make the potential thief question if they really want the car. Make it as un-appealing as possible. If someone wants the car bad enough, they will get it. The key is making it as time consuming and difficult as possible.

 

I have coil cut off switch in my trunk of my convertible - thought I never park it where I'm not (yet), except in my underhouse locked garage

 

Technology is a precarious thing, the unintended failure modes of this would be disturbing.

 

I'll bet you'd never post that on ROP!

 

I think I did.... the police told us to unload the roof rack, so the race wheels got rolled into the hotel- Cahokia Heights. I knew we were in trouble when I saw "Heights" on the exit sign. There ain't no good "heights" anywhere in this country! The internet reservations left that out.

 

That was brilliant, Kenneth...well done!

 

I have a hidden kill switch to the electric fuel pump. I take more comfort in that than any car alarm I've had on previous cars.

 

When I was car stereo slash alarm installer in the eighties and nineties you could buy a high pitched interior installed siren that would destroy your ears in less than a minute. They were outlawed. I still have three of them. I knew people that would epoxy razor blades to their stereo's. One customer had his truck broken into over and over. C-10. Super easy access. He did the epoxy razor blade thing. The thieves came back. When he brought his truck in there was blood everywhere. They never broke into his truck again.

 

My car has a alarm, the first shot is a warning, the second not so much...Tedd

 

 

Maybe this works well.

 

There's poetic justice! I love it!

 

A

lways watching

 

Ha, that brings back memories. I had a 76 Cutlass with a killer Alpine system (for the time, circa ‘83). Epoxied razor blades around radio chassis & adjacent dash areas. Car was parked in the woods adjacent to Connecticut Dragway, protected, I thought, by wireless pager alarm. Either it didn’t work or I never heard it, but upon arriving back at the car, there was a good amount of thick blood drops all over the console, driver seat & mat, along with a bloody fingerprinted infraction ticket. Best I ever figured out was a State Cop slim jimmed the driver door lock, found my M80s and cherry bombs in the roll top storage cubbie, cut the **** out of his hand/arm fishing up under the dash, took the fireworks and wrote a ticket. Never did actually look into it, the ticket wasn’t large and the real world testing of my security measures was enlightening.

If nothing else, I did learn not to park the car out there to sneak in to the track.

​​​​​​…..

 

Pager alarm...😂🤣
Classic stuff right there. We sold and installed those also.

Total poetic justice in that customer's C-10. He took great pride in the blood on his carpet.

Had another customer that had an old bathtub Porsche ragtop. He always left the doors unlocked so nobody would damage his car if they broke in. One night someone shredded his convertible top to break in. The car was unlocked. They absolutely trashed his dash etc. I hate thieves.

 

Mine's a stick, so.....no.

 

I have an ignition cutoff switch on mine , then again the way they steel cash machines now driving through a store window hooking on a chain and drive away pulling it out of the floor. Wouldn’t take long to yank one out of a garage with a chain. Wireless cameras are getting cheaper, don’t help when you are out and about though with the car when you stop somewhere.

 

Reality is: not many radios are stolen anymore. Don't leave anything out in plain sight that would tempt a ne'r-do-well: wallets, phones, keys, media players, laptops, money, etc.
If they want your car, they're going to get it, probably with a rollback or ****** dolly. An alarm does nothing but annoy people.

 

Exactly. It doesn't even matter if the item has no value. A friend's car was broken into because he left a ratty old empty gym bag on the back seat.

 

My motto in life, has always been: "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind"
Leave absolutely nothing to chance for these absolutely disgusting, deplorable scumbags. That goes for ANYTHING, not simply cars.

 

Well, except for leaving an Amazon box full of cat **** on the front porch.

 

That's a bummer.

A coworker of mine had his daily driver Honda stolen from the parking lot when we went to lunch. It wasn't the best part of OKC, but it wasn't the "other side of the tracks" either.

 

I live in Texas and abide by "The Castle Doctrine" My alarm is big enough to only be used once anything else is a waste of ammunition.

 

The ****** dolly in action

 

Those are some scary machines. My uncle ran a used car lot and did not use them; he simply kept a set of keys for the car and dropped an employee off to drive the repossessed car away. I believe he gave very little time for the person paying monthly payments to come square up before he terminated the contract and cleaned the car up and put it back out for sale on the lot. He was a hard dude.

I would be very offended if someone tried to steal my car with that; not to the point of shooting the operator, but certainly to the point of disabling his rig and holding him at gunpoint until the police arrived to arrest him. I've always wanted to hose a radiator under pressure with an autoloading rifle; I bet the results would be spectacular.