These Tracker things for cars

[cybermat]

Hello all

My Daimler 250 is at the moment on my mothers drive with a car cover over it, the wind whipped up and broke my aerial off the other week after ripping off the cover which has cheesed me off a bit.
Non the less the car is safe but too exposed to the elements for my liking,so I have been hassling for a council garage as my house does not have a driveway or a garage (old main road terrace).

After a fair bit of me hassling I have a garage at last available about 3 miles from home on the outskirts of a council estate :S

The only fear I now have is that the car will be nice and dry but also at risk of getting nicked, as an alarm going off three miles from home wouldn't be much use to me what about these tracker devices, are they any good?
If I go for one is there a good make to get etc as I know little about them apart from you can get one on ebay for about £50 with a sim card in it or you can get some kind of managed system for £100 odd a year rental plus the £200-300 for the unit itself.

If only I could afford a nice home with a drive

[Martin Evans]

Glad to hear you have got yourself a garage Presumably your back lane isn't big enough for a garage at the back

When you speak of an alarm, does the garage have one These can be linked in to the phone, so if it goes off, you can arrange for certain numbers to be dialled (Of course it means a phone line being present).

Prevention is better than cure, so ensuring the building is secure is vital. I have heard that some thieves are ripping out up and over doors with transit vans and ropes. I suppose you could sink one of those removable steel poles/bollards (Don't know what they are called) into the ground behind and (If allowed) in front of the door. Then there are the nasty little surprises but we won't go into those

[JPB]

On a practical note, don't forget to inform your insurance company of the change of storage address as they wouldn't pay out if the car were stored away from your home address and they hadn't been told. Prepare to be taken for at least an admin fee, possibly a rise to reflect the postcode.

[Martin Evans]

Would they not offset that being as it's now kept in doors.......perhaps not, we are dealing with insurance companies

[TerryG]

Having tracker on my rangey saved me about £100 on this years renewal.
I have one of these: http://www.skytag-gps.co.uk/what-does-it-cost
BUT i paid £80 for it with an offer in one of the land rover mags

[Maaarrghk]

It all boils down to how much you value your car Cybermat. You get what you pay for.

My company had a trackered Land Rover nicked and we found it the next morning on the internet by just logging on to the tracker site.

Usual story - Police not interested so we went over and picked it up.

I would say use any means you can to make your car as tricky to get at as possible. Strong hinges, good padlocks, rotor arm and half the plug leads whipped out.

I think that the cars battery may well need to be kept charged for a tracker to work - so you may need a spare.

You could also take a couple of wheels off and keep them at home.

Alarm mines can be picked up pretty cheap as well and are entirely legal if fitted as per instruction.

One thing with anything more "nasty" that you may consider - what are the chances of you setting something off yourself? That's the one thing that has stopped me from wiring my car to the mains.......

[SEE YA]

Having tracker on my rangey saved me about £100 on this years renewal.
I have one of these: http://www.skytag-gps.co.uk/what-does-it-cost
BUT i paid £80 for it with an offer in one of the land rover mags

PM me I can get you £125 off the cost for Skytag.

[richardtaylor]

Not a bad idea but I wolud first consider a Thatcham Cat II Imboliser - that should stop it being started in the first place and there not expensive- you should be able to get on proffesionally fitted for less than £100.

And your insurance company may even give you a discount for having it fitted.

Go for a good quality one from someone like Sigma or Cobra - both these manaufacturers have been around for years and supply OE - not some cheap EBay version.##

[TerryG]

My dad swears by his method of moving the plug leads round one so it sounds like the battery is flat if you turn it over. it confuses everybody.

My reason for going for tracker (as i have a thatchem imobiliser in my range) is that bypassing an imobiliser in an older car is so easy. It will help with the idiots that try and lift a car from tesco's carpark but when it is in a lockup and the thugs in question may have an hour of investigating to get the car started. Admitidly i know where to look but when mine broke a few years ago it took 5 minutes to bypass it.
Modern cars where the imobiliser is in the ECU it is all but impossible to get round, when it is in a seperate unit a bit of constructive wiring and away you go.

[Maaarrghk]

I forgot to mention it in my earlier post, but remember reading somewhere that a trackers signal can be blocked by placing the car inside a steel container. Perhaps not a concern for most of us, but could be a problem for owner of desirable and expensive cars such as Range Rovers, where theft is big business and the thieves willing to invest in an HGV and 20 foot container.