I hate thieves
 

So my 8 was 'broken into' last night. I use quotes, because I highly suspect that the perpetrator has a key to my 8, since I lost it yesterday, likely in my driveway from dropping off my key chain when I had a company vehicle for all last week.

Why didn't they steal the whole car? I don't really know. Maybe they don't know how to hide or get rid of the only WWP RX-8 in Rhode Island. Maybe they don't want the additional (and more severe) charges. Either way, I went out this morning to find my passenger door slightly open (like they just let it slowly shut, just before latching), and my 2 map lights were on. As in switched on, not the door triggered on. Door trigger was still in "off" position.

They rifled my car and stole my deteriorating radar detector (yay?), and my cell phone charger (wtf?)

Unfortunately, they also stole some electronics that belong to my work, including a $1,600 camera with $200 lens, my GPS, an in-car 2-way radio, a computer PSU, and a hand-held video screen (used for fine-tuning video camera lens for CCTV systems) Total loss ~$2,550

My worry now though, is that they will come back for the whole car, or sell the key to someone that is willing to steal the car. I have full insurance, so I should be able to get reimbursement for my stuff and my work's stuff, and if they steal my 8 it would be a good thing financially (upside down with GAP coverage and $0 deductible), but not very good emotionally.

Hrm...

"Not very good" is a severe understatement.


So I actually have a camera system available I can set up to watch my car tonight. Do I do that or do I go buy a chain and chain my car to a nearby tree stump in my yard, running it under the 8ft fence.

Decisions decisions... and alot of anger.

Thats fucked up.

I doubt they'll hit the car the next night.
Since they know the car is cleaned out. theres
only 1 other option now.
And theyre gonna do it when you least expect it.
In a few days..

this sucks.. cant you get new locks or something?

Yeah, I stopped by the dealer to see about swapping out the key codes, but they are closed on Sunday. Will have to wait till tomorrow. So tonight worries me. Either I can chain my car in, and not worry about it much, or I can put video on it, so I at least can identify who. I'm thinking both. Maybe a cable instead of a chain. Have to find/buy one.

yea a camera is good... cause Its most likley a neighbor im guessing.
And can catch them if they attempt...

That bites the big one man. Just track any suspicious ebay/craigslist listings for the electronics and stop leaving expensive shit in you car, especially when you KNOW you lost the key to the freakin car, c'mon.:) LOL

Yeah, I was exhausted driving a 6,500lb Chevy Express van for 6 days straight, was still transferring the stuff between the two to bring into work. I thought I lost the key down in Maryland though, not my driveway.

Thieves fuckin piss me off. They deserve to die , not because of their actions but because of their mentality behind it. Obviously they have no respect , they are scum , and once again deserve to die. Sorry i shoulda been a police officer >_>. Id be the only good one too , not giving traffic tickets for no reason , and actually catching the bad guys :)

So I am taking the middle-ground. I parked my 8 sideways at the back of my driveway against the fence (narrow steering to get it in there that way), and pulled my wife's Mazda5 across to block my 8 in. They have to steel hers first to get mine, even with the key.

... And I am putting the camera up in case they walk up to give it a try anyway.

May not be connected either, but we have a suspicion that someone (probably the neighbor behind us) is shooting our pug and basset hound with a pellet gun. Need to catch that on camera too.

damn man really sorry to hear that.

Damn dude, sounds like a not very nice neighborhood... I hope you catch those fuckers on camera and send them to jail

Neighborhood itself is nice, just people walk through it all the time that don't belong here. The neighbor in question just moved in, and I found one pellet embedded in my basset's ear shortly after, and occasionally find a circular pellet sized wound mark on one of the 2, most recently the pug. They have been doing a ton of growling and fearful howling recently as well, makes me suspect that neighbor.

Though I did just realize that the thieves also stole my fire extinguisher. WTF.

The rest of the electronics makes sense. But my fire extinguisher and my cell phone charger cord? I really can't follow that thought smoothly. But then I'm not a thieving piece of trash.

wtf is wrong with people?

They keep breathing. I can't sleep, will probably be up all night on the chat room.

you should use a accessport to lock your car down. and have a camera on the car

hope its turns out for the best and you catch those scumbags. Ive had a bunch of books stolen out of my car before, useless to them costly to me... Also report your damn neighbor, i did and now i dont have potheads roaming around at all hours of the day!

I got to have something to report them on first. I work with police all the time, so I know how to make something stick when I push it, but I can't push something on them that I can't prove. Just means moving the camera from my driveway to my back yard during the day.

Just snapped these 2 pictures of how I am shielding my 8 with my wife's 5 tonight :)
http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/g...n/100_0571.jpg
http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/g...n/100_0570.jpg

I'm paranoid.

Not so much in losing my 8. I am in love with it, but if you lose your girlfriend, you can get over it easier than if your girlfriend was violated by dirty filthy trash. That is how I feel.

That sucks dude! sorry to hear that!

STAKE OUT With a shot gun :D :lol: :eyetwitch

Sorry to hear about this dude. Thieves make me angry.

damn that sucks! hope you catch them

They wont come back tonight. at least for now, They got enough money from "you" already. they probably just gonna sell all those shit off for 300 bux(like those scumbags know how much those really worth, pay them 40 bux they be mad happy already)

there were times that some scumbags trying to sell me some portable navigation when I was driving @ stop light. One time the navigation is actually the top of the line tom tom model (I forgot the model number tho, its a while ago), I was about to just tell that guy that I'll go get money wait for me and I just gonna call cops. but lucky him I got shit to do that day so I was like no thx and I z00m off.

The problem with these navigation being mark as "target" is that most people never bother to put a freaking password on the unit itself. If its stole and it has a passwood on, no one will buy it. after a while they know that they can't make money off from that so they wont steal it anymore.

I dont have portable Navi anymore, I have in-dash one, and oh yes I have password on it. u want to take it? good. forget about the password. I installed some custom stuff back there if they want to steal it, it will destroy the Navi itself Im 99% sure. So nothing for u.

Just like what happened around late 80s/early 90s When a lot of theives go after stereo head units. it stopped after manufacture "invented" the "detachable" face plate. without the face plate, the unit is pretty much useless.



You can change the locks on 8, but its going to cost A LOT since they have to rip pretty much everything apart thats close by the "locks.

Oh yes, I hope they all die.

Yeah, I agree, they will likely not come back, they will likely get ~$300 for everything, but the issue I still have is that someone else in my neighborhood has a key to my 8. Ignoring contents of my car, it is just asking for someone to get drunk enough to decide to take it for a joy ride one night.

I am gonna ask insurance if they will cover a full locks and fob replacement to avoid an impending auto-theft claim that will cost them 17k. Even if they just reprogram the fob, the key itself will still work.

If they don't,or can't get it done tomorrow, then I am borrowing one of my work's GPS tracking beacons and wiring it into my 8 until I can get this resolved.

As soon as they reprogram the PCM, delete the old fob's data, the old keys will not work. Yes they can still open doors and trunks, but not starting the car.

Insurance MIGHT cover it, probably under comprehensive insurance.

Well, that is good to know. Although they can still violate my 8 at will even with a non-functional fob. grrrr

Thats a smart move! hopefully u dont have to track your car down.. but just in case..

well done on the blocking maneuver, for a bit of ease on the mind maybe you could consider a tracking device on the 8 like lojack?

http://www.lojack.com/

Dont bother with lo jack. A simple as hell off the shelf Jammer can jam its signal.

Or simply drive it to a basement.

Yea I mean it doesnt hurt to install it. but dont expect it to do wonders. and by the time you recover your car, its probably trashed already.

Where the hell do u live in the hood? geez bro that suks

Well, the night was uneventful. I am still slowly scanning through the video to see if anyone walked up. Claim has been filed and insurance company is investigating to determine coverage amount.

Lojack is better than nothing, but lojack compared with other options is complete crap. Lojack just sends out a uni-directional RF signal, and it is just picked up by a universal receiver mounted in some police cars. When a signal is detected, it just starts beeping. It doesn't tell the officer which direction it is coming from, or how far away it is. They have to drive around listening to it change pitch and speed to home in on the location. It can take literally HOURS even if the vehicle is stationary. Distance can vary wildly too. For example a stolen vehicle pinging it's lojack signal in New York City can sometimes be picked up by Jersey City PD, due to enhanced transmission range across the water.

No, what I am doing is going with a law enforcement grade GPS tracking beacon for the interim. The kind they use on bait cars. Accurate to about 10 feet (officially more like 18 feet, but I have never see it that far off), and within 10ms. easy to set up movement alerts and boundry zones to send to my phone, and if I work at it, I can wire it into my fuel pump or something as well to be able to remotely cut or supply power to <insert device here>. If I get the phone alert and don't stop them, I just power up my laptop, dial into the device via internet to it's cell signal, and hop on the phone with 911 and guide cruisers to my car :) If I wire up the fuel pump cutoff, then I could just have them tell me when to cut it so they don't wreck my car in a chase.

I have a few of them at work for the law enforcement support we provide. One could be spared for a week or so until my locks and fobs can be all completely changed.

And no, my neighborhood is actually fairly nice. It has some foot traffic that is not so nice though, and I don't know wtf is up with the neighbor. He is the most recent addition, we are the 2nd newest there. The 3rd newest to the neighborhood has lived there for 37 years. A few in the 40-50 year range. The kind of neighborhood that has frequent offers to come over for dinner, and who check up on each other's houses while people are away. The people to my left are on the city council, the guy to the right runs the city sanitation department, the people across the street are the neice/nephew of the council members to the left, the other house across the street is an old asian couple, both doctors who said they will write me a prescription any time I need it (I haven't had a need to take them up on it yet). Etc.

Half a mile away to the south though, there is a trashed neighborhood with boarded up houses and a liquor store that looks like Fort Knox.

Don't know if this was said but, If you have S/N( Serial Numbers) for what was stolen take them numbers and check out some pawn shops.

Prolly some punk trying to get dope money.

Let me know if you have any luck with this .

people will steal anything from a car...they even stole my spare wheel lock+key...they stole my microfiber cloth in the car too....thats super cheap.

Sorry to hear this man... I am really sorry to hear you had all the equipment in the car. :( Those of you who don't know, Worms is a loss prevention expert specializing in career crime lol. He is the one of the last people I would want to steal from, because he spends every day tracking scumbags like these down.

I had all the wheels stolen off my 8 and thousands of dollars of body damage done by a group of pro thieves working my area a few months ago. I know how miserable it feels to be violated by some scum after something I own. Just remember, it could have been a lot worse. You can replace your ..uh cell phone charger... (still don't know why they took that) but you and your family are safe.

On a side note, catch the person shooting your dogs. Seriously. If someone was shooting my dogs with a pellet gun, I would shoot them with my shotgun.

Yeah, I have a few resources at my disposal. Especially if they chat with my insurance and decide not have have my insurance pay for it, then it is a theft against the company and I can bring alot more weight to bear.

Yeah, I talked with a friend that was a state trooper for 26 years today, and he said he will have him arrested by the state instead of the city as soon as I get the guy on video. Him and my boss told me to bring home some stuff like infrared cameras to work on it :)

I shoot back with video and let the jail bedmates do the talking. I think animal abusers are rated higher than pedophiles in jail...but not by much.

I'm sure they will whisper sweet nothings into his ear. Keep me posted!

Sorry to hear. As a auto theft victim, I totally understand. I'm sure they were going for the easiest stuff. Get that car rekeyed asap.

did you lose a fob too, or just a key?

if you can't get it rekeyed quickly, a quick snip in the driver door harness will prevent the key from disarming the alarm. (and it is pretty easily reversed)

if you clear out the fob stuff for [any lost fobs] (i'm pretty sure you can do this with a working key, though i forget all the details... so please confirm) then when they go to open it with the key, the alarm will go off, perhaps making it easier to catch them...

it sounds like it might be cheaper for you to just change all locks . :)

Hehe, if I was buying all that, yeah, it would be. However, I don't have to pay for that stuff. Just on loan from my work. :)

The insurance company should let me know tomorrow what they will cover, and I already have the request for full lock/FOB replacement in to them. Quoted from the dealership at just shy of $800 total.

800 is not that bad.

Do it ! Do it ! :lol:

Dude, the camera stuff they stole...is that the setup you borrowed from your work for the Kancamagus run? I mean, it sucks anyways, but if it was that stuff, that....really sucks. :rant: I'd be livid.

No, fortunately. I had actually done some testing the day before, pulled it out to download the video and check it out, and hadn't reinstalled it. The camera stolen was just a high end digital point-and-shoot. Still pissed. Stuff is stuff. It can be covered and replaced, technically even my 8 can. Just having some trashy filthy grubby hands digging through my whole car for anything valuable feels like they sexually molested my girlfriend. (haven't told my wife that part :) )

Good luck man! Maybe within a week or so they will try to steal your car? Best scenario would to catch them red handed with the missing key in the ignition, and find the stolen equipment!

if they steel it, you dont want your car back, trust me, your better off not knowing who did it, so they cant find the car

If they try and steal it, at the very least it's an opportunity to jump out of woods and tackle somebody.

I agree, everyone needs to take out their anger somehow....right?

Last night I wired up a kill-switch, that breaks circuit for the clutch ignition lock. So even if they push the clutch in, the switch in the off position still breaks the circuit and the car won't start. This uses the stock ignition disable without crazy wiring or messing with the fuel pump.

The switch is really hidden. You can reach it easily if you know where it is, but you can't see it from the driver's seat without chiropractor visits, and just feeling around you will not run your hand across it, even feeling creatively.

I can sleep more easily now.

ouch...goodluck man
even in my neighborhood, just this week there's been two robberies on cars on my street....and my neighborhood is supposedly incredibly safe

damn dude that sucks. you should invest in a viper security. first thing i bought for my 8. and prob the best thing i have ever bought for any car. g/f said it was overkill. 4 nights after having the 8 (got the viper installed same day) i woke up to the alarm and my key chain vibrating...look out side to see some punk kids running. lol. works beautifully.

oh and good thing about the viper, is if you open it with the key, and dont know the vallet switch combination, the alarm will go off. and it wont stop...ever..lol