Grrrr! RAnt! Punk Kids! - Radio Gone
 

Tonight, my wife and I drove over to a city park where they show a movie projected on an inflateable outdoor screen.


When we got back to the car, I thought, "That's funny, the radio is missing. I don't remember taking it our recently...."

Yep, you got it folks. My electric car had its electric radio stolen.

Nothing else was touched. All my other junk in the car was exactly as it was when we parked the car.

My wife locked her door, and I simply had forgotten to lock mine.

I literally had bought the cheapest car stereo that I could find that had a digital tuner. The thief just popped the whole thing out. Disconnected the wiring harness - NOT - cutting it!

Maybe I can still find that same model radio. It would be the worlds easiest installation!
:rolleyes:

Man, that really sucks!! At least the wiring is ok. I had a pullout stereo in my Camaro that I never took out because the shifter was in the way. Didn't stop them from busting a window trying to get it TWICE to have it just sit there stuck between the dash and the shifter. $260 to replace the window though, iirc, each time. The most daring theft I suffered though was I was delivering pizza in my Festiva, and the thief actually stole my stereo between deliveries!

For some reason I feel safer from thieves when driving an beat up POS car, but the opposite may be true. If they go for anything I hope it's my radio (the LCD screen dosn't work), just leave the Johny Cash tapes and my tools. I also have the worlds crappiest iPod (it has an external battery held on with electrical tap)
I really can't see anyone getting more than 2 bucks for the hot cheapo radio... Speaking of which, you should see if you can by it back on ebay, or a local flea market.
Damn vpoppv, ether you live near some sly thieves, or you take far too long to deliver a pie. Frankly I think I could hot wire most cars in less time that it would take to nab a radio.

Bummer, Ben:( Good thing you don't invest in ultra hi-tech, multi-hundred $$$ systems.

My Grandma once left her car in a run down part of downtown Warsaw for 2-3 hours with the door wide open! Nothing was touched. Any potential thieves probably thought the owner left the door open to keep cool and is close by and had an eye on it.

My 1966 Impala 2-door had a Kraco radio with a crap-hole amp which the thieves got at by breaking the rear drivers side window. THAT window cost more to replace than both the amp and stereo combined. Argh! Nowadays my stereo usually is worth more than the car I drive... :)

I guess I feel better that most of the cars I drive either have a 20 year old radio or none at all. :)

You can get a radio with a digital tuner on Amazon for under $70. I opted to get the one with the USB port so I can charge my phone if needed, and play MP3 tracks on long trips. It gets amazingly BAD reception, and I am working on fixing that this weekend... Otherwise, if you want a radio without the digital tuner, those can be had for about $30 on Amazon, or for next to free at a garage sale, or for free from me (if I can get my radio to work decent, though I warn you, the LCD is broken, and it plays cassette tapes...)

Gotta have my tunes man... :)

About 2 years ago at Christmas time my Dad had his Festiva broken into the thief thought he was getting presents but the only think that he got was two loves of $1 bread. They did not bother with the stereo since it only had a tape player in it.

A while back, thieves broke into my brother-in-law's Metro. They smashed the window, dug through all his CDs, decided they didn't like any of them, and then took however many dollars worth of change he had in the car.

My brother was upset not just from the broken window, but that thieves thought he had bad taste in music.




Here's what my car looks like right now.
http://gallery.me.com/benhdvideoguy/...12786907040001

Im not liking the amount of festiva break-in's described in this thread...

Theres nothing valuable in my car. The cd player is a plain durabrand walmart crapper. I hardly ever turn it on. It has a nice clock, which the car lacks. Its not even hard mounted. Just kinda snug in the din slot.

I pretty much never lock the car.

That's the exact description I would have given of my car!

I never lock my car either. I do have this in the dash:

http://lesbaru.net/stuff/insurance.jpg

And after 5 years of owning the car, and driving it everywhere, I've never had anything stolen. Knock on wood.

Heh, another one bites the dust.
When I bought this car, it had it's original , early 90's Blaupunkt cassette player/radio . Just weeks after, it got stolen:confused:. (a back door was left unlocked because the central locking was malfunctioning) The punk forced it out and cut/ripped the wiring so it would probably cost a small fortune to get that fixed. Anyway, the funny part is that I had only used it once in those few weeks, mainly because here in Cyprus they play Greek language music which I simply hate.
Come to think about it, the thief did me a favor, took out 2-3 lbs of the car weight to help my FE.:D
Nowadays when I listen to music in the car, it's straight in my ear, from the iPod...and before you say that's dangerous, I have a pair of Sony in-ear speakers that doesn't block the outside noise to much so it's not impairing...and of course I would never leave my precious iPod in the car...:(

Don't replace it -- go camo. Confound Thieves With A Camouflaged Car Stereo For Under $20!

Joe_Bloe -

Ha ha, I like the "already stolen it" wiring. For shows you could just cover up the wires with a panel.

bennelson -

That sucks. When my radio was stolen my car caught fire (maybe just a correllation, but that's what happened). Mount the new cruddy stereo in the glove compartment (if it's not already full).

CarloSW2

That's hilarious!
I was actually wondering what it would take to replace the radio, WITHOUT replacing the radio, for exactly those reasons!

Is 72v enough to create a burglary deterrent?

It's probably a little low to be effective but it's better than nothing. A low tech version is to simply install some knife blades in the back of the radio. (And if you wire the blades to the power supply...)

A friend of mine has a bumper sticker on his Prius that says something like.

WARNING: 4,107 VOLTS!


He's an electrician and found that at a trade show.

72 or 4107 Volts does not matter its how many amps you can pump out.

Phantom - With more voltage, it's easier to overcome the very high electrical resistance of the human body and force more amps through it.

It's nice to know some people understand ohm's law. On another forum I've explained it so many times that I decided to just made it my signature.

This is why I love the story of the guy who, after having his car broken into too many times, installed an extra ignition coil, with an inhibit switch, and then ran a bared and frayed HT lead along the back of the driver's seat.

Sure enough, he was in the pub and suddenly heard a blood curdling scream outside, and his car was never messed with again! mwahaha!


I want to do something like that on the seat of my bike. Electric fence ribbon is pretty cheap!

Whether you can rig something similar with a car stereo I don't know. Even if you could you might damage it in the act of electrocuting the thief.

For a while I had to park my EV in the main commuter lot at school and one of my locks broke, but I had an very decent anti-theft system. There was an isolation issue with my gauges, so whenever my EV was charging the chassis was energized and any poor nut who actually touched the car got electrocuted. Nothing that could kill you, but it would leave little burn makes and make you scream. I usually just pulled my ground cable to fix the isolation issue, but those times I just left it plugged in and nothing was ever taken.

Now my EV sits next to Police cruisers, so I don't think anyone will be messing with it.

I heard a supposedly true story about someone keeping a bear trap on the driver's seat. He forgot to tell his mother-in-law about it when she borrowed the keys.

I got a call from the police detective. Looks like they actually may have recovered my radio!

:D

I have to go down to evidence and identify it. I don't think I'll be able to do that for a few days though. (The detective and my schedules seem to conflict.)

The best part is just knowing that the perp got caught!

Recently the neighborhood hoodles went down the block testing car doors. Would you believe it, they stole my ScanGauge! Leaving the CDs, Digital camera, etc. The Bastiches!

That sucks. Maybe you have fuel efficient thieves?

Hopefully it will scare them straight! Good to hear you may have your radio back... It's just not as fun to drive listening to nothing... you don't even have an engine to keep you company!

I got my radio back! :D

Apparently, it was a ring of punk kids fleecing the neighborhood. They got caught red-handed.

I hooked the radio back up to the car, (just plugged in the wire harness!) and it works, although the removable face was kinda jammed. I wiggled it around until it popped on and off cleanly again.

I still have to properly mount the radio. Maybe this time I put some gigantic bolt straight through the back of it into the car frame!

The only real downside to this incident is that I still have to return a new radio to Wal-Mart! Oh well, they have a pretty good return policy!

wow, thats pretty amazing!

Check the back of your unit, there is generally a provision for a bolt in the back so you can fasten it to the body. There are also generally similar threaded holes in the side. You can't make a stereo impossible to steal, but if you make them have to work for it, they'll likely give up.

In my minivan, my radio is bolted to the subframing the factory radio was bolted to and the subframing is bolted to the car using torx bits I think. It can be stolen, but it'll take a while!

Wow! That is extremely frustrating. I'm sorry that some kids just broke in to your car and broke in like that. (Assuming it was locked)

I've never heard of this happening to peoples car's, only boats.

Thanks.

Congratulations Ben! So nice to hear that there is at least some justice left and that you benefited from it.

......now get rid of some of that black "mounting tape" :)

The radio was actually a very clean installation.

It's the ammeter and voltmeter that use black "mounting tape". The trouble there is that the meters are such an odd shape, and they barely fit in where they are. I just couldn't find a real nice way to mount them. Not really enough room for custom black plastic bezel, etc.

Since the radio is out, perhaps I could look at swapping where the radio and meters are? Somebody suggested earlier about having the radio in the glove box. (Not sure it would fit! Metros have tiny glove compartments!) But if I did, maybe it would free more room for instrumentation.

bennelson -

Woo-hoo! I like those happy-endings.

CarloSW2

That is amazing, I would have never guessed you would ever retrieve it!
I guess people who rob people who drive Metros aren't the most skilled crooks.

If you could extend the wires 18 inches or so you could stick it under your steering wheel. I would be wary of putting anything other than a cheap radio in the radio hole. It just seems like anything "fancy" there would look like a good thing to nab. I'm also a big fan of really sloppy installation, if there is a lot of wires hanging around it, it looks like junk (like my ipod aka the frankinPod ).

I'm glad to hear there was a happy ending!! I almost have hope I might get my batteries back now:p
Something to think about on the radio install: The best job I ever did on securely mounting a radio cost me a totally thrashed dashboard! I'd rather lose a stereo than having to replace dash parts. It was a detachable face too, and I threw the faceplate under the passenger seat. They took the stereo, but left the faceplate:(