Wheel clamping as a form of enforcing parking laws can be incredibly frustrating, but using your own wheel-clamp can be just a frustrating for any would-be thieves. They can be large, cumbersome and heavy devices, not always the easiest to transport round, but there’s no denying they are a very high visibility deterrent to a criminal.

Wheel clamps are often used on trailers, or cars parked for an extended period of time, but effectively hinder or stop completely the wheels from revolving. Quality can vary massively and prices can start from 10 dollars to over 100 for a really heavy duty clamp, with more basic ones being easier for criminals to remove, usually simply by trying to drive the car off, damaging the clamp in the process.

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Vehicle tracking systems have been available for nearly 20 years now, and work using GPS to pinpoint the cars location. Once the system is activated upon the car being stolen, the system sends the location of the car to the tracking company, who notify the police of its location for retrieval of the car.

Several systems are available from different companies, some of which require you to report the car stolen first before the tracker is activated, other more advanced systems are connected to sensors built into the cars alarm and immobiliser. and notify the company, who check with you to see if you are aware of your car moving. some systems even require you to carry some form of smart card, so if the car is active without the smart card present the tracker is automatically activated and the police called.

Whilst it may seem like a good idea to advertise the fact that you have a tracking system installed to warn off potential thieves, it is best not to do so, as if the thief knows about its fitment, they could find and remove the system, leaving them undetectable with the car. Only the installer and yourself should know if it is fitted, and whereabouts on the car. 

Tracking systems usually require a fitment and equipment cost, followed by some form of subscription to an annual monitoring service. Occasionally the package includes lifetime monitoring included on the initial purchase price, but it is best to check beforehand. Some systems may also get you a discount on your car insurance, and high end models sometimes need trackers fitted as a minimum requirement before insurers will provide cover.

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More to stop your expensive alloy wheels going missing than your car, but nonetheless locking wheel nuts do a very good an relatively inexpensive job of protecting your rims. They work on a simple principal, one nut / bolt on each wheel is replaced by one of these, and it requires a special key to release the bolt. These adaptors come in wide varieties width masses of combinations personalized to the manufacturer, meaning the thief having access to the right adaptor is very difficult. The more expensive the bolts, usually the more combinations and the harder to remove they are.

The trick is to hide the adaptor somewhere inside your car where it will not be easily found, as if it is in your glove box or somewhere similar the thief could just smash a window to get to it, but at the same time, you do need it in the car, so if you have a tyre puncture or blow out and need to change the wheel, it is available there and then.

Manufacturers are starting to fit locking wheel bolts as standard now to most cars with alloy wheels, but if your doesn’t have them, or you have purchased a nice set of aftermarket rims to enhance the look of your car, then spending another 30 dollars or more on some locking wheel  nuts may be a shrewd investment.

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If you can’t afford a professionally installed electronic immobiliser, or your car simply isn’t worth investing several hundred dollars in, then maybe the much simpler and cheaper option is an ignition kill switch.

All a kill switch is, is a discreetly positioned switch that is wired into your ignition loop, meaning the switch has to be flicked to complete the circuit before the car will start.

In its most basic form it is simply any sort of electrical button or switch attached to a couple of pieces of wire. If it is found by the criminal it can be easily turned to on, so positioning the switch somewhere out of sight is a must, but it may cause the thief minutes of grief while he tries to figure out why the car won’t start.

Kill switches can generally be overridden quite easily by connecting powered wires to the starter motor directly under the bonnet, but this takes time, so if you have an old banger, you have a basic understanding of car electrics, then a kill switch can easily be bought very cheaply from any local electronics store and installed yourself or by a friend or relative with a little electrical understanding.

We do warn against tampering with your cars electrical system if you don’t have and knowledge in this department though, as it may cause you more problems that it solves if your car won’t start on a morning due to your own faulty wiring!

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Electronic Immobilisers have been responsible for the biggest drop in car theft figures since their introduction as standard fitment on new cars in recent years, and are one of the most highly recommended pieces of kit to invest in to protect your pride and joy if it does not have a factory fit unit as standard. Several countries have required these to be fitted in all new cars, Australia from 2001, the UK from 1998 and since 2007 in Canada.

Immobilisers all work in a broadly similar manner – an electronic system prevents the car from being started by not allowing the ignition system to trigger the starter motor. Most systems now also block delivery from the fuel system too. They are usually linked to a key fob transponder with a code in that must be recognized by the car to allow activation – if the correct code is not present at the time that the ignition system is activated the car will not start.

Aftermarket systems are now pretty advanced and come as an all in one unit that connects up to the car’s separate central locking and deadlock system, and most usually also include a good quality alarm. These must be fitted by an approved installer as they are usually quite complex and include all sorts of safety systems to stop them from being overridden or easily disconnected.

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There are 2 types of steering locks, the first is the Wheel lock, which aims to render the steering wheel unusable by stopping it from being turned. There are hundreds of different designs on the market and can be bought from nearly any auto accessory shop, with prices varying wildly from $10 for an inexpensive lock up to over $100 for a top of the range lock as pictured above.

The basic locks work like a long bar has been placed through the steering wheel and are often locked to one end of it with the other end protruding far enough to make tit difficult to turn the wheel without the bar catching on something such as the windscreen ,the dashboard, the roof or the drivers legs. Unfortunately you do get what you pay for, with the cheaper locks easily picked or broken by force, and a common method of removal is simply to cut the steering wheel, which are generally made of plastic nowadays, and slide the lock off.

The top of the range wheel locks cover most of if not all of the steering wheel like the one pictured above, making it impossible to cut the wheel to remove the mechanism, and also satops the rising crime of Airbag theft. They are constructed out of solid materials and have high quality locks that cannot be easily picked or forced. These can be expensive, but are also highly visible and with most thieves knowing just how difficult they are to remove, they can cause the thief to look elsewhere for his next target. These are a very effective method of theft prevention, and if you can afford it, are highly recommended.

The second type of steering lock protects the steering column rather than the wheel itself, covering the column in a protective metal sheath, which blocks attacks on the ignition barrel to reach the electrical switch and try and start the car, or to try and break the cars own inbuilt steering lock, which is often forced by the use of a hammer and chisel down the side of the ignition barrel. They often also have an arm that passes through the spokes of the steering wheel, restricting its movement.

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Thinking of buying a used car? Then this is one of the most important and simple things you can do to protect yourself. IT will not stop the car from being stolen, but it could prevent you buying a car that has already been stolen, been involved in a serious accident, or a car with outstanding finance attached to it. you will need the registration and VIN number from the car you are thinking of purchasing, and do this before you commit to buying or pay for the car.

There are several different companies that will provide this service for a small fee, typically anywhere from 10 to 30 dollars, the data is usually sourced by the providing companies from a combination of the police databases and insurance companies, and it should cover as many of the following points as possible:

Firstly, if the car has ever been reported stolen to the police – the registration and chassis number will be recorded on the national and international stolen vehicle database, to see if it is currently reported as stolen or missing, or ever has been reported in the past.

Secondly, it should show if your intended purchase has any outstanding finance – if a previous owner has used credit to buy the car, and the loan agreement is tied to the car, then the finance will stay attached for the car, and the new owner – you, will be responsible for any outstanding finance payments. The report should tell you if there is outstanding debt owed, and if so, who with, you can then call the finance company to clarify the situation. Make sure the finance is settled before purchasing.

The report should show if the car you are buying has ever been involved in a total loss insurance claim, this could mean it was either stolen and recovered, or damaged in an accident and classed as beyond economical repair. This could mean the car is less safe in an accident as crumple zones cannot be restored fully to their original strength, it could also mean that if the car is involved in another claim, the insurance company may not value the car so highly.

Following from the above, it should also show if the car has been scrapped. A scrapped car should not be on the road , and this may show evidence of the car being ringed - which is where a stolen car is given the new identity (VIN number) taken from a scrapped car. If so the matter should immediately be reported to the police.

Some reports may also give the last recorded mileage at point of owner change, which if higher that the current displayed mileage on the car, could be a sign that the mileage has been tampered with or falsified to enhance the value of the car.

Some reports may also give details of things like number pf previous owners, and the full official specification of the car, and should also provide some sort of guarantee that if the data is found to be inaccurate and the car is actually stolen or a write off, but the data check did not indicate it as being so, then the data check company may pay you a set amount in compensation.

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With webcams and digital cameras becoming much cheaper, it is now easily possible to have an in-car camera fitted very cheaply. This can be set to record or even broadcast images back to a home computer via the internet so at any time the cars owner can see what is going on inside the car.

These can be triggered by any sort of sensor system, often linked to an alarm immobiliser, notifying the owner of a potential theft so they can see what is going on inside the vehicle. They can also be used to record images to possibly identify the thief or be used in evidence.

Costs for these cameras can vary a fair bit, and but a non-specialist webcam style camera can be purchased and installed for less than 100 dollars from most electrical stores very easily.  With sizes decreasing it makes it a simple matter to install into a hidden location and not be detectable by any criminal.

Security cameras for your home, garage or driveway that provide a similar level of protection are also very cheap and easy to install, both are perfect for the concerned owner who loves checking up on their pride and joy.

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Once now a very popular accessory for a new car, alarms are now considered one of the less effective methods of protection, which has sprung from their “neighborhood annoyance” factor. Alarms were being triggered for all sorts of reasons their highly sensitive nature meant that if a cat jumped on the car or a lorry passed by, the vibration could set off the alarm, and if this was in the middle of the night then even worse.

Car alarms reached a point where false triggers were happening so frequently that the first thought upon hearing the siren wasn’t that the car was being stolen, but that it was a false alarm. This meant that people have taken less and less notice of the noise, so it is unlikely that anyone else but the owner would care or bother checking the car, rendering the systems generally pointless.

Early alarm systems were very basic and were triggered by switches attached to the doors, only sounding when the door was opened. Later systems added switches for the bonnet and trunk, and also motion and heat sensors for the interior of the car that could sense movement inside.

More advanced recent systems also cut back on the false alarms, and have back up power supplies and sirens, and can be linked to the cars deadlocks. Most are now combined with some form of electronic immobiliser, and some notify the owner if they are triggered by a phone call, text message to a cell phone, or email, and even have optional extras like spy cameras, or devices that fill the car with smoke.

More expensive new cars are generally fitted with alarms as standard nowadays, and if you have an older car we would only recommend an alarm system that is both professionally fitted, and coming in conjunction with an electronic immobiliser, as the sound alone has become to generally ignored to be effective.

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