Glad to hear you got it back!
Sorry Buddy. Glad it was found though. Sorry about the stuff inside. I feel guilty.
Glad you got it back sans some smaller stuff. Check 2 options for the locks- a locksmith can rekey them or a junkyard might have what you need for less than new. It’s also possible your insurance may cover that- my Mom’s car keys came up missing at her workplace and State Farm had a locksmith in her driveway the next day gratis. Re-keying isn’t that hard; I do my own and if a tumbler or two doesn’t match the pins and key I have I just leave them out- nobody picks car locks these days, faster to yank them out or break them. 3 tumblers is enough to deter the rest.
Not LoJack or exactly invisible, but Ham Radio has a setup called “APRS” which can track your vehicle on a map, and the needed parts have shrunk to the size of a few cigarette packs plus a short discreet antenna. It has recovered more than a few cars stolen from Hams but you have to get a Ham license to use it. No cost to use it. GPS trackers are available but require a subscription to a service who interfaces to a map for you; ongoing costs and the trackers aren’t exactly cheap if they’re good ones. If you have friends in the right places, a cell phone left behind can locate to a small area by triangulating tower signals. A cheap prepaid hidden for that purpose also provides a back-up if your primary phone is unusable, just be sure to turn the ringer off. Police can access that but it takes several hours and legal paperwork for the process to happen when you go through their channels. They may not want to bother.
If a pro wants your vehicle, it’s a goner and you’ll never see it again. All you can really do is try to deter the lesser crooks, and deterrents don’t work well with non-thinking druggies so it’s often just a matter of luck. I hope they catch the perps and rearrange their hemorrhoids via a long jail sentence.
Phil
Not your bad Frank, it’s all on me. He got my new bare A6 and stock BLF EE X6 and ripped the mini 01 from the dome along with my trusty 14650 Micromag. A newish 4.35V LG was in each 18650. The knives I listed before but they were an SRM SS that LSX gave me, a Buck pen knife from Dale, and a Juice S2. He did leave behind two brand new cells from RMM. It’s just stuff and big picture not a big deal, more of a lesson on attachments and a reminder to keep the things that matter in proper prospective. He took two pair of sunglasses and left two pair so maybe he’s only mostly a dirtbag.
USAA is being a bit cheap about the locks though. They said that since there wasn’t any damage to the actual mechanisms they would only pay for new keys and not locks and ignition as well. So I would be driving around in a vehicle that could be driven off or opened at any time. The first thing you do when keys are stolen is change the locks, duh! The rep said it had only come across her desk once in four years that a vehicle was stolen again. Multiply that by the number of her coworkers in that office x the number of offices x the number of insurance providers with that policy and it adds up. Not to mention that nothing in the vehicle is as secure as before. The good news might be that Ford no longer has the records to duplicate the keys so they may have to replace the lock cylinders and ignition anyway. I’ll know more tomorrow when the repair shop gives them the news. Everybody cross your fingers for me eh? That and hope it wasn’t driven at 80mph with the overdrive shut off.
Sob story … my dog ate my pizza
when i was a kid they broke into my porsche 914 and broke a 180$ worth of glass to steal two 5” jensen speakers worth 16$ new
Can I get you one of these?
I had a car stolen over 10 years ago. It was involved in a police chase and the Flint police ran it off the road and arrested the driver.
All of my tools and new work boots in the trunk was stolen. What pissed me off the most is the prosecutor wouldn’t file charges on the Flintoid. The jail was overcrowded and court docket was backlogged.
When someone works thousands of hours of their lifetime to buy things and have some turd to steal those things, it gets really easy to not see any value in that theifs life.
As for whoever stole OP’s truck, I hope that person resists arrest when the cops catch up with them.
Depending on how cheap you are and what your excess is and what your car is you might find a chip programmer on the net for less than your excess. My car got stolen a while ago, went from a 2003 to a 1997... My crappy insurance company was all over me for fraud, wanting phone history, bank statements etc. Didn't even consider the fact that my house was broken into at the same time and my uninsured contents was stolen too, nor the fact that in the 6 years I owned the car, being a young person, I paid more in premiums than the value of the car. I recon they were actually disappointed when the cops tracked the guy down. Anyways when I bought the 1997 bmw it only came with one key, so I got a chip programmer off the internet and cleared all the old (3 previous) keys out of the MCU just in case and made up a spare key for $20. So if you can get a cheap chip programmer they'll be able to get in but at least they won't be able to drive it off.
He pulled it into a gas station and walked away. I asked the station manager and she told me the Police won’t even bother looking at the surveillance video.
Generous offer Steve but I might use it.
And that is why I don’t drive South into that mess. My friends and family that live down your way keep two cars. One beater for driving to work and a nice one for when they drive out of town. Flintoid. LOL
They used to say, Move West Young Man. In Michigan it’s Move North!! Just please keep the Flintoids. Problem is that a lot of young men and women from up here move down there and are completely unprepared for it. They just have no idea what they are getting into. They come back up here and tell their tales of horror and it’s always the same. The poor smucks, get ripped off, beaten up and just generally abused, easy marks in a city where it’s the quick or the dead mentality. Oh and I was in Midland when my truck was jacked so I was one of those poor smucks too, in my youth.
For you guys reading this who don’t know. I’m from Northern Michigan and he is from the South and it’s like two completely different worlds. It’s really kinda bizarre.
Are you f’in serious? I thought car theft was a serious crime, and maybe the police would like to arrest this criminal before he does it again, or something worse. Silly me.
Not in Flint, back then especially. Flint was the Murder Capital of America in those days so car theft was like shoplifting. In fact guys would get caught a bunch of times before they made it to court and then they would plea bargain them all down to one count. Straight up car jacking with a gun was pretty common too back then, those guys would go to prison though, IF they got caught. I think Detroit was just as bad or worse. My Uncle got shot in a car jacking right in front of Henry Ford hospital in Detroit. Drive a nice car in that area and you are asking for trouble. That whole part of the state just kinda runs together into one huge metropolis of horrors. What’s really goofy is that if you live there long enough it just becomes normal. If they haven’t gotten one of your cars they probably broke into your house or garage at least.
I moved North after having enough of it. One of the guys my Mother worked with was shot and killed in his home, he walked in on robbers, father and son team (took seven years to prosecute them and they were caught coming out of his house), she had known him since they were kids. Then another family two roads down from us were all killed in a break in, that was never solved. I lived out in the Country on a farm and that wasn’t too bad (we all had shotguns) but drive into the city and it was a mess. Plus the crime just kept spreading out all the time until nobody was safe. I used to have nightmares and I’m not kidding. I was always worried they would come into my window at night. They broke into my next door neighbors and shot their doberman. The Dobe got them first though, he lived but was really vicious after that, they eventually put him down. I could go on and on.
Dang, that sucks. :-/ I’m glad you got your truck back at least. My sob story is that my car burst into flames last night while being emissions tested. Something blew a massive oil leak. Thankfully they got the fire put out before all the hoses/wires melted (or so it looks). I’ll know more about what happened later as it’s at the shop right now.
Wow that’s crazy I thought Jade Helm was all supposed to be Farther down South like in Texas.
No question there are much worse troubles than mine. This was just a chance to blow off some frustration and let others chime in without causing flak. The latest is the repair rep talked to a different insurance rep(mine still not answering her extension or returning calls timely) and was told they would only pay for a key and I was responsible for the cost of the locks even though that exceeded my deductible. We both made it clear that Ford could not create a replacement key but they were intractable. After calling another different agent(mine still not answering) and explaining the situation to him, he called the repair guy and obtained the local Ford number and talked to that person and apparently their is an aftermarket way by which the ignition can be used as a mold to make a replacement key and wanted me to go for that even though it’s not coded to the alarm system. I held firm and questioned the safety of an un guaranteed non oem key in a situation where I could not afford to fiddle with a sticky, poorly copied duplicate. He put me on hold yet again(each time he went to phone someone else I insisted on staying connected to his phone)and made some further inquirees and finally came back with the news that they decided that the only way to present me with a vehicle with a fully functional lock, ignition, and alarm system was to re key including a new ignition lock and door cylinders and cover that cost less my deductible. Yay. Might get it back by the weekend now. I’ll update further with any new info.
Yes, they have contracts, exclusions, and exceptions but bottom line they are responsible for getting it back to you as it was before the incident. Having an older vehicle worked to my advantage in this case but I think a change in policy when a vehicle is stolen to cover a re key is a reasonable policy for any age vehicle.
Here in upstate SC’s largest town, they hardly care about property crimes. They won’t even come out for a break-in with valuable property missing, just give you a report number over the phone you can give to your insurance company. If you have insurance; most renters don’t. But if you have the right connections, they’ll send out a forensics team for the same thing. Double standard here, poor folks don’t matter. Car thefts are pretty much the same, they won’t respond immediately unless you saw who took it. They’ll send someone around when they’ve got time or you can go downtown and file a report there. They plea down property crimes here instead of trying the perp. Just ain’t worth their time to do their jobs unless you’ve got connections, and then they go all out for you. I help them with their laziness- just ask the crack-head whose collarbone I broke when I caught him trying to break into my truck. Never knew a human could run away so fast! All good, I found out later word on the street spread fast to leave me and my house alone :bigsmile:
Phil
I need to ponder what more I’m willing to put down in print about this. For now I’ll just say that everyone was very nice.
Can you get replacement locks at Autozone, Advance Auto, O'Reilly, etc? I bought new door and ignition locks pretty cheap for those places in the past. Obviously, you get new keys with them.
Splice the power wire to your electric fuel pump and wire it to a hidden switch. It’s low tech but it can slow them down.
EDIT:
Same thing can be done with ignition coil and starter solenoid to help slow down the dumb ones.