Preventing theft and vandalism on you antique automobile

[Matt Harwood]

Gee,,,,,,,way to make a guy feel good about his car....... 

 

You're right, and I apologize. That's not how I meant it, of course. What I meant to say is that old cars are not targets for thieves interested in monetary gain because the cars and their associated parts are difficult to sell. Thieves are interested in quick gains, not the potential for a big score on a rare old car. As a result, something like a 1926 Dodge or a 1929 Cadillac or, as I mentioned, an early Rolls Royce, has zero value to them. There is literally nothing a thief wants less than a car that will be impossible to fence.

[Restorer32]

We had a customer whose bright red 24' closed trailer was stolen from his home. Happily his '31 Cad Conv Cp was not aboard. The thieves painted the trailer green with a roller and latex house paint. The trailer was recovered and the insurance co paid us to pressure wash off the latex paint. Crooks are generally not real bright and it's a good thing.

[auburnseeker]

It's nice to live in a relatively low crime area.  I drove my 57 Thunderbird with no tops to the local home depot a couple of times and parked it in the parking lot while i went in to get a few things. Did the same with a few other old cars.  They all have their own old quirks and most have an anti theft device built in called lack of knowledge by a thief.  The Tbird had a tricky neutral switch.  You had to move the shift lever a bit to get it to start.  Otherwise nothing.   Almost every old car i have owned needed some special sequence of events for a successful start.   I agree nothing will stop a rollback but unless you have a one of one car or similar I try not to sweat living too much.  There are too many other things in live that gives me heartburn.  I don't want driving my old car to be one of them. Now I might not leave a valuable radiator cap on an old car.  A little too easy to lift but for the most part I don't think you will find too many souvenir hunters.  

[Dave Henderson]

Some FOMOCO cars had an additional  terminal on the solenoid (to bypass the dropping resistor for a hotter spark at start-up) that could be jumper wired and the car could be started by also jumping the cables at the solenoid.  My '64 Comet Caliente has this intriguing "feature".  This makes these cars prey to anyone knowing about this vulnerability.  When parking in a questionable area, I have sometimes switched the wire from the coil to the distributor with a wire from the distributor to a spark plug.  The switch isn't obvious , particularly if the thief is under pressure and wants to act fast.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Dave Henderson (see edit history)

[JACK M]

How many cars have this???

I remember those.

I will bet it would confuse most people younger than me.