Will Zehring asks about simple car security for old cars...
A couple of old tricks come to mind...
One method is to just remove the HT lead going from the coil to the centre
of the distributor. The engine will turn over but not fire. BUT, any thief
worth his salt will open the bonnet, grab a HT lead off a spark plug, use
this as the coil lead and drive away with one less pot than normal firing :-(
Another method is to remove the rotor button. Messy, greasy, time consuming
and difficult to replace in the dark. :-(
My favourite is an intermittent short to ground of the low tension side of
the coil. (This should be an ironic favourite with brit-car owners.) An
electronic hobby shop (Dick Smith in Australia) has do-it-yourself kits
for this system, but it just consists of a 555 timer that opens and closes
a relay. The relay grounds and 'ungrounds' the points in the distributor.
This means the thief will crank the engine for a while, it will start and
run for about 30 seconds, and then die. At this point the thief has probably
moved the car out of the parking spot and will be much more conspicuous as
he tinkers about under the bonnet. The unit can be activated by a hidden
switch or for more security, you could build a simple UHF remote key and
use this to activate the system.
One of the best hidden (actually it was very obvious) switches I have seen
is the cigarette lighter. A friend removed the element and rigged the lighter
up so that when pushed in it allowed the car to start, when he parked the
car he simply popped the lighter back to it's 'off' position and this stopped
the car from being started.
As always, YMMV, I take no reponsibility for fried Lucas electrics, positive
ground problems, or fancy electronic ignition systems that are cooked by
grounding things that aren't usually grounded. Nor does my employer or for
that matter my dog. As you guys say... Have a nice day....
Cheers,
Paul.
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