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I live in a tiny little street in a gap off a long sweeping terrace, 8 houses only, a dead end.
The other night our neighbours had the wing mirrors off their Mini stolen. No damage to the car seemingly, just two big oval holes there with wiring connectors hanging out.
Nobody heard a thing.
Any car I've had you had to be on the inside to remove mirrors but seemingly this is a thing with Minis... 😐
This morning I've just heard that last night, the same neighbours brand new (hideous massive white BMW suv thing) car bought on a company allowance has had all the wheels nicked off it and it's on bricks!
Wtf!
How on earth do they do that in the dead of night, at the end of a tiny street where any noise ricochets off the terrace walls and all bedrooms front onto the road?
Surely they have to use impact drivers.
They'd wake the dead!
Unbelievable.
You can't have anything nice... 😐
Surely they have to use impact drivers.
Never changed a wheel then?
Well yeah, obviously you can use a wrench and stamp on it or stick a scaffy bar on the end but the chances of doing it quietly are fairly slim.
Unbelievable.
Locking wheel nuts too I'd have thought, or are they next to useless?
hideous massive white BMW suv thing) car bought on a company allowance
Well I just hope you didn't put that in your statement to the police 🙂
No, my thoughts on the type of vehicle he chooses to park in our tiny little street do not cloud the fact that it's a horrible shitty thing to happen to you, especially both cars in the space of a few days.
They're a lovely couple and it's a great little street.
I just can't believe they didn't wake me who can't sleep very well or our dog or any of the other dogs on the street.
Well yeah, obviously you can use a wrench and stamp on it or stick a scaffy bar on the end but the chances of doing it quietly are fairly slim.
So way it is done,
1) Someone come along with telescopic wrench and cracks all the nuts, leaves.
2) 10 mins or so later they come back with mate with bottle jack, fits in the pocket, jacks up all 4 corners takes off wheels.
3) Wheels tolled to end of road, phone mate who is round corner in vehicle who then comes picks up the wheels.
At all stages in this if they made a noise and light turned on they would just walk away. But doing this operation makes very little noise.
Someone stole a headlight from my car many years ago. Just parked in the street. It did unbolt fairly easily. I think they would've taken both but one was rusted on.
Tbh I'm surprised it doesn't happen more. Parts are largely untraceable and easy to sell. There's also millions of accessible parked cars.
It is amazing what you can sleep through. I didn't wake up when my bike store was broken in to, alarm going off and everything. It's only 15 feet away! Thankfully my Mrs did though 🙂
I remember years ago I got the fuel siphoned out of my tiny little Yammy RXS100
You'd have to be pretty despo to bother with that, but yeah, car parts now are so crazily expensive and complex and the cars themselves are ever harder to steal so makes sense I suppose 😐
I live in a very quiet close and someone stole the catalytic converter from my parents’ Jazz in about 90 seconds flat - but at 11am one morning. Perhaps your street is being targeted precisely because there’s no passing traffic?
Many moons ago I had an original-shape 1970s VW beetle. Left it at the rugby club as I'd had a few post-match beers and when I collected it on the Sunday some b'stard has cut/stolen the blades off the windscreen wipers. Not the whole wiper blade mind, just the narrow bit that contacts the glass. Proper pre-meditated shittery, that.
Especially when you don't realise while you're driving until the heavy rain starts...
many moons ago I had a mk1 golf. i left a mates house in the early hours one morning, door was open and it was messier than usual. someone had 'broken' in (i may have not locked it...), gone through the glove box etc. no idea if they took anything but then I noticed there was something dropped on the drivers seat. 20pack of bensons, with ~1/8th resin and £20 cash stuffed in it....
This has me thinking how the balls they got away with our carbed Volvo 245 last night, I think it was broken into (glass on the ground) and pushed off down the street to the main road, cos getting that thing to start in zero-degree temperatures makes a noise.
In '03 someone tried to steal my windscreen from my vauxhall corsa. They cut out the rubbers and tried to lever it out but cracked it, at which point they must have scarpered it's nuts really what they try to steal!
Two colleagues have been done over.
1 lost the indicator ,'glass' from a wing mirror but left the bulb.
The other lost both back doors and a bumper from his van. The small front drivers einfos was smashed to gain access
When we lived on a dual carriageway; one morning our neighbour asked if we heard all the fuss than night. What fuss we asked.
Apparently someone was knocked down and killed on the central reservation directly across from our window - 20 yards or so.
3 ambulances, 2 police cars and a fire engine. We didn't here a thing - slept right through. Our neighbour on the other side had some mad person bang on their door for 15 mins demanding to be let in for some reason. Off their head they were, screaming and shouting. Again, slept clean through.
I could have a full on F1 pit lane on a race weekend going on right outside my house and I wouldn’t wake up
I use earplugs, never hear anything once I've fallen asleep....
I was staying in a small guest house near Cheltenham, away with work, and went down to breakfast where the lady of the house apologised profusely for the disturbance.
I smiled and said that I had heard nothing, basically because I hadn't.
Apparently three guys staying there came back from a stag do, set of the fire alarms, fell through the front window, directly below my room, smashing glass everywhere and cutting themselves badly at the same time. Full blues and twos from the local coppers and ambulance and 25 minutes before anyone could work out how to turn off the new fire alarms with sirens in every room.
When I got back that evening the fire alarm company were there trying to work out if there was an intermittent fault with the siren in my room as it was 'impossible' to sleep through it.
You can’t have anything nice… 😐
Was reminded of this recently. I had my perfect car and a dream bike, now I have no car and a mid-range Norco.
It's just an entire industry around here. They're out every night just like we go to work every day.
xora
So way it is done,
1) Someone come along with telescopic wrench and cracks all the nuts, leaves.
2) 10 mins or so later they come back with mate with bottle jack, fits in the pocket, jacks up all 4 corners takes off wheels.
3) Wheels tolled to end of road, phone mate who is round corner in vehicle who then comes picks up the wheels.
At all stages in this if they made a noise and light turned on they would just walk away. But doing this operation makes very little noise.
I think we've found the culprit... 😉
What I want to know is who carries all the bricks around to leave under the jacked up cars? DO they travel with a vanful of housebricks at all times?
Well yeah, obviously you can use a wrench and stamp on it or stick a scaffy bar on the end but the chances of doing it quietly are fairly slim.
I've never struggled to get a wheel off a car when using a breaker bar. 100kg of weight at 1m away is more torque that most impact drivers can deliver. Add a little bit of bounce and you're away
First car I owned was a b reg fiat strada. Remember them? Absolute piece of junk.
This was around 1991 I think. Still at uni. One night someone broke in and stole a denim jacket off the back seat. They did this by bending the door. The glass section hinged nicely where it meets the main panel, aided by a few years of rust. I just bent it back in the morning.
I’d paid £9.99 for the jacket on barnsley market. 🤷🏼♂️Maybe they were cold.
They did this by bending the door. The glass section hinged nicely where it meets the main panel, aided by a few years of rust. I just bent it back in the morning.
This still works on most cars and vans.
Someone stole my neighbour's car off his drive by lifting it on to a flat bed truck (just at the edge of my CCTV so we didn't get the registration). 2am, no-one heard a thing.
Years ago, someone stole the wheels of my car whilst my then girlfriend was at a dry ski slope. They didn't bother with the bricks, dropped it on the disc brakes.
20 years ago I had a window smashed on my Renault Clio and all they stole was the tax disk.
"Lost" the heated wingmirror glass out of our mk1 Focus one night when we lived over Bradford way.
I also worked for a company there for a while where some chap had a big Range Rover type thing which kept getting done over for the headlights. Apparently they could be popped out as an assembly from outside and then used has HID lighting for cannabis farms. We'd be sat in the office, a car alarm would go off, and 30s later the getaway vehicle would be zooming off up the road bouncing off the rev limiter and heading for freedom.
It happened three times before he started parking the car with the front bumper kissing the wall of the building.
Years ago, someone stole the wheels of my car whilst my then girlfriend was at a dry ski slope. They didn’t bother with the bricks, dropped it on the disc brakes.
This wasn't at Silksworth dry ski slope in Sunderland was it? That car park was like a flea market for the local scallies especially in winter when it was dark. They would just wander in and take whatever they wanted.
That's where I learned how easy it is to fold a door over (as mentioned above) and help yourself to a free stereo, a new jacket or a bag of clothes etc.
This wasn’t at Silksworth dry ski slope in Sunderland was it?
No, it was Uxbridge. All sorts of fun getting a flat bed truck with crane to recover it...
When I was young I had a T reg VW Polo. It was a wreck. I wanted it gone and decided I would let someone nick it. We went bowling in Streatham (south london) and I parked on a back street, left the window open and spare key in the ignition.
Few hours of bowling later we went back ready to act all surprised.
It was still there, untouched. Disappointingly we drove it home and it kept going for another year or so until rust killed it.
In the mid 90s I had a Metro broken into - they stole my smart work shoes off the back seat!
100kg of weight at 1m away is more torque that most impact drivers can deliver
It sounds to me like a lot of STWers aren't using the recommended torque on their wheel nuts!
When I was young I had a T reg VW Polo. It was a wreck. I wanted it gone and decided I would let someone nick it.
When I lived in N London I had a G-reg Polo - one of the breadvans. It was so easy to break into that the local scallies used to unlock it if cold to smoke their joints in, and then lock it all back up again. It got to the point that I used to leave it unlocked and I'd find it locked back up again the next day!
What I want to know is who carries all the bricks around to leave under the jacked up cars? DO they travel with a vanful of housebricks at all times?
In my experience, they don't. Unless they can find bricks nearby they just dump the car on its discs.
I think we’ve found the culprit… 😉
What I want to know is who carries all the bricks around to leave under the jacked up cars? DO they travel with a vanful of housebricks at all times?
Heh, years living in Leith, there is always the same pattern when the young team are up to no good.
Bricks were probably in neighbours garden, if they hadn't found some probably as above find car on its discs.
Someone stole the wheel center caps from my fiat 500 once.
What I want to know is who carries all the bricks around to leave under the jacked up cars?
On closer inspection this morning, it wasn't on bricks as I'd thought, but scissor jacks.
Cheap enough to leave if you're getting a set of Beemer wheels and boots seemingly...
Someone stole the wheel center caps from my fiat 500 once.
Of course back in the day it was this...
Not sure if that's a thing anymore. Listen all a y'all it's sabotage.
Certain noises seem to wake me up. I woke hearing someone trying to kick start my TY125, which was parked out in the road. It gave me the chance to creep downstairs and chat to him about it.
This was a very long time ago.
When I lived in N London I had a G-reg Polo – one of the breadvans. It was so easy to break into that the local scallies used to unlock it if cold to smoke their joints in, and then lock it all back up again.
Used to be a council minibus parked up near my folks house that was used as a partybus on more than a few occasions.
Takes 5 mins each side to remove Mini wing mirrors. Why anyone would want to nick some when they'd be about a tenner at the scrappy though...
many moons ago I had a mk1 golf. i left a mates house in the early hours one morning, door was open and it was messier than usual. someone had ‘broken’ in (i may have not locked it…), gone through the glove box etc. no idea if they took anything but then I noticed there was something dropped on the drivers seat. 20pack of bensons, with ~1/8th resin and £20 cash stuffed in it….
... your Honour.
Many years ago, my mum's boss parked his new Beemer in a multi-storey in Liverpool. (Yes, I probably couldn't get many more stereotypes into that sentence.) He came back to find it up on bricks with the shiny alloys gone. In the time it took him to find a phone box (different times) to report it and then get back to the car, someone had nicked the bricks.
I could have a full on F1 pit lane on a race weekend going on right outside my house and I wouldn’t wake up
I sorta did this once. Travelling round Europe in a campervan and we arrived very late to a campsite near Milan one night. Parked up and went to sleep.
Was woken early the next morning by Eddie Irvine testing his Ferrari about 50 yards away at Monza.
I'm a sound sleeper usually but that absolutely woke me up.
I think we’ve found the culprit… 😉
Nah, I suspect that we have someone getting their alibi in nice and early:
kayak23
Full Member
I live in a tiny little street in a gap off a long sweeping terrace, 8 houses only, a dead end.The other night our neighbours had the wing mirrors off their Mini stolen. No damage to the car seemingly, ................................
Wtf!
How on earth do they do that in the dead of night, at the end of a tiny street where any noise ricochets off the terrace walls and all bedrooms front onto the road?
...............................
Unbelievable.
You can’t have anything nice… 😐
.........................................
I just can’t believe they didn’t wake me who can’t sleep very well or our dog or any of the other dogs on the street.
😀
MY mum had a Golf GTI mk2 when they were the current model. They tried nicking it, older models could have their steering lock snapped by applying some leverage to the wheel and just turning it. Turns out later models had a bolt rather than a split pin and the leverage applied resulted in the whole dash ending up getting ripped up. At this point they decided to steal the stereo, but not before they took her Cliff Richard cassette out. Even scumbags have some taste.
This happened to a friend on 3 occasions. His Audi S3 had the mirrors stolen. to replace them at Audi cost £1000 each time.
This thread has reminded me of the worst one I heard though - when I lived in Brum, a mate had a flat in one of the new developments in the City Centre (just off Broad St if anyone knows).
One of his neighbours had a Honda S2000 which he would cast admiring glances over from time to time.
Until one morning, when he came down to get his own car to find a few remnants of what used to be a the neighbour's Honda S2000. It had been completely stripped down - wheels, engine, exhaust, body panels, interior, roof, all lifted and taken overnight. Talk about organised!
Early this year I opened my locked car door (BMW X3 for the standard STW haters) to find the dash and centre console removed and the entire iDrive system (screen, unit behind dash and console controller) gone, rest of the car untouched, not even nicked my Oakleys from the arm rest storage. Fella that picked the car up said I was lucky they'd not taken the steering wheel and instrument binnacle too.
Car was in the repairers for 3 months as all the wiring looms are custom made and they had to wait for 3 of the things to be created as the thieves had snipped the wires just before the connectors. After I moaned to them about the amount of time it was taking the manager called me back and said he had an issue with space as had around 20 BMW/Audi/RRs all waiting for looms for the same thing. Apparently it's a big issue. Total insurance bill - £14K!!
Can't see what the market is for the parts as unlike ICE of yesteryear, these parts are all proprietary and I would have thought that any crash that had written off the iDrive would probably have totalled the car (and occupants) too.
Car parked on drive, leafy SW London suburb.
any crash that had written off the iDrive would probably have totalled the car (and occupants) too
My brother's iDrive went tits-up, so no crash necessarily required. Replacement unit was North of £1000, there must be a market for a s/h but serviceable unit.
Someone took the keys out the ignition of the timber fuel delivery truck the other day and walked-off. Complete chaos in the centre of Tobermory as someone had to get the other set of keys…expect it was more to do with the local parking style of just abandoning your vehicle at the closest point to your destination and leaving it there. Major incident as it doubled the crime rate! 😆
My brother’s iDrive went tits-up, so no crash necessarily required. Replacement unit was North of £1000, there must be a market for a s/h but serviceable unit.
Or it's possibly an optional extra in other markets and thus desirable.
Or it’s possibly an optional extra in other markets and thus desirable.
Don't think so, standard equipment in the newer X3s. It wasn't the fancy pants Bose spec either. I'm guessing some back street operation has them stolen to order when needed. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing, the one tiny pry mark was almost bang on the dash retaining clip.
In the early 90s some barsteward nicked the grille of my old transit van, did it neatly though and didn't touch the brand new battery.
Don’t think so, standard equipment in the newer X3s.
In the likes of Eastern Europe? I may be wrong but just aware that "standard equipment" is only valid within the context of the target market.
Car parts are very expensive and very easy to steal. I once had mirrors pinched on a mini and sound like still going on.
For perspective replacement alloy and tyre is north of £2000 per corner on my A5 Convertible. Not surprised people prefer to pinch them.
"100kg of weight at 1m away is more torque that most impact drivers can deliver"
It sounds to me like a lot of STWers aren’t using the recommended torque on their wheel nuts!
The recommended torque for my wheel nuts is 135Nm. 100kg at 1m is 981Nm; if it needs that much it's way overtorqued or corroded.
I'd say corrosion is a likely culprit.
Also, depends on if you trust the muppet at the garage with the impact driver to actually torque it properly.
Had a customer get a steering wheel nicked..
Another wings, bonnet lights rad and slam panel...
All accident repair stuff
Somebody took my front towing eye cover a few years ago. Was going to be £70 ish to get a new one to match, and couldn't find one at breakers/scrap/eBay.
I've lived with a hole in my bumper since. It ever so slightly annoys me if I see the front on my car, but not enough to actually spend money sorting it out.
In the 1970's, we had the Krooklok, a bar that you locked onto the steering wheel to prevent the car being stolen. A colleagues Ford Escort was broken into in Glasgow - the only thing taken was the Krooklok
Well yeah, obviously you can use a wrench and stamp on it or stick a scaffy bar on the end but the chances of doing it quietly are fairly slim.
Have you ever looked at the kit supplied in the boot with a spare wheel, if actually supplied? You get a scissor jack, a locking wheelnut key, and a wrench, which is a round-section bar about eighteen inches long with a bend at one end with the socket on the end. There isn’t any space available for a two-metre length of scaffold pole, to add leverage when undoing the nuts! Stomping on the end two or three times is all that’s needed, there’s very little noise created undoing a bunch of nuts, and pulling the wheels off; I’ve done it, it ain’t difficult or noisy!
The workshop blokes at work use a battery impact driver to take wheels off of cars, but they’re taking lots of wheels off of lots of cars for refurbishment, either smoothing out kerbing scuffs and dings, then re-painting, or re-doing Diamond-cut finish, so faffing around with wrenches just isn’t practical.
I’m really surprised the scallies managed to get the wheels off the Beemer so easily, it should have had locking wheel-nuts fitted, any car fitted with alloys comes with them, so they aught to have been fitted, and getting those off without the appropriate key is certainly not easy or quiet! It’s also not easy to just get a random key that fits - I’ve had to try to find a replacement key to go with a despatch car after the supplied one went walkies; believe me, even with a couple of thousand cars on site, finding one that fits, and which can be ‘borrowed’ while a replacement is ordered can, and has, taken a significant amount of time!
A replacement alloy wheel for a BMW M4 would cost £1400 to replace, probably with another £350-400 for the tyre, so I hope the wheels and tyres for the Beemer in question were lower spec ones!
I'm surprised you can jack up a locked luxury car and nick the wheels without the alarm going off...I suppose if you jack it under the wishbones and risk bending something, it only needs lifting a fraction compared to jacking the sills and unweighting the suspension. (My van is designed to be jacked like this, feels much safer as the body hardly lifts)
It sounds to me like a lot of STWers aren’t using the recommended torque on their wheel nuts!
Wheel bolts... Most garages seem to give them 10 uggaduggas to be sure. I used a label maker to mark the torque on the locking wheel socket for my own benefit, the unintended result was it's always bang on after getting new tyres, presumably the mechanics either appreciate it or just concerned it will get checked! I also put the reg on it.
I'm careful not to over torque after seeing a clip of a Discovery losing a wheel and going over the crash barrier into the opposite lane of the motorway. Accident investigation pointed to overtorqued bolts causing wheel/studs to fail.
Found it, skip to 0:50
Seems like performance car owners have found a way to disincentivise scallies from nicking their posh wheels…
I’m really surprised the scallies managed to get the wheels off the Beemer so easily, it should have had locking wheel-nuts fitted, any car fitted with alloys comes with them, so they aught to have been fitted, and getting those off without the appropriate key is certainly not easy or quiet!
I guess that there are you ways of doing it.
1. Identify the car you want the wheels from. Use a blob of play-doh to make an impression and then get hold of the correct socket. Return at a convenient time to retrieve the wheels.
2. There can't be that many locking nut designs for a particular model of BMW. Even if you just get a random BMW socket and spend a night walking around a town, trying which cars it fits, you'll probably find one that works. Return at a convenient time to retrieve the wheels.
My sister and I once parked her car outside The Rock pub in the west end of Glasgow. As we got out I said to her "I wouldn't leave your fags on the dashboard". To which I got the reply "nobody would smash a window just for a packet of cigarettes".
Obviously, an hour later - broken side window and fags gone.