Transit based motorhomes being stolen.

[grath]

I have been woken up in the night by the alarm to find a guy wearing a headtorch making a rapid getaway with my trousers and 8 year old daughters DVD bag .
Alarm definitely scared him off and no gassing was involved !

Maybe I should put the alarm on at night and leave the doors open!
Not so silly!

[hairydog]

A large, noisy and protective dog is a particularly good deterrent. One weekend a few years back, ours was the only motorhome not broken into in a town centre car park. It was the only one with a large dog in it.

[Abiteachuck]

Best alarm when inside at night, my 2 x 30kg HWV, not to be messed with after dark, and if they cant run 100m in 10sec the dogs will do it in 6 sec. game over.
x

[grath]

A large, noisy and protective dog is a particularly good deterrent. One weekend a few years back, ours was the only motorhome not broken into in a town centre car park. It was the only one with a large dog in it.

Agree, that does work, a few years ago, we used to take our Daughters largish black dog with us and we always felt that our van was safe!

[TonyBrown1948]

I still remember the feeling that I had when I noticed that the drivers door on my motorhome was wide open. As I approached it I noticed that the panel below the steering wheel had been removed. I was lucky The fuse for my OBD port had blown and the thieves could not disable the immobiliser, otherwise my motorhome would have been gone.

Since then reports of Transit motorhomes being stolen seem to be increasing, and the reason for this is because they are so easy to steal!

If your van is a Mk6 / Mk7 Transit (2002 - 2014) then you really should upgrade the drivers door lock. It only takes a few seconds to open the drivers door with no damage and the pick decodes the lock and becomes a key for the ignition barrel. Unfortunately these picks are very easy to buy and very cheap.



The lock picks are cheap (£24.95) and easy to use, they can decode the lock and make a temp key in seconds.

Attachment 35944


When you unlock the drivers door it removes the deadlocks and disables the alarm system.



Next the thieves just need to plug a key programmer into to OBD port and 15 seconds later the immobiliser is useless.





I am showing you this because so many people are having their vans stolen when just changing the door barrel and fitting a steering wheel lock wheel deter most thieves.

Transit 2006 > 2013 Hykee Replacement Cylinder | ProtectAVan

With the new lock fitted the thieves cannot disable the alarm or get the front doors open.


Disklok UK

The DiskLok makes the vehicle a lot more hassle to steal, and drilling off this lock will certainly not be quiet.


Please share this thread and lets hope we can stop this happening to more motorhomers.

------- UPDATE ------

Just for those people who feel that they will be able to track their vehicles if stolen, unfortunately not. From what I understand these professional thieves also carry a cellular / GPS jammer and an RF sniffer.

Portable Cellphone + Wifi Jammer J-240A-Pro [J-240A-Pro] - £179.00 : jammer4u.co.uk

Once the vehicle is safely away they then sniffer out the tracker and disable it.

Thanks for taking the time to post this information. I have an insurance rated steering wheel lock, and will be getting some deadlocks on the doors. Hopefully that should deter most thieves! Thanks again.