With a 6-12 month wait for a cat, I am going with the effort. I wanted to know if anyone has done anything for our S2000s to prevent theft (as it seems common in the UK-perhaps different scrap laws make it more enticing) if it indeed has been a real problem for our rare cars.

 

This brings up a good point. I live in a very low crime area, in a city of nearly 400,000 people we may get a couple murders per year and any murders we do get are some kind of domestic disputes, random crime is extremely low. However, in my field of work I see lots of cat. converters being stolen from vehicles in our city. There must be some kind of scrap metal regulation that makes this so lucrative for people. You don't see used cats being sold by average people, but they are being taken to these recyclers who take them apart and make use of the internals who buy all of these stolen parts no questions asked. There must be some increased market demand for the metals used in the parts to make this such a lucrative business, and it is much easier to steal a cat than to steal an entire car, easier to unload too.

 

All these posts have been making me think about the constructive criticism here. This august group of S2000 enthusiasts can surely put their heads together and come up with a better way to skin the cat. (Good pun, eh?)

So, if you went to the basic muffler/auto shop that can weld or you have the equipment at home, how would you rig up something that is not overboard to deter, to some degree, the average cat hacker? This is not something to resist IEDs in the middle east. I have thought about putting rebar inside of the tubes (tubes do not rust) or tacking it to the actual cat and frame. The muffler guy ( lifelong local resident ) says you need to watch corrosion and expansion as the cat gets pretty hot, that is why he prefers to use stainless tubing and has only one fail to his knowledge. My longtime mechanic shop says they use everything from angle iron to rebar depending on the vehicle and how bad the hangover is.

What say you guys?

 

it sounds like your exhaust guy has experience with this and he has likely faced this issue protecting other vehicles. If in his professional opinion this is a good fix I would go with that, plus you life in a very safe area from what you described.

I have come up against all sorts of petty thieves over the years. While you and I go to work every day and deal with work issues, family matters, and other responsibilities , these guys sit around all day long just thinking about how to perform their crimes. They have unlimited time to devote to this, much more time than you or I. If they want your car or parts they will figure a way to get them.

In this case they don't survive on one cat converter per evening, they need multiple thefts per evening to make it worthwhile. If they have an issue getting your cat off in quick order they will move on , they can't risk being seen and the process creates a lot of noise/sparks etc. , they need to be in and out in quick time. I think what you have done is a good deterrent.

 

What about a totally different approach? Like a motion alarm? Maybe even something that can send you a text alert, etc.

There must be alarms these days that work with an app that can start blaring an alarm on your phone even if its in silent mode. If not, there should be.

Something that had a motion detector would alert you even as they are still Jacking it up. Plus the alarm sounding from the car itself might scare them off.

Obviously this works better if you are in earshot of the cars alarm (or close enough to respond to phone alert). Car alarms have been notoriously ineffective deterrents. But perhaps for this sort of crime they might work.

It would be important to limit false alarms. That would mean not setting motion too sensitive. But then if they are careful, perhaps they could jack both ends in concert and prevent tripping motion sensor.

Perhaps alarm paired with mechanical barrier would make a good tag team. Barrier allows longer time to respond to alarm.

Or what about more out there out of box ideas. Lets do some brain storming, where you say any silly idea that comes to mind, as it might make someone else think of something truly inspired.

Here goes. You know the glitter bomb decoy box used on Porch Pirates? Or those exploding dye pack like used with armored car money bags? For cats it would need to be something that is metal encased and heat won't set it off, but if cut through it spews them with dye.

Yes, I know they still might keep going and steal the cat. Not meant to be a serious idea, but to inspire your serious idea. Go!

 

Don't forget, 60 seconds! One minute is not a lot of time to respond. I have seen the videos.

 

Here is a good video of these thefts , you can see how easily it is done and the people doing the work don't have that many tools, the guy on the bike doesn't even have a jack. Petty thieves looking for a quick score. The scrap yards buying these things need to be held accountable as they are driving the thefts and providing motivation for the street punks. You don't even need a crime organization/ring , these coyotes are out on the street nightly collecting cat converters for themselves and the next day they sell them to scrap yards in the area for a few bucks.

https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/93df4...4/?jwsource=cl

 

what about bolting up a smooth under tray between the frame rails? It would be challenging to not only reach the exhaust pipes, but if they were cut, the gutter trash wouldn't be able to remove the loose exhaust either.

I recall a number of years ago a car security company in South Africa made a flame thrower to deter car jackings. Maybe something similar that would produce a large flame out the sides and back of the car severely deterring the asshats.
darcy

 

My son got his car back today. The collision shop is a well known chain out here called Caliber Collision. This one was downtown Sacramento and approved by USAA. He headed over the the muffler shop I went to in order to prevent another theft. They put the car up and the owner asked him if his neighbor did the welding. He said it was some of the worst he had ever seen. For a half hour of labor he removed and re-installed the CAT correctly welding this time as well as adding the stainless tubes (with welded nuts) to help deter theft.
I am attaching the pictures just for fun.
The rod you see was the initial portion of the deterrent until the welder could not take it anymore and notified the owner of the muffler shop.
The pipe was not even sealed by the welding so it would not pass smog and would soon screw up the O2 and probably throw a CEL code soon. He left a message with his adjuster at USAA so we shall see how they handle the sub standard work.

 

I recall that too! Was thinking about that very thing when asking for out of box ideas to solve this.

I like your undertray idea. Anything that doesn't match their preconceived speed methods and tools for hacking these things off is going to be met with heading off for easier targets.