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.