Stolen Vehicle recovery option

[surfbeetle]

Its always a bummer to read through the STOLEN part of the forum. A coworker of mine just bought a new car and installed
http://guidepointsystems.com/index.shtml
He said it was around $1200. It's supposed to "arm" when you park the car and then if it moves out of a certain radius from the spot it was armed at, the car will trigger the service to call you and call the police. I thought it was way cool how it uses a satellite to track the car. Of course, if you're worried about "Big Brother" tracking you, this may not be for you, but I'm all about getting my stuff back. No, I am not affiliated with them, I just hate to see VW's get snaked from their owners. I know I have ton of time and money into mine and I want to keep it mine.
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67 Beetle Build Thread
69 Beetle

[Gary]

Unless you live in California, I wouldn't worry about getting my VW jacked.
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West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

[millerje78]

[coad]

[howiesfamily]

Around here you just park your VW head in to a spot. It has built in theft deterrent. Most folks in this area don't know how to put a VW into reverse. If they do, they are already on the VW scene and shouldn't be too hard to track down.
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[Gary]

[pyrOman]

[Matt K.]

Seems like it is one or the other vadalism or theft. You just really have to be aware............................and carry a gun.
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[bk63rag]

Thats a good idea i need to get some hytech Lowjack style theft protection for my car.Mine was stolen from me wile living in Phoenix in 94-95 it had been broken into twice before that.I now have a Berg locking shifter and i take the rotor at every ware i go.When my car was stolen i had a locking T handle locked no rotor or coil wire in it and they still stole it .Theives will do any thing to take your car away from you they draged mine out of my apartment comlex with a rope wraped around my front bumper .Brian
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63 rag under construction for 30 years and counting.

[pyrOman]

I've posted the same before but WTH, here it goes again.

A few years back I contemplated installing Lo-Jack in my '55 Ford F-100 pickemup truck. They said that it'd be $700 vs $500 for a new car off the lot. Their reasoning was that it was more difficult to "hide" their unit in an older car than in a new one. Plus the fact that the owner is not supposed to know where it is. I trust it'd be hard to hide ANYTHING in my bus without me finding it! This prolly have to do with liabilities and/or the owner "possibly" disabling the unit and claiming their money back guarrantee.

Again, this was over 6 or 7 years ago and I for one haven't heard a single Lo-Jack comercial in a long time. With the advent of On-Star and the like, I believe that Lo-Jack either went belly up or sold out to one of the few others out there providing sort of the same systems.

Good luck on the search and please post back if you find a suitable outfit for this!
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Some people are so busy being clever they don't have time enough to be wise.

[EverettB]

[surfbeetle]

As I mentioned in the first post, a friend put this in his new car. At the time, he had an option to go with LoJack (yes they're still around), but chose Guidant instead. His reasoning was that LoJack requires that the local law enforcement have their tracking device to track your car. Therefore it's not going to work if the car is stolen someplace where the cops don't have the technology.

Guidant is tracked by the company themselves and uses a satellite and is not dependant of the cops having anything other than a phone to receive the call from Guidant to report the cars whereabouts to them. Also, you track your own car on the internet if you pay a yearly subscription fee. I thought it was cool. Also, guidant has been tracking delivery fleets for years.

Yes, I agree that it would be pretty hard to install one on my car without me knowing where they put it. I figure that I would have to create a safe and secure place to have the unit installed on the car.

[pyrOman]

So surf, did you find out how much $$ it is to get this Guidant installed on our old buses?
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Some people are so busy being clever they don't have time enough to be wise.

[Mikee]

[surfbeetle]

pyro, no I didn't find out what it cost to install on a vw. All that I know was that it was 1200 here in san diego for a guy to come out and install it on a new car. Obviously cost is an issue, but the car that I want to put it on is my first car, had it for over 20 years, so I guess I wouldn't care if it cost that much.
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67 Beetle Build Thread
69 Beetle

[KGCoupe]

There was a thread last summer about a device similar to those available on may new cars. It consists of two main parts - a unit hidden in the car, and an electronic "key" that stays with the driver. Once the driver (and his "key") is out of a certain small range, the vehicle shuts down electrically. Although it wouldn't help find a stolen car, it would be particularly good for a car-jacking situation.

[pyrOman]

[surfbeetle]

My coworker said that it was a one time fee for the theft recovery option and a 100 per year additional(but not necessary) if you wanted to be able to track it online yourself. I could be wrong, but I would say check it out on their website.
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67 Beetle Build Thread
69 Beetle

[Gary]

[LOWASS60RAG]

My wife and I had our car stolen twice in phoenix. The first time we found it stripped down about 100 miles away. The next time a year later from our covered parking locked up with a club and the wheels turned. never to return.