Vehicle tracking

[XOOescort]

Has anyone got any experience of 'no subscription' trackers?

I've been thinking about the recent car thefts and been looking on eBay

There are some very cheap ones from abroad and a couple from the uk

The ones I'm considering are pinpoint pal from Lichfield trailer centre at £224,95 quite expensive & another from a seller called turbo revs @ £69.99 which is probably the same as the foreign sellers which they have imported it themselves

[escortmad79]

www.savvi.co.uk do trackers & will travel to fit them (within reasonable distance).

[mk1gaz]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/320862312639?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

[mk1gaz]

You can also buy Tk104 trackers from uk suppliers but usually £85-ish . Good thing about these is the 60 day battery life between charges and proper DIY tracking . No need to wait for the old Bill too get off their arses , if the car moves you can come on the forum and arrange a recovery posse in 5 mins !!!

http://youtu.be/oSFmeNXaaaE

[mk1gaz]

Here's a uk supplier and comes with sim card so ready too go .

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221291804300?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

[grum]

good idea these trackers ......... but there's one floor i can think of ........ where are you going to fix it ??? ...... an old escort has no real hiding places

maybe i'm being too analytical, but apart from the head lining, under the carpet, under dash or door linings etc, there ain't many that some one in the know could miss [and these scum are certainly in the know]

normally these cars go missing at night and are discovered gone in the morning, so they have already a minimum of 2-4 hours of getaway and hideaway time .......... time to go over the car and find a 'box' ..... 5 mins tops, even with the more tricky places, to find something that's probably [at smallest] the size of a match box, another 5 mins !!!

think at the end of the day, these cars should come with a health warning that they could vanish at any time unbeknown to you .................. its a risk that people take and are 99% lucky never endure, but to the ones that have experienced theft, it aint very nice at all, i should know, twice

good luck

[TugsW]

My biggest concern with using a GPS/GSM based system is jammers that can be bought cheaper than a tracking device There was a roadside study carried out a while back that measured blocking devices and it was pretty high, seems to be a lot of people around that have something to hide

Looking on the Tracker site, they use VHF as well as GPS and say they can't be jammed. Now that seems to be a pretty big claim.

So if you can't stop a tracking device. Do you store the vehicle up for a number of weeks just to check its not being tracked and wait, or strip the vehicle ASAP possibly while still being transported and find the tracking device ?

Going back to the roadside study, the other option is there is so much data from mobile devices being transmitted would it not be easy to invert that and see the blacked out spot? Sadly this would need all the providers of mobile information to work together and provide a network and I can't see that happening. Or maybe it does, Google gathers info for live traffic info on its maps.

Also there are a few people on here who can turn a wiring loom into an incendiary device, just follow the smoke signals.

[Hoonabator]

I have to say these look like a great idea. There are plenty of places one can be hidden, not every thief is going to assume it has a tacker a strip a car just to look for something that may not be there.

At the end of the day for the price of a tank of fuel it may result in finding your car....... and with any luck finding the scumbag

[trialscort]

good idea these trackers ......... but there's one floor i can think of ........ where are you going to fix it ??? ...... an old escort has no real hiding places

maybe i'm being too analytical, but apart from the head lining, under the carpet, under dash or door linings etc, there ain't many that some one in the know could miss [and these scum are certainly in the know]


good luck

I certainly agree with you Grum in that the thieving gits are extremely quick to find things like trackers etc, however I do believe that during the course of a restoration, some pretty good hiding places could be found. Obviously, the more luxurious the spec of car, the more bits it has and the more hiding places there are. Inside a radio may even be possible, or a speaker, or under a console or carpet or both! If the t leaf didn't know said tracker was present, a good chance of recovery would be on.
Or maybe it's me being too optimistic

[XOOescort]

I'm more confused than ever
Cheers for the input though
I think I need to go back to the krooklock I had in 1985

[mk1gaz]

They don't look for trackers when nicking your car and they can't jam them either unless they wipe out satellites and all the phone networks , lol .
You can hide them anywhere , they are small and just stick on with magnets . Even if you just stuck it underneath when you've parked it up they wouldn't spot it . You can get tiny versions that are hard wired in but these draw power from the car battery . You can get an alert as soon as it moves/breaks a Geo Fence etc and it plots it's route onto a map on your phone or pc . Even at 85 quid it's cheap enough to have two on each car .
You could hide a tiny one hard wired into the cars electrical system and then stick a magnetic stand alone one with inbuilt power supply somewhere else on the car for good measure .
If you've used a sat nav on your mobile phone then you know how good they work as that's also a real time tracker of sorts .

[grum]

i stand corrected then ..............

but how big / small are these things ? ........... going by the ebay one and the screw holes for fitting, scaled up roughly, that thing must be at least 4" long .............. surely you'd spot that

[mk1gaz]

Some are very small but the size depends on power unit . Hardwired is the smallest as no battery and they are only a few inches . The good thing about the GSM style ones is that you track it and not Plod . Plod isn't interested in finding your Escort but forum members are .
If your car gets nicked then send it's current location to us on here and we could arrange our own recovery team . The forum covers the whole country so the thieves can't escape for long , lol .

[dustydog]

Just one thing you need a good mobile reception for vodaphone or it wont work best one to get is a roaming sim card

[FLATCAP40]

Some are very small but the size depends on power unit . Hardwired is the smallest as no battery and they are only a few inches . The good thing about the GSM style ones is that you track it and not Plod . Plod isn't interested in finding your Escort but forum members are .
If your car gets nicked then send it's current location to us on here and we could arrange our own recovery team . The forum covers the whole country so the thieves can't escape for long , lol .

Hear hear.......Everything you've said is correct and even though there's a small chance they could find and remove it surely it's worth spending a few quid to try and protect your investment/pride and joy!


These are very good.

http://www.tramigo.net/private-car-security.asp