Auto Security System

Well.. since we had one of our cars stolen this past weekend I am looking to protect the one car that we have left in our house. I know that conventional alarm systems seldom do much more than make some noise and are relativly easy to defeat.

I am specifically intersted in a product called Ravelco. I'm just wondering if any fellow CPFers have had any experience with Ravelco. It appears to be a product that creates multiple "circuits" that encompass different parts of your engine. For example one circuit that goes around your igniton, one around your starter and one around your fuel pump. The only way to start your car is with the use of the custom "plug" inserted into the reciever. You take the "plug" with you when you leave the car and that puts all circuits in an "open" state which renders the car incapable of moving under it's own power.

Anyone have any experience with Ravelco ?

Looks interesting. I have never heard of this before. I wonder if you could pick it with 16 paper clips?

This seems to almost over and under protect your car at the same time.

So maybe noone will be able to steal it, unless they know what you have. I would get a car alarm before getting this. An alarm can do the following; disable the starter, disable the fuel pump, go off if your door/trunk is opened, scare the punk off before he steals it, if they see a blinking LED, they know it has an alarm and my prevent them from even thinking about breaking in. That is, unless you have just gone Christmas shopping and left a bunch of present out in the open, with receipts in the bag. If you get an alarm, get one with a pager with extended range.

A cheap way, depending on how high tech your car is, is to put a switch in the look to the coil or fuel pump and hide it under your dash.

I think the brake petal lock does fairly well. Anyone can defeat the club by cutting the steering wheel and removing the club.

The on-off switch to the electric fuel pump on my '57 Chevy kept it from being "borrowed" twice. It was simply mounted under the dash. Crooks don't waste any time trying to determine the problem when the car quits going out the driveway, or won't start. There are all kinds of possibilities for such a $5 switch on computerized cars - just switch off anything essential. On older cars, blocking power to the coil or starter solenoid is easiest.

I've handled a car where the ignition key itself contained a chip, which had to match both the codes in the engine control unit and the fuel injection system. I believe it was using an assymetric key system like RSA, however the manufacturer wasn't about to give me that kind of in-depth info. According to them, if I cloned the key, I would end up with a perfect looking physical copy without the RF chip and encryption key inside and that wouldn't do me any good. Not only wouldn't you get any fuel, but the ignition system (controlled by the ECU) wouldn't fire.

I've learned to take what I've been told with a lot of salt though. Is it as good as they make it out to be?

Now that i think about it, most thieves walk to another car when they see its a stick shift. That may do little to nothing about stealing your stereo.

I guess the best bet is to shop for a car not high on the list of stolen cars and hide your goodies.

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cobb said:
Now that i think about it, most thieves walk to another car when they see its a stick shift...

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I only wish that were true. Our car that was stolen this past weekend was a 2000 Honda Civic STICK 5 speed. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif I went ahead and got the Ravelco installed. It works exactly how I thought it did. And it would be too much trouble for a thief to go through if they wanted to drive it away. Although they could always tow it away. But no alarm can stop that from happening. All we can do is make it harder for them. If they really want it, they will get it.