Nope. Bring an ECU that has the immobilizer disabled and you are off to the races.

This may be an ignorant question but if it is the "gypsies" trying to steal your car or stole your buddies, what is the end game for them.

I'm assuming the cops would stop them on the drop of a dime, (I'm assuming street people in a nice car would raise some kind of alarm).

Do they chop them up for parts to get the cash?

 

The immobilizer has saved many an Evo I'm sure. But as more thieves learn about this car and info on the Internet it's time to add more security measures. I know I will as a read more threads like this one.
Go multi-layered because time is the enemy of a car thief. The longer he has to figure out the puzzle the more frustrated and scared he gets.

 

WOW..... at least they weren't able to actually get away with your car. its time to invest in a good alarm, and if you can start garaging it. if not start using a car cover.

I see some scummy people just walking and driving around my area and i can tell they dont belong there, considering i have never seen them on my street or area before. definetly start keeping a better watch on your car.

 

People really suck.

 

Well he didnt say the ECU was touch and that would be noticeable if it was.

OP put a fuel pump kill and ignition kill switch ontop of the alarm. Make them well hidden or try to use oem switches and you will be fine

 

Sorry it took me so long to get back to the forum on this one. Thanks for all your kind words and words of wisdom. Here's the update! So..... I saw that somebody asked about the term gypsie? They are transient Romani I found out. They are all over Europe and people here really really hate them. The females either prostitute (these are not hated at all actually loved) or do street corner washes or sell trinkets. That's cool. I can't knock an honest hustle. Some of the guys have a similar 'okay' hustle. Others just panhandle at the tolls to get on the highway.

They set up these camps that near hypermarkets and the little towns. The useless ones that don't huslte go out at night and do petty crimes. Usually it's smash a window and steal NATO gas coupons, ****** change, and anything else left in a car. The night that they tried to kidnap Ms. Midnight there were roughly 20 or so larcenies. They had come in little teams to my town, Gricignano Di Aversa, to f/n raid the town, just like the Vizagoths or something. They broke into a bar (in italy bars mainly sell cafe/esspresso) and stole a freakin slot machine!

So my landlord brings the vid up to my place and me and wifey have a look. It all goes down at 0445 Sunday morning. These guys are ballsy. They drive directly to my carport in a Ford Escort and id my car tags with an LED light. Dude, midnight was straight up targeted! They crowbarred the back of the security gate lock, exposed the mechanism, and popped the gate lock. This allowed them to squeeze into the carport. They come in the carport and the motion light snaps on. Then they see the camera. One of them covers his face with his hand and the other one just looks straight into the camera like a dumb a**! The dumb one then gets a stick and pushes the camera up but the focus is so wide it doesn't matter.



They popped the lock and rifled through the compartments for GPSs and crap but we learned from Rome to never leave GPSs. After they rummage through my crap they exit the car, have a brief conversation, and go get the 'tools' out of the Escort. They jump in and pop the lower column cover and try to hotwire the car. It fails and they give up after about 10 minutes. Creepy to watch.

That Monday in the local news they find a teenage romainian with a fatal bullet wound to the head in front of my town's hospital.

Dude, you are in Mob-country. You gots to be more careful.

And no I'm not sad. I'm pretty happy actually.

(rant)SOBs you don't deserve to get a car like this with your sloppy careless a**! This freakin car means something to me.(/rant)

 

I'm really glad they didn't take her. I literally wake up in cold sweats some nights. I had my turbo RX-8 vandalized and the wheels/tires stolen a couple of years ago right where I park my Evo now. Surveillance doesn't mean much in my area as the cops don't give a ****, but I do keep a loaded gun handy. If someone wants to take my baby they'll have to bleed to do it.

 

sux man

 

glad they didn't get it.

 

It sucks what happened to your car, I hope the police catches those thieves and throws them in jail for a long time.
Also, gypsies are not the same as "Romanians", gypsies are called Romani people, i know it's similar but it's not the same, they don't even speak the same language. Don't get that confused. Gypsies are migratory people who originate from India, and have infested european countries with their begging/prostitution/etc. There are some gypsises in Romania, but believe me, Romanians hate gypsies just as much as you do and are trying to get rid of them, just like the other countries in Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

 

I feel sorry for you man

 

Romani is the plural form than? I was so mad I saw Romani and was like Romainian! Thanks for the edit and the lesson!

 

Wow. i need a garage.

 

Very sorry to hear this but I'm glad they didn't get midnight! I keep stumbling across threads like these and its about time I invest in an alarm system myself...maybe a .45 too

 

Check out the12volt.com and bcae.com those sites will help a ton. The only difficult part about alarms is remote start. If you don't want that, it's super easy. If you can install a CD player, you can install an alarm. Add a tilt sensor to trigger the alarm if someone jacks it up. This will alert you to someone trying to take your wheels or tow the car. Also, get the 2-way pager. Nobody pays attention to alarms but when your keychain starts vibrating and beeping, you'll know your baby's being tampered with.

Here's some tips. It makes the install take a lot longer, but it also makes the car a lot harder to steal.

• 1st off, add a pair of air horns to the system. On the siren output (brown wire on Viper/Python/Avital/Directed systems), add a relay. use this relay to trigger the air horns and the alarms siren. Put one air horn inside the fender liner and the other under the dash on the drivers side. I use the cheap kit from Harbor Freight that includes 2 air horns and the mini compressor. Thieves don't want to listen to an air horn going off inches from their face while they try to disarm your alarm. Add a Piezo siren if you really hate thieves. Also, hide the alarm siren somewhere creative in the engine bay. And hide the wiring too.
• Put the alarm module behind the gauge cluster, and run all of your wire inside loom. Run this loom into the factory harness. Make it look as OEM as possible. If you really want to get crazy, you can de-pin the wires at the module and switch them around. Experienced thieves know which color wires do what on most alarms. Switch the pins, and those colors no longer do what the thieves planned. I wouldn't try this on your 1st install, though. Putting the module behind the cluster or somewhere else hard tor each makes their job even harder. Try not to tap your wires in the usual spots. Follow the wires down-stream and tap them there. Again, this makes the thieves work harder.
• Add a battery backup to the alarm. Put the battery far from the module and hide the wires in OEM loom.
• Replace all mounting hardware for the ECU with weird hardware. Get creative on methods to secure the ECU plugs from being disconnected. This makes it harder/more time consuming for them to swap the ECU.

We carry car audio/security stuff now. Let me know if we can help you get your hands on any components. I recommend looking at the Python and Avital lines from Directed Electronics. Directed (aka DEI) makes Viper, and their lower end lines are just as good as Viper but usually lack the really baller features. I've owned Python and Viper alarms and both were great. The Python/Avital/Hornet/etc is cheaper than Viper, and just as reliable. Unless you need to remote start the car from your smart phone, you'll be happy with a lower end DEI unit.

If I think of anything else, I'll add it. I know it's a lot, but every little step will slow the thief down and make him re-think his decision to take your car. A thief is gonna go for the easiest victim. The trick is to make your car too much work to take.

They're not just in Europe, they're in the US too. I used to work at a movie theater when I was in high school, at the nicest mall in AZ, and the women would be there all the time trying to hustle me for food at the concession stand. They tried it on all the places in the food court. They'd ask if they could have food for their kids because they were broke... I knew it was a hustle though. The guys would roll around offering to do body work on peoples cars. They'd do some terrible bondo work, then tell the owner "We have to go the dealer for the paint; We'll be back!" and they'd never come back. They got one of my friends for like $300. His dents could have been pulled with PDR, too

-Matt C.

EDIT: Don't try to confront thieves unless you're prepared for the consequences. I've done it twice, and one of those almost resulted in ME being charged with assault.