MaKSiNG

With us coming close to Winter hibernation time and me living in a city where there are always more and more reports of air cooled Porsches being abducted, I started thinking about some ways to make it as difficult as possible for any potential thieves.

I am in an underground garage where the access ramp goes around quite a sharp corner and access is very limited. This means that lifting the car is impossible and dragging it out is also highly unlikely. The only possibility to get an incapacitated vehicle out of there would be to push it up a relatively steep and long incline to the road side. Not impossible but would require man power.

My car does have some sort of immobiliser installed. I don't hold much faith in it though, as I presume it to be relatively old and I think any car thief worth their salt could be able to circumvent it.
Firstly, I am planning on removing the steering wheel to make the task of stealing her less appealing.
I think I will also remove one or more of the relays which would prevent the car from starting in the hope that only someone knowledgeable in Porsches specifically would know what was needed.
And I think I might look into adding some sort of wheel clamp.

Is there anything else obvious I might have missed?

It is probably the only downside I can think of of owning and driving a car so desirable in a major city. On my way to the garage, I do often feel like one day I will get in there only to find an empty spot where my car should be parked.

PCA1983

This is one of the reasons i opted for the Repair or Replace option on my AAA Auto Club insurance policy. Id get a new equivalent model, if wrecked or stolen. It costs $200/yr extra on mine, and good for the first 5 policy years on a new one. In year 5, id get an equivalent model with equivalent options on a 2022 or 2023 911.

koenig_roland

good value report that is agreed with insurance and a good insurance... Perhaps removing DME, the wiring of the ignition blackboxes in the engine tray and the steering wheel, if you do not have airbags... I let my both 964 just as they are (drivable) in my open parking lot (200 cars) down frankfurt

Rocket Rob

If you want to prevent the car from starting, you can remove the DME relay or disconnect the battery.

MaKSiNG

LM964

Pull the DME fuel relay and battery disconnect (as suggested) . You have room to remove wheels and leave on stands? You could remove steering wheel if it's easy to do so (e.g. Momo). Some dark unappealing car cover too maybe - draws less attention for opportunists.

luft

koenig_roland, i am sure its a bad idea to have 2 964 in an open parking lot down town Frankfurt without any protection and devises. Here in Amsterdam 2 Porsches 911 got stolen out of our private parking garage with the usual protection, cameras, changing # call to open automatic doors, still gone. Scum Thiefs where pro and no signs of forced entry on the Porsches, and yes locked, DME out & battery neg. disconnect. We recovered both, one direct the other within 12 hours. Thanks to a lot of prep, the usual tamtam, smoke signals etc. unreal but we also we discovered how they did it, how i will not post here as scum can read to and gives others ideas. And BTW on top our insurance cancelled. For more info how they did it/ how to recover PM me for info.

MaKSiNG

I will definitely go down the DME relay route and removing the steering wheel. I don't really have the room to remove the wheels but that is a good option.
Just trying to make it as difficult as possible really. Will probably look into prices for wheel clamps as well.

@luft I'd be happy for a PM from you with some details, if we know the tricks they use and the knowledge they already have, we can maybe make it ever more difficult for them. The thing is with pros, they would know the cars as well as we do, so a lot of the obvious stuff will just slow them down but cannot really prevent it. If they really want, they will get it.

koenig_roland

Works so since two years and before that, i had the cars downtown Munich for roughly ten years in open parking areas, where nearly everybody could go in/out.
I want to use the cars, so they have to be quite close to my living-place... Much more exciting is parking at the ring in the night before (well known) events out there or using the car for some trips to the alps where a huge amount of nice cars is parked in front of the well known hotels over night...

i have a good insurance and a good car-value certificate... that has to be enough... :-)

Thread starter:

go under the car and remove the linkage to the gearbox... Some minutes of work (undertray) but doable in the parking garage and then, the car could not be drove away.. OR. Remove the power-cable from the starter motor or - at least - the ground cable from the engine.. some minutes of work and impossible to detect for a "foreign" thief" and not that usual.

jpar

If you have the room to jack it up, leave it on stands with the wheels on. This will save your tires from flat spots and be another obstacle for a thief.

MaKSiNG

I really like the idea of removing the power cable or the ground ... I would obviously need to figure out how to do that myself first though