I have an April 2002 Citreon Saxo VTR, and recently, just after the car was four weeks old, the car was broken into. The drivers door lock was popped and the standard CD stereo was taken. Approxiamately £700 worth of damage in total was done.
First, does anybody know the safest way so that this does not happen again. I have been suggested to have the car de-locked as I have remote central locking. Does anybody know of any other or possibly better ways for securing the car?
Also the car has a metallic dashboard insert that surrounds the CD player, heater controls, ashtray etc. This is a new part, and replaces the original black one, and is currently not available from Citreon. Does anybody know where I can get one of these?
Any help would be appreciated.
Iain
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First, de-locking won't stop entry through a window. If you do decide to go this way, I'd also recommend Toad film to stop the window being broken.
Is the stereo in the Saxo a unique-fit one, or a standard DIN-E fitting? If so, I'd replace it with a face-off/coded unit, which makes it less use to a would-be thief.
Andy
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BUT a coded unit won't stop them breaking the side window and stealing the stereo, only to find out later it's worthless.
The best (as in most user-friendly ) system is the Ford small removable panel - includes numbers 2-5 of channels.
Small enough to be USED.
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If you read Andy's post, he has suggested this (face off)
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I have experienced several brands of "face-off" and repeat -
the Ford system (because it is small) works - BECAUSE people use it.
This is of course from a NON Ford owner.
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Possibly so, my pretentious Potter adversary - but it would look a bit odd in his Citroen, don't you think - not to say the chances of it working withy the Cit's steering wheel controls being fairly infinitesimal?
But do repeat yourself old chap, if it makes you feel more in control of us...
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On my Corsa I have a Vauxhall approved Philips CD player. It has a detachable piece to the display that is small enough to be removed, but it is next to useless, as after the dealer had fit it I found out that not only was it not coded but the radio can still be used if you have detached the facia as you only need to push in a small plastic bit.
Amazed that this was Vauxhall approved.
Oh for a CDR500.
Paul C
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I like the Saxo. I think it looks good. Trouble is we are not alone. Best advice if you want to have a nice car is park it near houses. Preferably under a street light. Get a face off stereo. Fit an alarm. If you have alloys, get locking wheel nuts, and be prepared to pay 100 quid a pop every time you kerb it. Alternatlively (sorry can't spell) get an old car with a big engine such as a Nissan Maxima. Cheap to buy. Won't break down. Fully loaded. Nobody wants to steal it/from it. Spend the rest of the money on food/women. I had a Triumph 2000 once which cost nothing as a telegraph pole had fallen accross the bonnet. Drove perfectly. I could leave it anywhere. AND it was brilliant for attracting members of the opposite sex.
Meanwhile if you find out who did it and beat the crap out of them, don't on any account get caught by the police or you will be the criminal and he will be the "victim". Good luck.
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A few tips here about buying "face off" radios, but they are not infalible. There are a couple of scams:
1. Villain reckons there's a fair chance that the face of a radio is in the glove box. under the seat, or in the boot.
2. Villain steals the face off a radio in a place like Halfords, then looks for a radio to match.
The above was told to me by a bloke who re-codes radios (legit) as part of his business.
BYW, I don't know the answer.
Ian
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Can't believe anyone actually takes the face section off and away with them. What a daft system to be out for dinner with a bit of the car twice as big as a mobile phone in your pocket.
A decent stereo is only £150 so why bother.
I had a new Cavalier in 1991 and remember that was fitted with a standard stereo where just the small tuning display came off, more sensible but still couldn't be bothered after week 1 when the pose value wore off.
David
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Well I do. My unit cost £250, and I prefer to keep hold of it. If I'm going somwhere where I don't want the inconvenience of carrying the front around, I simply leave it at home and do without it. I wasn't trying to promote one particular method or another, just a few alternatives. From some of the comments, I sometimes wonder whether it's worth bothering.
Andy
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Andy,
Sorry, I was just trying a new posting style to fit in with the last few days "itchyness" that seemed to run through the forum. I'll switch the meek mode back on now.
;-)
Luckily I don't have to bother with the head unit in mine because it is one of the dedicated Xantia ones (very good actually), and who bothers to nick those. What I do hide in a crafty way is the Sony Discman CD player, the anti-theft device only cost 25p in a charity shop.
David
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If the radio is not din standard e.g. curves to the dash and large, you can get a plastic plate, from many places incl Halfords to enable you to use a normal size unit.
If you buy a normal unit, chances are it will have an ISO plug for the wiring loom. Some manufacturers have a female ISO socket in the loom so you just plug it in and away you go. If you car doesnt have an ISO plug *dont* cut the plug off and splice the wires with tape. You can buy wiring loom adaptors for about £10 that will convert from the manufacturers loom to ISO.
I have a kenwood Mask CD player, you can remove the front if you like but it also turns it round to "mask it." Brilliant for me as I cant be bothered to carry around part of my car all of the time.
I was told by a specialsit radio shop that the codes in the kenwood mask are real hard to crack. You need a little remote control to enter the code not just a number.
Sorry I cant help you with the citroen part, but I would order it from the dealer and wait. I would want genuine parts in such a new car.
One more thing, why do manufacturers still put tape players in new cars. Perhaps they should be an option but I cant remember the last time I bought a tape?
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Now I'm intrigued - I don't think anyone will be robbing my Xantia stereo either. I also run the Sony Discman combination, but would love to find a security device for 25p for it.
Mail me off forum if you like you've now got me interested!
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best security device for a radio I ever had cost me about 5 quid.
It looked like an old and cheap analogue radio and cassette. It was simpy a cover which slipped over the face of the rather more expensive CD unit when I was away from the car.
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I recall seeing such a 'disguise' for sale in Halfords a few years ago, and it made me laugh because the really naff-looking stereo (as Mark says a piece of plastic that fits over the real one) carried the name Harry Moss. Many of you will remember that this was a well known brand in the 1970s/1980s, and I thought Haldfords were being a bit cheeky!
For what it's worth, I have a face-off Pioneer CD Tuner which I'd rather not have nicked so I remove the face if I park somewhere iffy. I leave it in the car, but I still think it's a deterent to all but the professional criminal if they look in and see a 'faceless' stereo. For the same reason, I also put a Krooklok on, even though the car has an electronic immobiliser - the message is 'try another car'.
Regards
Pat
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Did the same to my brother's Saxo this week. Screwdriver in behind both locks. Damaged both locks. The police wouldn't fingerprint or search 3hrs of CCTV footage. They wouldn't let him look at it either!
Owning anything decent in this country seems pointless. Scum are everywhere
Micky
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I used to have a nice Panasonic Car Radio, the face of which I'd always diligently hide in the glovebox. I came back to the car in the dark once, and couldn't find the damn thing, so I drove on without it. Wasn't until I got home that I discovered there was a hole where the radio used to be, and weeks before I noticed the small hole under the driver's door lock.
If I caught someone doing this to my car again, I'd dispose of them a couple of miles offshore one night. I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time some drug addled thief had ended his pitiful days this way.
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MickyF,
"Did the same to my brother's Saxo this week. Screwdriver in behind both locks. Damaged both locks. The police wouldn't fingerprint or search 3hrs of CCTV footage. They wouldn't let him look at it either!"
Not a very nice thing to do to your own brother - but at least it sounds like you got away with it!!
Seriously, you're right of course and it doesn't even matter whether it's good stuff or not. I had one nicked from my old BX, replaced it with a cheap thing and had that nicked and another. On each occasion they tried to screwdriver the locks, made a right mess of them so smashed a window. Money they made? probably a fiver; cost to me - hundreds. If they'd asked I would have unlocked the car and given them the radios - it would have been cheaper.
Strangely, since I got my "new" BX (about 8 yrs ago) with a plain plastic flip down cover for the stereo I haven't had one nicked - yet!
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Interesting to read this thread, because earlier this week I thought long and hard about spending a few hundred quid more for laminated side and tailgate glass on the V70 that I have just ordered. The advice I was given from experience though was don't, because the scum will just do more damage to the panelwork trying to get in.
/Steve
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Well, I can vouch for Ford. I think their security is wonderful! :)
The best thing I can think of is to de-lock, that way it forces them to break the window which is cheaper to replace than the door. :)
As far as the radio is concerned, not long ago my car was left in a position at work with a few other cars that was totally out of sight.
The 3 cars that I was parked next to got done, they could have spent as long on mine as they liked, I really mean they could have sat in it taking the stereo for an hour if they had wanted and no one would have caught them and they knew that.
But they didn't I had the small face off panel with me, absoloutely tiny, and the radio was a Ford standard CD player, with walnut finsh of course :)
I learned the hard way about leaving panels in the car, lost my precious Kenwood that way, and a window. :(
Blue
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The trouble with de-locking is that it has to be done properly, most people just spot-weld a metal plate to the inside of the door then hide it with filler/fibreglass. Your average scumbag knows that if he puts his screwdriver where the lock used to be and thumps it, 9 times out of 10 the plate breaks off and he can reach through the lock hole and flip the catch.
And what happens to your de-locked car the day the battery goes flat?
As a little aside, I once got called to jump-start a regular customer's car. H-reg BMW 5 series, driven forwards into a garage, battery gone flat. We arrived at his garage and he went to unlock the doors so he could let the handbrake off to roll the car out, only to find that the key barrels on BMW 5 series are not mechanically connected to the door locks, rather they work a switch which unlocks the doors by solenoid, even the one you've got the key in. Flat battery = no doors unlocking.
Solution? Lateral thinking...
Now I hate to stereotype, but the chap in question was of West Indian descent, so I remarked that a nice car like this probably had a decent sound system in it... He unlocked the (mechanical) boot release to expose a brace of amplifiers and subwoofers, so I promptly held my jump leads against the amplifier connections while he unlocked the doors with the key!
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