My daughters boyfriend has just had the cat nicked off his diesel transit van,apparently for its scrap value.Full details of when and where are unknown at present,how low can these scum get - not as low as a car obviously:)
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rustbucket (the original)
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 07/11/2007 at 19:11
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just as bad as coming out and finding your fuel lines have been cut
i wonder if they pinched to use on a van they have rather than for its scrap value
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Not unknown in these parts to have the complete front end stripped out of a Transit while parked up over a weekend. And when I say complete, I mean complete, seats, steering wheel, dash, engine, gearbox, the lot. So just to lose the cat could be considered fortunate, I suppose.
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Someone stole the sump plug from my Skoda once. A part that costs 50p, but is easy to get at when the car is parked. Fortunately I saw what had happened before driving the car, but I imagine my wife would just have driven off and cooked the engine.
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Update. Cat was cut out with grinder last night sometime, the transit was parked outside his house in the urban street. You would have thought somebody would have heard a grinder?
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rustbucket (the original)
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I know someone that lost their engine whilst the car was parked on their drive overnight.
I was actually in awe that anyone was capable of removing an engine without disturbing anyone.
The best bit was the telling of the story, well, he said, the missus came back into the house this morning and said that the car wouldn't start. I opened up the bonnet to see if I could see anything obviously wrong and got a bit of a shock
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I read often, only post occasionally
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A mate with a BMW had his windscreen stolen once back in the '90's. Amazing.
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A mate with a BMW had his windscreen stolen once back in the '90's. Amazing.
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My boss had the windscreen stolen from his sons Fiesta.
The teens piled out of the pub and kept asking the driver to turn up the heater :-))
He also had the glass cut out of a headlight.
Local scouts had the clutch stolen from their truck.
I had a Ford Crusader (MK4) stolen one evening when I left it for just 5mins.
I went to view it 12 hours later and the WHOLE inside had been removed.
Dash, steering wheel, seats, carpets - absolutely everything but it was still on its wheels.
I had to steer it with mole grips while kneeling on the floor as it was towed to the nearest road.
So anything can go walkies!!
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Many moons ago a mate of mine had the bonnet stolen from his Rover P6 while it was parked in a multistorey car park. This was in the days when a Rover P6 was considered to be a rusty unreliable jalopy with unserviceable brakes rather than a "classic" so the cost of a replacement bonnet from a British Leyland dealer would have exceeded the market value of the car.
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In 1975 a friend had his rusty Austin A30 entirely stripped overnight while parked on his drive.
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Had my first car, a 950cc Fiesta, pinched and got a call from Police to say they'd found it parked in a residential street and I could just go and get it. Speakers & tapes nicked (not surpised) but car wouldn't start. Flipped bonnet to see that my spark plugs, HT leads, air filter and coil had all been pinched. All brand new too! I guess someones Fiesta needed a service so they thought they'd get the parts for free...
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Friends pulled out of a hotel, and a few hundred yards down the road noticed 'erratic' behaviour from the temperature gauge. pulled over, and lifted the bonnet. The radiator had gone!
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robbing parts off cars (as opposed to just nicking the radio) was quite common when I was in Liverpool in the '80s. In fact it went so far that if you bought a base model car it wouldn't be long before you were offered the interior from the top-of-the-range one for £50 or the engine, gearbox, suspension etc from the sporting version. I knew a guy who worked for a garage and had the breakdown truck at home over a weekend. Early one Sunday morning he saw an RS3100 Capri loose it on a bend and slide into a ditch. The driver went off to get help so friend jumped in the truck, pulled the Capri out, took it round to the garage and had the engine out. Nipped back down the road and put the car back in the ditch again all before the driver got back.
Isn't there a joke somewhere along the lines of 'Ferrari have recruited 6 Scallys for their new pit crew 'cos no-one can get the wheels off a car faster than a Scouser'
Apologies to any Scousers reading this :)
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"Friend jumped in the truck, pulled the Capri out, took it round to the garage and had the engine out. Nipped back down the road and put the car back in the ditch again all before the driver got back."
With friends like that, who needs enemies? Did you really think that this could ever be anything other than common theft?? Disgusting.
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I'm not condoning this guys actions merely relating historical fact relating to this thread.
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It used to be standard practise of the manchester police to remove ht leads and cap off any car they found that had been stolen and dumped in case it got stolen again.
About 10 years ago when the wifes festa was broken into and i chased the youths in my underpants (not a pretty sight) the police advised that i disconnect the battery for the rest of the night in case the thieves returned.
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i chased the youths in my underpants
What the ..... - you mean they nicked your underpants as well.....
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What the ..... - you mean they nicked your underpants as well.....
That reminds me. A friend at Uni has his £200 audi coupe broken into while we sat in lectures, and all they stole was a few cassettes and a box of his dirty laundry, smelly socks and pants included!
My brother once had the rear hatch broken into on his old Nova and all they nicked was the jack..
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A previous employer had part of their office parking on the opposite side of the street. It was effectively a very wide pavement, which allowed plenty of room for people to park their car at a right angle to the road, and still leave room for pedestrians to walk in front of the cars.
One afternoon we were sitting in the office when a scruffy looking LWB high top Transit with a yellow flashing light on the roof pulled up on the pavement directly opposite. This was not unusual. The industrial estate was like a maze, and the directory board at the entrance was about 10 years out of date, so people often stopped to ask for directions or look at a map.
After about 10 minutes, the Transit pulled away. A colleague's red Nissan Primera parked directly "behind" it was up on bricks, with both front wheels, the offside front wing, both headlights, the bonnet, number plates, and the radiator grille missing. The thieves had parked the van in the perfect place to ensure we couldn't see the car, jumped unseen from the sliding side door of the van, helped themselves, chucked all the bits in, jumped in themselves, and driven off. In broad daylight. Nobody saw them, and probably the only passers by that even noticed saw the flashing light and assumed they were legit mechanics or recovery people.
The receptionist got the reg number of the van which was traced to a local traveller site where of course they all denied owning it and the police took no further action. I just couldn't believe the balls of these people though. It stands to reason that they would know that no individual in their right mind was going to challenge them, but talk about no fear of the law either. With good grounds, as it turned out, but even so.
Cheers
DP
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04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
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This thread reminds me of the Les Dawsons comment on the Parky show about having his car hubcaps nicked in Liverpool .
' So whats unusual about that' ? he was asked.
Well I was doing 70 mph at the time...sez Les.
Well it made me laugh.
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The 80's seems to be a common thread here. We woke up one morning in the mid 80's to discover half the front end of our Mini gone - Bonnet, Bumper, lights, radiator grille, distributor... Obviously someone repairing a crashed mini clubman.
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I've seen stickers saying dog in transit, but never cat in transit. Sorry, because it's theft I must be more serious ........
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L\'escargot.
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i often see 'horses in transit' stickers and often feel like pulling these people up and pointing out they are in a tk bedford not a transit
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we had a few nicked off some bt transit vans parked in our exchange yard also tried but did not succeed with one of the vivaro's.a few weeks earlier they nicked the twin wheels off one of the transits.there were travellers passing through the area but the boys in blue held out little hope of recovering the items.
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BB
Please don't pull them up - they go quite slowly enough as it is.
Watching silly girls trying to drive a decrepit old truck on the A272 at a steady 20 for mile after mile with 100+ fuming drivers stuck behind them is all too common.
Edited by Screwloose on 08/11/2007 at 14:06
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Quite a few years ago I parked my 1600E car in a multi level staff carpark inside a fenced security area.
I discovered the spare wheel and the destinctive Wipac driving lights had been "removed"
I called in to the local nick to report it. The duty BIB said fill in the details & just copy the entry above !
He explained that with the pathetic boot locks on Fords of that era and the attractiveness of Rostyle wheels it was quite common for a full set of wheels, usually with brand new tyres on, to be collected in multi storey carparks.
It was obviously an inside job ;-( Nice people to work with;-(
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in the early 90s a guy I used to work with had his B reg Astraoid stolen from outside work. car was picked up about 20 miles away and the police removed the HT leads & dissy cap, he was told to pick them up from the nearest police station which he did, got the car and drove it back.
had it written off due to the damage, then left it parked on the road outside his house in a less-than-salubrious area of Nottingham (south of the R. Trent) whilst awaiting ins co to retrieve vehicle.
a couple of nights later one of the neighbours heard some noise and came out to find some lads trying to nick it (again). so chased them off and they removed the ht leads & dissy cap again. then next time someone tried again, but couldn't start it so tried to bump it down the hill, where it was found next morning. replaced leads & cap, drove it back up outside house, removed cap & leads,
more calls to insurace co, "can you PLEASE come at retreive it!"
then next night bloke lashed up over the limit in his car came down the road, smashed into the Astraoid, push it through their garden wall, through their garden, into the neighbours garden, then obviously did a runner.
I think the ins co picked the astra up asap then
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Reminds me of a friend sof mine who had his MG broken into outside his house in 1995. The previous day he had left all his cassettes and a bar of Dairymilk chocolate on the passenger seat. The toerags smashed the side window, took only the cassettes they wanted and left the rest that were not to their taste in a neat pile on the seat (American soft rock from memory). What made even my mate laugh ruefully was they also helped themselves to the chocolate bar but left him one square on top of the dashboard.
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In the 70s and 80s my father was Transport Manager for 'the world's favourite airline' which at the time ran fleets of Cortinas. As the Cortina was a very popular car the new, unused spare wheels were disappearing out of the boot, only being discovered of course when the vehicle had a flat tyre.
My Dad decided to replace the spares but before they went in the car the wheel and tyre were given a coat of orange or yellow paint.
Funny, they stopped going walkabout after that................
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4 years or so ago had a mate staying at my house for a while due to a marriage tale of woe and overnight he had the o/s door mirror assembly stolen, the whole lot.
can't work out how they've got the nerve to do it in a well lit London street and without setting the alarm off (1 yr old Focus).....and he was sleeping in one of the front bedrooms which overlooked the car
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In the mid 80's I did a stint at the earls court motorshow, one of many.Anything inside a car that could be unscrewed or pulled off would have to be replaced on a daily basis.The most outrageous thing though ,happened on the Peugot stand.They had introduced a new multivalve engine and on the last day of the show someone removed the cylinder head!!!They'd obviously done the job bit by bit during the course of the show,amazing.
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Rival companies are fully aware of what other companies are doing well before introduction dates.
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>>>>>>can't work out how they've got the nerve to do it in a well lit London street and without setting the alarm off (1 yr old Focus).....and he was sleeping in one of the front bedrooms which overlooked the car
Reminds me of my Brother's boss abot 20 years ago who had a new, fully alarmed Jag that he managed to lock his keys in one day. The car was parked outside the office where he was sitting at his desk no more than 10 feet from the car. It was a hot sunny day and the windows (above eye level) were all open.
He called the local Jag dealer who appeared at the reception desk within the hour.
When the owner went to take him to the Jag the dealer mechanic handed him his keys.
He had arrived, got into the car and got the keys out all without disturbing the owner who wasn't even aware he had arrived.
Remarkable, but scary : o)
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