So you don't want your truck stolen...

I don't know, my Tacoma doesn't have that. Do you have a picture of one?

 

I believe not all 2nd gen have them, not sure when they started.

 

I made a custom kill switch on my old s10 blazer, granted it was a woods beater. I had a switch installed on the top side of the ashtray you had to hold down, and I also wired the brake light switch in series with the clutch so that you needed to do 4 things (turn ignition, depress clutch, depress brake, and hold hidden momentary switch in ash tray) for the starter to crank. Granted you could just jump the starter solenoid to the motor and force the ignition switch to the accessory position if you really wanted to steal it, but nobody bothered to steal my truck, which had no windows so I could never lock it lol

 

I lost count, how many arms and legs you got?

 

, two and two. If I were to ever lose a limb I guess I’d be out of luck to drive that truck. Hell, these days just having a manual transmission in itself is pretty good theft protection.

 

Boy can you say that again‼️
My wife is a high school teacher, the maintenance department called my wife on her class room phone to ask her to move her car because they needed to do something and they didn’t want her car damaged. She asked her class of over 30 seniors & 2 juniors who wants to move my car for me. She drives an 08 Mazda MX-5 GT with a 6 spd manual. Every kid in the class room raised their hand. She remembered many kids can’t drive a car with a stick. She then said Ok, who can drive a manual transmission? Not one kid could drive a car with a manual transmission‼️

 

Has anyone else had any experience with the ravelco switch device? How viable does that actually look to deter thieves?

 

Since their site has no technical info on what they are doing with RFID, I simply wouldn't even trust it. RFID sounds all fancy, but if it's just some legacy 125mhz shit which is pretty much the most common shit you will find. I'll have your truck pretty quick and not have to try hard. Probably just more profit when I ebay the Ravelco bits off on ebay. I would hope/assume they are at least going down proxmox paths, I would wager at best ProxKey or a micro version. Demanding that dollar amount I would expect at minimum that, but also expect just to get generic 1995 tech.

Slight rant, and I'm making a lot of assumptions because I cannot find any info other than "RFID" on their site. I feel you're expecting to get a super awesome padlock that no one ever can pick, or torch, and just never get into. But in reality it's just a TSA travel lock which... I think you can even just buy those keys on ebay, or use a hammer. Keeps honest people honest, but a thief will take what they want.

If you look at the "competition" IMO I would just tag them on at #10.

Personally, https://www.ravelco.com/product.html I'll take that challenge any day of the week. If ravelco had one.

 

Appreciate the rant. I’ve had my fair share of theft incidents due to where I live so I’ve also become wary of blindly trusting things like this. When you mention the competition, have you seen a better kill switch option?

 

In the old, old days I would remove the rotor from the distributor when I wanted to disable the truck from being stolen. Also, remember the days of the "fusible link"? Quick disconnects on each end made it easy to remove and the vehicle wasn't gonna start without it.

 

I'm blindly guessing here, but from what I can read on their site, and guess by some vague numbers they are giving out, it seems to me that it's just going to be low cost off the shelf wiegand of some flavor, or a hacked up iteration, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiegand_interface . Anyways, there's plenty of rabbit holes to go down on speculation, but to this day, still super common to see old tech still being deployed. I would wager with all the pins, it's just another set of randomness, where most don't do anything. Again, having never seen one in person, or heard of them, I'm 100% speculating. Lojack works, but you can also just jam GPS (felony, so I wouldn't play with that, but I feel a car thief may not care too much), or spoof coordinates. fuck, you can buy off the shelf shit to do it https://github.com/furrtek/portapack-havoc/ literally has a section just to mess with lojack. ADS-B?.... I would be fucking terrified to even look at such a thing.

It's cat and mouse, always will be. https://www.thoughtco.com/clyde-barrow-letter-to-henry-ford-1779294 IIRC something changed with either having a key or changing keys to ignitions around the time.

So, to answer the last part. Commercially? I can't think of a single thing I would spend my money on, and think that it's going to be worth it. Honestly, just going old school, sticking a switch somewhere to disable something, will probably be more than enough. I don't think there are many people out there meticulously plotting the theft of tacomas. Majority of thieves are opportunistic or taking the low hanging fruit. If you jam them up slightly, the clock is ticking in their head before they need to either get your truck, or run.

Hell, I used to drive this shit box mazda for years. Didn't have power...... anything expect those seatbelts that would auto come up, ironically.... So, it was a PITA to unlock/lock all the doors. Simple solution for me, I never locked my car doors. Just, don't leave anything valuable in it. If someone steals it, job well done? you got yourself a $500 car, which if/when you fuck up and get caught will totally be worth it.

I'm gonna cut it there, because I could go on for novels about auto and tech. Having some background in infosec and automotive, I'm constantly at conflict with everything for myself. If anything, at a cheap cost, pickup a pre-paid phone, there's some super cheap plans just for IoT type traffic. Without going through a massive list, and some are for huge scale, redpocket.com is good for cheap pre-paid monthly and you can back whatever provider gives your area the best service. Otherwise I've heard of hologram.io but have not personally tried them. SimpleMobile and Mint are decent as well, both of those are just t-mobile backed. Shit that reminds me to buy up some t-mobile calls.

Edit: Oh, yeah, hide said phone connected to a battery backup somewhere. then you can track it

 

Dude, take a breath.

 

Haha, I'm a far cry away from $whackd sitting in a prison cell in spain. More than likely just as unstable.

 

Sit next to me, I can use the company.

 

Omg I do !

 

Millennial anti theft! they dont know what a manual trans is !

 

Just musing on this......

Could a microchip for a pet be used as a trigger to enable the truck's start system? The microchip could be activated from a key fob or a dangly bit on the key chain.

 

That is essentially what the ignition immobilizer system on most modern vehicles that use “chipped” or “smart” keys is. All 2nd Gen V6 Tacomas already have such a system. For an I4 you could purchase an aftermarket immobilizer.

 

yes, I know that.

Thinking to use the pet microchip in place of a series of kill switches.

I doubt if a thief would be packing pet microchip reader........

 

Pet chips are just the same RFID in a different (implantable) package. I can take my reader and scan my cats/dogs and pull the info off it. Would be no different than an off the shelf rfid fob.

I've debated trying to come up with a system to have a dog door, but not let the cats out... problem is the cats are fast, all I could think of to combat it would be to slam said door shut real fast, but I'll probably end up killing one of them. Not a viable solution.