Thief Prevention

Hey guys I recently got my 98 tacoma stolen and recovered. Not wrecked but robbed. I want to do a kill switch but I’m a rookie when it comes to wires but I want to do a clutch start cancel switch and a fuel relay switch. I have the 2wd 2rz. Any help if very appreciated. If I had it my way I’d wire it hotter than the sun and louder than the sounds that come from your parents room as a kid

 

So someone boosted your 5 lug? Joy riding kids?

Clutch start cancel is likely the easiest, use some thought in where you hide the switch, so it's at least not too obvious.

If you park somewhere sketchy for an extended period, just pull the fuel relay out if you think you need that as a back up.

If the area is really bad, make sure your insurance has appropriate coverage, is paid up, and you don't leave anything in the truck you'd feel bad about losing.

 

Yeah stolen out of my driveway and was found a few streets down. Dummy pitched it into a snow bank. Going to be pulling relays until I get a solid switch put in. Didn’t like losing everything out of my truck subs and amps and what not but I’d hate to lose the whole truck. Lots of blood sweat and tears. You know the deal

 

I hate thieves… I used to drive nice vehicles for their time but thieves and vandals always showed up. I drive old pickups now that dont attract too much attention. To get to your problem, you can either put a switch inline with the fuel pump power wire or do a starter disable, or both. The next problem is where are you going to put the switch where you dont defeat yourself… convenience vs functionality. One thing I have thought about but I haven’t investigated is using the passenger side airbag switch as the switch. Of course this switch would be used to control a relay as the contacts in the air bag switch wont take the current for either the fuel pump or starter. Even if a thief sees you get in and start your truck all they will see is you turning you passenger side air bag on or off. It is convent and hidden in plain sight. I would wire the air bag to be in the ON position all of the time, just in case.

 

OP...do you have switch blanks in the dash?

If so, you could hide your kill switch(s) in plain site. Use some normal option switches from Toyota, like fog light, LSD, whatever........

Most thieves wouldn't realize your truck doesn't have those features or likely wouldn't know the purpose of those features.

 

CrisFix has super simple video to do this.....even I can do it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhXLsrZiE0&t=941s

 

Yea yes I could do this

 

now I wonder how you would go about wiring that. Red to red black to black

 

For a long time I had a kill switched wired to the fuel pump, and installed a keyed switch in the passenger air bag location. It wasn't the stock one, cause way back in the day when these trucks were new, wrecked/partout/junkyard trucks were hard to come by.

That being said, If you choose to go this route- I HIGHLY suggest using a relay rather than extending the fuel pump wiring at all. It may have been my younger (inexperienced) mistake, but I didn't match the gauge of the wire and eventually melted the harness under the driver seat where I spliced into the pump wire. So- don't do that.

The fuel pump cut off switch is great. I don't think you need to be extremely tricky about hiding it. Anything you can do to make the person think twice about taking your truck will do. It just needs to not easily start. They aren't going to spend the time looking around for concealed switches.

 

Okay I really like this idea and thank you for the write up. I’ll have to do some YouTube on how to wire in a relay to open and close the circuit. Any way you could give me a write up? This is one of the last things I’d like to mess up

 

Yeah I like the relay ideal.....like to see that.....

 

Fuel pump killswitch is what I did, I used 12GA wire and a 30A toggle switch in-series with the fuel pump. I used the blue wire at Pin 1 of the Circuit Opening Relay, before it terminates at connector BN1. This effectively cuts power to the fuel pump with the switch toggled, and the truck cannot be started no matter what you do.

If you do not want to toggle a high amperage wire such as the fuel pump power wire, you can also toggle Pin 2 (ECU Signal). This is a very low amperage wire that activates the coil in the relay, for example.

 

Suggest to interrupt the power on the SIGNAL side of the relay.

There are several prime relay candidates. Fuel pump, starter, EFI ..........

 

Just pull the distributor cap. First boomer post of 2022.

 

How did they get it started?

If they just pushed it away, your no start ideas won't be helpful.

If they already have a key, you have another problem to address.

 

He has a 1999, it uses a coilpack for each bank of two cylinders. 1995-1997 was the distributor, 2001-2004 were coil-on-plug.

I guess he can unplug the coils, same effect. Lol.

 

The crisfix one just interrupts the relay signal....looks safest way I seen so far....and easy...

 

I like this one

 

Lol I’m light years ahead of distributors all coil packs here