BenKenobi said:

The kicker is that the insurance company want to know about any mods that are added, they charge extra to cover the car with said mods - but they won't cover the value of the 'extras' that in my case adds up to a significant a four figure sum. We only pay 'market value' is their statement and that will be for a standard vehicle, it pays no head to the standard that the car is maintained to.

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Ben,

I too have a 04 Disco 2, live in the sticks and have mods to the car.

However the car gets left in the drive unlocked all day and night, I drive to work and it sits outside the office all day (locked) and often gets parked in the supermarket car park (again Locked) and yet nothing has been stolen from it. And my insurance covers all the mods.

If your that worried about it sell it and buy a Golf or Focus.

Nope not that worried I was just checking whether I need to be. I can't sell, there are very few cars capable of legally towing 3.5 tons.

The mods aren't for racing or bling they are for towing and invisible unless you know what to look for ... in standard form the Disco was 'garbage' as a tug (that's a different topic though).

I know you can get a bracket thing for the D2 that fits over the lights to stop them being popped out but if they want it they will take it
I worked in the motor trade for 20 years and you wouldn't believe what gets nicked
It's not just land rovers
Hard tops from convertibles
BMW sport bumpers from supermarket car parks and from out the owners front door
Rear doors from transit vans
A propshaft from a sprinter van
Petrol out the tank by punching a hole in it
Cats from cars parked in the main road
We had the complete interior taken from a A class from our yard with CCTV
I can even remember a car coming in completely stripped just a shell with the engine and some other parts still on it that was parked in a on block garage the thieves broke into the garage next to it shut the door and knock the wall down stripped the car took the parts

So the short story is if they want it its there's for the taking you can only make it harder for them ie if you do stuff to your discovery and its parked in the same tesco car park next to mine then they will nick my bumper and headlights

A friend of mine had a 3 door cosworth all ways wanted one so he bought one but he couldn't sleep at night worrying if it would be there in the morning
It was fitted with wheel clamp steering wheel lock alarm imob and he took the HT leads off
He even tried putting it in storage but still found himself worrying about it
In the end he sold and said it Was the most stressful 6 months in his life

i reckons if yer disco is covered in mud, green bits growing in various places, bumpers a bit bent, the odd scratch etc...pikey is going to think its mechanically crap as well and go lookin for summit more valuable that dont need crap scraping off it.

when my ifor plant trailer got nicked i replaced it with a good chassis and topped it with a body built from scrap... no self respecting pikey would want to be seen anywhere near it.

It's been mentioned before, but to me it certainly seems that if someone wants to steal your car, they will do so, and your best bet is to buy the appropriate insurance. Everything on my car is declared and I trust my insurance company by the reputation it has had with people I know.
It's not the cheapest but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to replace my defender with no money after it's been nicked.

As an example - car alarms - a friend of mine had an expensive clifford job on his mitsi evo. Went on holiday, parked it in the airport car park under a CCTV camera.
Got back, the car wasn't there. Checked the CCTV to see a low loader driving in, driver smashes the evo window, takes the handbrake off (Alarm blaring), winches it onto the truck and drives off. If they want it badly, they'll take it.

No argument from me, targetted theft like that is hard to defend against, I sold an Evo for the same reasons - attracted far too much attention, had to pay attention to where you left it and who was hanging around when you returned to it. I had a tab with that and the cars tracker would activate if the car moved without the tab present in the car, alarm systems aren't worth the noise they make but such a tracker is way to expensive to justify for the Disco.

Not that paranoid about the Disco, just seemed that from Googling that they were high on the to steal list ... never had anyone take an interest in the P38 or Classic Range Rovers I had, just trying to get some confidence that I haven't bought another 'Evo' in target terms ...

The trick with alarms is to have 2 sounders

1 in the engine bay and 1 inside the car

110db inside the car hurts!!!!

Daz

Corbs said:

It's been mentioned before, but to me it certainly seems that if someone wants to steal your car, they will do so, and your best bet is to buy the appropriate insurance. Everything on my car is declared and I trust my insurance company by the reputation it has had with people I know.
It's not the cheapest but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to replace my defender with no money after it's been nicked.

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Exactly, paying a little more on the insurance to cover all the mods on the car has got to be better than only being paid out enough to buy a market value car, or worse, no payout because you didn't declare.

You'll always be able to argue with the insurance about what average market value is provided you have some backup from quotes / prices etc, but I'd rather know that if I've spent 5k on my truck, I'll get 5k back though and agreed value cover with all mods.

J

lol ricc and besides thay have to get the damm thing to start then thay can show me how

Corbs said:

As an example - car alarms - a friend of mine had an expensive clifford job on his mitsi evo. Went on holiday, parked it in the airport car park under a CCTV camera.
Got back, the car wasn't there. Checked the CCTV to see a low loader driving in, driver smashes the evo window, takes the handbrake off (Alarm blaring), winches it onto the truck and drives off. If they want it badly, they'll take it.

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last one I saw on cctv was even quieter, they just whacked some quick release dollys under the rear wheels, and pulled it up onto the loader like that, no motion detector on the alarm, so they could deal with it somewhere else.

Back in the 60's my uncle had a series 2 that he used to park in the front garden, the biggest problem was pikeys nicking fuel. So he wired it up to the mains at night, the next pikey that tried nicking fuel found the experience... errr shocking! never had a problem after that. I would have expected the whole thing to go up in flames (pikey included), but it never did, surprising as it was a petrol landy.

anyone who has watch mythbusters will know there is a very small "sweet spot" of fuel to air ratio to get an explosion, liquid petrol does not burn (easily anyway) its the vapour that does.