RaceCraft

I’ll post this in here for the benefit of DM first as it can then be discussed whether it is appropriate to be released into the general tech sections...

After reading about XAs' loss of his Sprint Ed and a few other members cars going missing of late my discovery today might be an eye opener to some

A driver locked the keys in the ignition of one of my AU series 3 cars today.. Now this is not a big deal as we know any key from EB will lock the car but the problem was that he then UNLOCKED the car with his key... His car is an EBII... He popped it straight in and BINGO! He was inside the car... Now due to alot of 'witnesses' for a better word I didn’t ask him to try and start the car BUT after he left I went and got my bucket of miss match keys (from E series-AU) I rummaged around and managed to open 3 AU 2's with random keys from my bucket..

I will follow this up tomorrow and see if I can start the cars, but as you might understand I don't want anyone around watching me...

But the major concern is that they can get into the car, pinch your valuables and/or put it in neutral, remove the handbrake and roll the car far enough away for it to be trailered away..

Now I have a few questions that must be answered regarding the key on the AU 2's and 3's but even if I can turn the ignition to release the steering lock I have concerns...

We know they are easy enough to break into with various tools etc but this opens a whole new can of worms if people can just walk past and open the door with a key...

I will investigate the 'randomness' of this key issue and keep you informed

outback_ute

Dellboy999

tibbo are these cars always locked/unlocked with keys, or do they use a remote button, hence meaning if they use keys the barrels could be worn, but having said that, they are supossed to use a hardened metal roller to avoid the barrel wearing out, which makes all of this pretty scary stuff.

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BlueAU

Hmm thats pretty scary! I might go with the idea that someone brought up: get a rhs rear door handle and replace the drivers side handle with it so there is no key hole on the outside. Then they would have to have the remote.

RaceCraft

one of the cars that was unlocked has only 86k and 80% of the time it would be locked with the fob.. got me to thinking though, it might have been the key that was worn, (as his key was 1992'ish and the other in my bucket could be similar in age)...

Dellboy999

If you really want, just do what I did on my XF, that was to leave the locks in place, I just removed the rods inside the door, so all the lock did was spin around and do absolutly nothing, the only way into the car was through a remote central locking key fob.

Now this poses a problem, flat battery, how do you open the bonnet, solved that one with a bike hand brake cable carefully hidden under the guard that could be used to pull the bonnet latch open, thus allowing open bonnet to jump power to battery and open your doors, start car etc.

Thats as close to car lockdown as I can think of, but if they want it, a hammer or rock, or a proffesional makes short work of a side window though :(

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xacoupe

hrmmm.. I guess no system is fool proof but that is funny in an ironical sense. I remember when the EB was released all the press releases about being unstealable and how they hadn't had one stolen ( that didn't involve a tray truck ) in 12 months .. but it looks like they got lazy on the key side of things.