I feel your pain. Some idiot neighbor or idiot friend of neighbor is siphoning gas out of my husband’s car. Since it’s the holidays and we live in a mostly-college-student area, the gas theft has dropped off.
If it continues when school starts up again, though, I’m going to catch the thief and ask my second-floor neighbor if she minds if I borrow her window to defenestrate an idiot.
Buy a five gallon gas can. Put it near your car, or lawn mower or somewhere the theif will see it.
Now, we need to figure out what to put in it. It will need to look and smell like gas, but we need a special additive that will seriously fuck up an engine.
You know, I really like the sit in ambush all night scenario. Further more it is an excuse to buy new top-of-the-line technologies that Santa forgot.
Sugar in the tank is the classic way of screwing up an engine and can cause major damage. However, I’m not sure how well sugar dissolves in gasoline.
I’ve heard that it does not dissolve. Acts like sand. So I don’t think that will do.
Hmmmm. It will need to be highly concentrated since it will mix with whatever gas is already in the thief’s car.
Who is the SDMB chemist?
How about… 70% water. 30% gas. Nothing volatile about that mix. Gonna make the thief’s car run like shit for a while though. It should smell enough like gas to not arouse suspicion.
Maybe dissolve some sugar in the water first?
Ehhh… We may be getting on the edge of what is acceptable to post. But I do feel vibrotronica’s pain.
And, while fun to think about, I would add that you would have to think about the thief trying to get retribution, If he figured out what happened.
So all in all, better security is really the best bet.
Escalation can be a very bad thing. Especially when dealing with someone that does not worry about working outside of the law.
Its’ clearly the big oil companies. Clearly.
We are though the looking glass, people.
You know, I’ve lived in Midtown for 16 years, and I’ve never had anything like this happen until I moved to Central Gardens. Weird, huh? I’ve heard lots of Memphis crime horror stories, and known a couple of people who had their cars stolen. but this is a first for me. And naturally, it’s weird.
My mechanic told me that you can’t get a siphon in modern gas tanks like this. And my theory is that he’s only opening the gas cap when the gas isn’t flowing quickly enough, i.e., when there’s not much in the tank.
Well, yeah, that would make sense. All those polar groups on the ring could make dissolving into a hydrocarbon mixture difficult. (Anyone got any kerosene or camp stove fuel to try as a model?)
Motor oil would probably work. If nothing else, the car would smoke like hell.
Now that’s a good tidbit of info to have handy.
Re: surveillance cameras. The $900 figure was just the one I found on a quick search. As Lute said, you can find cheaper units. I used to work tangentally with CCTV systems, and we didn’t much like the Box Store crap. We only installed good, professional systems in business applications. For home use, I wouldn’t have a problem installing a cheap unit. Go ahead and spend a couple of hundred dollars and get a recorder and camera. You can get video units if you don’t want digital, but digital will allow you to download the images onto your computer.
If you call the police instead of ‘bringing in the gimp’, then a video record will be a nice bit of hard evidence for the trial.
Quick advice: Park the car in reverse, tail-in. Possibly against a wall, if there is one.
I got this kewl outdoor camera and monitor for Christmas. Only $121 from Amazon.
We’ve had more than one lawnmower stolen out of our front yard. And then there was the motherfucker who stole my bookbag with all of my books in it. Hope he enjoyed reading about Organic Chemistry.
So yeah, I’m in. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a dopefest?
-Lil
We got a new camera for Xmas - it was $200 and makes it’s own webpage for itself. It has motion detection and will send you an email when something moves. You could get one for less than $150 if you don’t want the pan/tilt option. The keyword for ebay is “Network Camera”.
Just tape a note to you gas tank that reads
Smile, you on cadid camera asshole!
They guy will take off running and never come back.
Well at least he’s only breaking the windows and stealing gas from your Honda Civic… I’d be more pissed if the perps riced it out for you while you were sleeping. =P
On a more serious note, I can kind of relate. In college I used to drive a Toyota Corolla (also red). In about a two week period, some jerkoff(s) hit most cars on our street by slashing 2 or 3 tires per vehicle. My car was hit 3 times in that two week period. At least in your case it makes some sense since they wanted something of value (your gas). In my case, it was just fucked up random vandalism, for no good reason.
I’m mostly stunned that anyone would have the balls to pull off a crime like that.
I was stolen from once 25 years ago, the tools where sitting in the back of an open truck.
Pissed me off it did.
Someone on a recent gun thread had talked about being burgled. FIVE TIMES.
FIVE.
That type of situation is completely unacceptable to me. I guess I’m a bit naive about the ‘real world’.
A simple home burglary up here makes the paper. It’s very rare. You do not mess around with someone’s ‘castle’ around here.
At least not twice.
I believe you can rent these kinds of cameras, too. Might be cheaper than buying one.
I was at a neighbor’s New Year’s Eve party last night and my across-the-street neighbor said he thought somebody had been siphoning gas out of his car, too! He’s going to check for tape on the gas tank today.