Ford car break-ins

pat127

My neighbour's 2 Fords (Mondeo and Focus) were broken into by using a knife to cut the wires to the central-locking. Fortunately my Focus wasn't touched. The wiring was cut from outside the car, and very easily too it looks like.

Is this known to have happened elsewhere and is there any way to prevent it?

Many thanks,


Pat

cruizer101

I have heard that on some fords if you cut the wiring between the car door and the body i.e. in the space at the front of drivers door, that the door will unlock. Seems like a very badly designed system. not sure which models it applies to but you might be able to see when door is open how easy it would be to cut them, I would have generally thought they would be in a tough enough rubber sleeve which would have made it pretty difficult, but you never know.

Mc Love

What year/models were the cars Pat

DublinDilbert

Might be worth seeing if you could rivit on a small metal right angle plate to see if you could block access...

Henry Ford III

It seems to happen to several makes

burger1979

Happened to me 2 weeks ago, Ford Mondeo. cost me 240 to get the loom replaced, also blew a good few fuses. BASTARDS:mad::mad::mad:
If you could get some old copper tube and place that around the loom, not going to be easy though on the mondeo look as it breaks off into 2 bits when entering the car. Anyways if you think of anything and it works let me know, might try it myself.

pat127

burger1979 wrote: »

Happened to me 2 weeks ago, Ford Mondeo. cost me 240 to get the loom replaced, also blew a good few fuses. BASTARDS:mad::mad::mad:
If you could get some old copper tube and place that around the loom, not going to be easy though on the mondeo look as it breaks off into 2 bits when entering the car. Anyways if you think of anything and it works let me know, might try it myself.

Sorry to hear that - it's a real pain. Problem is that the loom must stay flexible because it moves with the door. I was thinking of putting some type of narrow tape, teflon, glass-fibre etc around it. The Ford dealer told me that there had been problems with Fords in our area, but that the problem is there with any car. Said he'd look for a solution and to contact him again. Anything I hear I'll let you know.

pat127

Mc Love wrote: »

What year/models were the cars Pat

An '02 Focus and and an '03 Mondeo but according to the Ford dealer it's not just confined to older models. What shook me is that he claimed it could happen to any car, not just Fords!

Mc Love

Yeah its fairly shocking alright, you'd think that car manufacturers would have something in place to combat this in this day and age!

pat127

Henry Ford III wrote: »

It seems to happen to several makes

That ties in with what I've been told. The wire-mesh idea hadn't occurred to me.

I was looking for earlier postings like those but didn't search properly. Didn't mean to start duplicate thread.

DublinDilbert

I wouldn't really believe the ford dealer fully, that it could happen to any car. If it was taken into account when the electronics were being designed something could be done about it. But like everything in the industry it comes down to cost and effort.

There is also any number of mechanical solutions to the problem, the design of the door / A pillar at the wiring could be such that it wouldn't allow a hacksaw blade to penetrate.

bonzer79

Not going to be of much help on the prevention side of this but last week in the D16. area there was 2 focus break ins in my local pub car park and on the same day there were 4 more done in the golf club car park.

pat127

bonzer79 wrote: »

Not going to be of much help on the prevention side of this but last week in the D16. area there was 2 focus break ins in my local pub car park and on the same day there were 4 more done in the golf club car park.

I'm in D16 also. I think I know the club you mean.

Does anyone know if having an alarm-system in the car makes any difference?
Presumably the wires going to the door-sensors are contained in the same loom? If so, are alarms typically triggered when the wires are cut?

Pat

Alfagtamini

this also happened to my old work van a 01 transit. cut the wires going to the rear right back door. i rivited a plate onto the pillar to make the gap smallerand it stopped it from happening again. its a terrible design . luckily at the time the van was empty!

kona

Im pretty sure you could get stainless steel braided tubing in that diameter. That would solve it.

Either that or wrap a few layers of thin wire around it, the wires will be cut but as they break they will make it harder to cut as the blade gets entangled.

_Kaiser_

I seem to remember an "urban legend" that Fords were particularly easy to get in to .. seems it's true after all.

Bumpstop

What will these scumbags think of next, mad.:mad::mad:

I was just looking at my own car, a Merc, the loom flexible conduit, is fitted between the door and the side of the A piller. It doesn't pass through the panel gap, so I doubt it could be cut this way. It's worth checking if your door loom passes through the panel gap for a start.

I swear to god these bastards are ingenious, I guess there must be paint damage as well from the scraping of the blade. The damaged loom really could be a diy fix, it might take a bit of dismantling, but splicing the damaged loom shouldn't be too hard. It might take a good day to do, but would save a lot of money.

Riveting on a small plate with a lip at right angles, just to fill the panel gap at the loom sounds like a handy deterent.

A low tech deterent might be to run a wire from the positive side of the horn, or horn relay through the flexible conduit in the door. This way the horn would sound as the blade cuts through the loom and connects it to a positive wire.

A more high tech approach would be to run a loop wire through the door conduit, connected to a relay to "hold off" the horn, or alarm circuit, when the loom is cut, the wire loop is cut, the relay closes and the alarm sounds. The relay could also be wired to disable the central locking, so depending on the way the wires get cut it might disable the central locking before it opens.

Thats all I can think of at the moment.