To Boot

While taking my morning walks, I noticed several months ago a car with one of those wheel lock devices, a boot I think is the slang, on it, one which the authorities apply for things such as unpaid parking tickets. Uh, oh, someone's in trouble, I thought.

That device appeared to stay on for a long time. I guess maybe they don't need their car.

Then I noticed the car had been moved, quite a few times in fact. Finally one morning I saw the owner come out of his house, a tool of some kind in hand, and proceeded to walk to the car, removed the device, get in and drive off. A-ha. I don't know where he got it, but it wasn't about unpaid tickets at all. It was about a guy securing his vehicle. Not a terrible idea when you think about it.

Anti-theft cars

I don't believe this applies anymore; it likely hasn't applied in 30 years or more, with all the changes in engine technology. But we used it back then, and it worked 100% of the time.

Before clubs, before ultra sensitive car alarms, it was hard to keep the so-called professional thief from stealing your car if he really wanted it. And while I'm sure others may well have come up with the idea, me Pops or me Grandpa Joe one had come up with it around here.

Cars at one time had distributors and coils. A wire ran from the one to the other as the distributor (as I recall) 'distributed' the spark to the cylinders of an engine to cause the small explosions necessary to make it go. But without connection to the coil (which stored power, again as I recall) there was no spark to distribute. So take off the coil wire and your car would not start. No way no how.

So we would remove the coil wire, the cord between the distributor and coil, when we were home for the night. And not one of our cars were stolen after we put that practice into place. Yet we did have a couple cars stolen which had all the fancy anti-theft devices in play.

Yeah, we knuckle dragging Cosgriffs weren't always so dumb. I bet if you have a car made before about 1985, you could still use this method today.