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HOW YOUR AUTOMOBILE MAY BE STOLEN 37
HERE'S A HARD ONE TO DETECT
ild a business body on to a stolen pleasure car. With this disguise it sells readily.
minutes' unobserved work. For instance,
there's the old-fashioned chain around a
wheel and axle, the rings at the end
fastened with a padlock. Charley can
cut chain so heavy it'd hold a tug-boat
with those bolt-cutters of his, and with
a lot of these padlocks, a rap with a
hammer will knock the hasp out of engagement
with the lock, without any old
bolt cutter. I'm talking now of the
crook operating from another car and
having stuff with him. Those fellows
who stole the tires off Brown's machine
had of course another car and beat it
nil' when they got the tires.
"Ford owners take out the switch key
nn the coil box and go strutting off as if
they'd locked the car in a safe deposit
vault. The first half-baked auto mechanic
who needs a Ford can slip in another
key and depart via the jitney route
without paying his fare. The same
holds true of a lot more auto locks of
this sort, with key on the ignition. A
Yale lock is harder to beat because duplicate
keys to Yale locks don't hang on
every bush. The weak point to all these
locks on the ignition and starting
switches and buttons is that the wiring
is accessible elsewhere and any halfeducated
auto mechanic can lift the hood
and do the trick at the engine.
"Here's one lock, for instance, that
prevents the starter button from being
depressed and so prevents the thief from
starting the engine from the seat. Only,
here, behind the instrument board, are
the wires and their binder posts. Mr.
Thief merely reaches around under the
edge of the board, unscrews a wire,
makes contact with another, and presto!
here goes your old starter with the button
still locked.
"Any of them can be beaten by lifting
the hood and using a piece of wire at
the magneto if the lock is on the ignition
system. Naturally, a man knowing
enough about motor cars to repair such
an ignition system can beat any old lock
that's installed. The point is that with
plenty of cars from which to choose,
the half-hearted thief, the joy-rider,
passes up the one that requires fiddling
around, beating locks, because the owner
might stray out. or some copper might
stop to watch the fun—and coppers