Someone tried to steal my Black Edition wheels

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148KPT

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Went to my car at 7.15am to find pieces of kerbing around the car and all but one nut per wheel removed. The car is parked just off road on a small drive at the front of the house, c.15 yards from my front door and less than 10 yards from my immediate neighbour's front door. Somebody had tried to steal my 18" Black Edition wheels - particularly worrying thing is that they managed to remove all four locking wheel nuts with no sign of damage, must have had some sort of key. According to my neighbour the car alarm went off at 3.30am - presumably when they tried to jack the car up to put on the pieces of kerb. I didn't hear the alarm and not impressed by my immediate neighbour hearing the alarm but doing nothing, I chased after the local kids that tried to take his scooter for a joy ride. Tonight I will inform all my neighbours asking them to be extra vigilant and report to the local police immediately if suspicious.

I live near Epsom, normally a low crime area, the police say with the Epsom Derby coming up there are "strangers in the area" sounds like Pikeys then.

I took my car to the local tyre place to get the wheel nuts torqued correctly and have spoken to local Audi dealer - both are very surprised that they got the locking wheel nuts off so easily. I am going to change the locking wheel nuts to a different style.

Any other suggestions as to what I can do to reduce the chance of them trying to nick the wheels again? Do you think they will try again? Is it common to have Audi wheels nicked off the car?


Kevin
 
Id put another set of locking wheel nuts on , some people put 3 sets on
Horrible that is though thieving scum bags
 
I've heard of people hammering a smaller socket onto some looking wheel nuts so maybe they did something like this. I can't remember off the top of my head what the Audi ones look like or how many different keys there are. I know that with some other manufacturers they only have about 20 different key patterns for their locking wheel nuts.

I've read a few good reviews of the McGard ones and as braque10 says maybe use 2 or 3 different ones per wheel. Other option is to buy a cheap caravan and park it on your lawn. That way you'll look like a pikey too and they won't steal from their own kind.
 
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braque10 said:
Id put another set of locking wheel nuts on , some people put 3 sets on
Horrible that is though thieving scum bags
Click to expand...

^ that actually sounds like a good plan - I didn't think of that.

Considering there are something like 30 different combinations on the OEM locking nuts, these gits must be carrying a helluva lot of keys around.

Still, sorry to hear about you having to go through this rubbish, but glad to hear there's no damage mate.
 
can anyone post any link of suppliers for different style wheel nuts

4x112 + The nut to put them on and take them off?

Cheers
 
The thing is there are only about 10 variations of locking wheel nuts so if anyone knows an insider at a dealers they can order on of each and have a full set for most of the vehicles,bmw's are also the same the dealers keep a master set which we have borrowed for cars in the workshop
 
phil76 said:
The thing is there are only about 10 variations of locking wheel nuts so if anyone knows an insider at a dealers they can order on of each and have a full set for most of the vehicles,bmw's are also the same the dealers keep a master set which we have borrowed for cars in the workshop
Click to expand...

Still better than having normal nuts on tho
 
I thought the days of steeling wheels were over, obviously not :(

Best getting locking nuts from different manufacturers, maybe two different audi nuts and two McGard or something like that asap

Sounds terrible, but I'd be concerned that the f****** will be back
 
So I went to my local Audi dealer, as there was no damage they believe whoever did it had the correct key. I considered putting a different set of locking wheel nuts on from Audi, when we examined them they had exactly the same key! I now have a set of aftermarket McGard.

Kevin
 
That's really FxxKING annoying.

Made that bit easier for the B***ards due to this

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_10001_catalogId_10151_productId_196491_langId_-1_categoryId_165469

Very easy to use. Friend of mine has a set and we've used them on our own cars in the past.

My view on locking wheels nuts is that they serve as a visual deterrent to most criminals and will only slow down a determined thief by a few minutes.

It’s lucky that the car's alarm is sensitive enough to go off from jack lifting the car, do car alarms have tilt sensors?
It’s also good that the one wheel bolt was enough to hold the wheel on and you’re not looking at nasty hub damage etc.

Hope it is just a onetime random occurrence.
 
I was considering using a wheel clamp .Im sure they want 4 wheels not 3 .Also i would attach a rake of chains to the back of the clamp so when they try to remove it the noise will freak the muppets and wake you hopefully .
Other than that garage it .
 
Holy crap, what's the point of having locking wheel nuts if any little scum bag can pop into his local halfrauds and shoplift one of those?

As far as I'm aware most premium cars have a jacking up type alarm. It's good that the Audi one worked in this case as the BMW one requires the car to be practically flipped over before it goes off. An alarming number of people were having the standard 19" wheels stolen off BMWs last year. It seemed most of them were turning up on ebay.
 
Our locking wheel nuts are the type which spins the outside sleeve so if you try to use one of these 'Locking Wheel Nut Remover' from halfords thingies it doesnt work - so they must have had the proper keys for it... WAN**RS!!!
 
1inchpunch said:
I've heard of people hammering a smaller socket onto some looking wheel nuts so maybe they did something like this. I can't remember off the top of my head what the Audi ones look like or how many different keys there are. I know that with some other manufacturers they only have about 20 different key patterns for their locking wheel nuts.

I've read a few good reviews of the McGard ones and as braque10 says maybe use 2 or 3 different ones per wheel. Other option is to buy a cheap caravan and park it on your lawn. That way you'll look like a pikey too and they won't steal from their own kind.
Click to expand...

Shocking to hear this,they must just have a spare set of OEM whell nut keys :mad:
 
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The Police asked me the value of the 4 wheels, I told them I had no real idea but would guess £1,500 in total - is that a reasonable guess?
 
148KPT said:
The Police asked me the value of the 4 wheels, I told them I had no real idea but would guess £1,500 in total - is that a reasonable guess?
Click to expand...

£480 per wheel iirc. That's not including rubber.
 
i have two sets on mine and they are only reps , the thing is if they want you wheels they will have them locking wheels nuts only slow them down , a few weeks back we had a car in work broken into the smashed the window and got into the boot (to get the locking nut im assuming) and they nicked all 4 wheels they were cheapo aftermarket wheels they made a right mess of the car too from ripping the boot mat up to find the key and they left the car on its brake disks , i thought those days were over too but obviously not
 
cctv is a good idea as you can put it on a separate tv and record and watch at night ,,or a pager linked to your alarm ,,pages you when alarm goes off ..
 
A little something to lighten the mood :)
If you did have the wheels nicked then this would be what you'd be like



Luckily though they weren't! Some people are just c**ts
 
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That's pretty scary that people can do this so easily.

think something like this is needed

[video=vimeo;24004184]http://vimeo.com/24004184[/video]
 
As above hammer a socket over the nuts and they come off easily, did this on my old civic when I lost the locking wheel nut key. Some real ******** about though, hope you catch them mate
 
Our locking wheel nuts will NOT, i repeat, will NOT come off with just hammering a socket over them....they have the anti theft spinning mechanism on the outer of the locking nut....
 
Yeah most good ones have anti tamper spinning outers & also some have hard as hell metal used, so smacking a socket on may not get you anywhere, but certainly if you have decent wheels on then using multiple sets of locking bolts will help, as the more time spent on trying to remove the wheels the more chance they will get caught or give up sooner, so make it hard as possible to get them on quickly, lucky tbh as leaving wheels on 1 nut could have collapsed & caused some nasty undercarraige damage.
 
lockers are generally pants, most are removeable within seconds and i only see them as a tool to slow a thief down, not to actually stop them!

strangely there is a set of perfect BE alloys on ebay now for 1500 so theres nice money in it.
 
audi upgrades
Another cheap option might be to just park the car so they can't get at 2 of the wheels. Park with the passenger side as near as possible to a wall or park the car in some way that it makes it impossible for them to jack up.
 
Denty said:
Our locking wheel nuts will NOT, i repeat, will NOT come off with just hammering a socket over them....they have the anti theft spinning mechanism on the outer of the locking nut....
Click to expand...

Our Mazda 3 had these locking nuts on them (with the spinning outers) and trust me you can still get them off hammering a socket on to them as i have watched a garage do it to ours when the locking nut key broke.

Don't get me wrong it was a hell of an effort and made so much noise you couldn't do it discreetly, but it is possible.
 
Can someone post up a link for these locking wheels nuts with the spinning thread, 112's please
 
I find Air ride is a deterrent, not much chance getting a jack under here?

DSC07551.jpg


:laugh:
 
Very True N8 that may cause an extra hassle of using a tin opener on your wing first to get the wheel off,plus yours are a bit individual for some scum who wants a quick sale as they would have them painted something a bit more factory as i think if they turned up on ebay its obvious who's they are
 
You can remove any locking nuts with a drill and a counter screw - pretty quiet and takes minutes - I know, I've done it.

Don't forget that they don't care if they damage your hub/undercarriage - all they want is the wheels so that they can buy some more H.

You can set up a motion sensitive camera with any webcam and free to download software off the internet. I live in an area where so-say vehicle related crime is quite high - because there are a lot of decent/semi-decent cars; and I have 2 sets of lockers (different makes), a motion camera aimed at the car AND I park right by my front door, in direct view of 5 front doors (it's a funny shaped road). I've still had someone try and nick my £400 ebay reps, even though they were badly scratched and the lacquer was lifting.

You can deter them, you'll never stop it completely unless you can park in a garage or a private car park.
 
never understood them locking wheel nuts to be honest, load of crap

only way to secure your wheels for sure would be to chain them to the ground with a huge chain that only an angle grinder would go through, this way they'd have to make a lot of noise to get them, or park your car inside a garage.......
 
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