Panel theft

[Bren]

Had a spate of these on garage forecourts of late exterior panels and interior trim being removed from new (or nearly new) stock.

 

Despite the price of ferrous metals being rock bottom precious metals must still be in demand as we have also had quite a few catalytic converts being filched as well - usually from vehicles with the best ground clearance.

 

I wonder what the next thing will be?

[Cavcraft]

Someone must have a bodyshop and is doing up damaged cars. Supposedly the bloke stealing cats round here a few years back used to watch people going shopping on the retail park, open his side loading door, lean under the cars and snip the cats off.

[sierraman]

Most wouldn't fuck about sawing exhausts off. The usual method is a Transit with a length of chain wrapped round the victim exhaust, then set off 'at speed' thus ripping the system off hopefully. You've only got to look on eBay to see the prices people pay for nearly new parts for salvage to see there's a market.

[twosmoke300]

A customer of mine had the entire exhaust nicked off a sprinter while he was in Manchester . Cost over a grand to sort . Worthless , lowlife stealing cunts I hope all their kids have little cocks - even the girls

[overrun]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33348506

 

"I just wasn't expecting it," says Frankland, 43, a midwife. "I didn't expect to go out and find the front of the car missing."

 

O WOT

[anonymous user]

A colleague's daughter had the front stripped off her Fiesta not long ago while it was in her work car-park, it was enough to write it off. Slightly amusingly she is a civilian working in the Police Headquarters.

[overrun]

A colleague's daughter had the front stripped off her Fiesta not long ago while it was in her work car-park, it was enough to write it off. Slightly amusingly she is a civilian working in the Police Headquarters.

 

 

That kinda Cat D is a great one to buy though!

[Pete-M]

This was done to this Fiesta early one morning near a friend's house. A visiting nurse had parked it at 2am and it was like this at 6am.

 

Nobody heard a thing, and it's 20ft from a main road to a Plod Shop.

[Angrydicky]

About six years ago, there was a spate of thefts of MK4 Fiesta front grills around here. My mum's Fiesta Ghia lost its grill, she thought initially that it had fallen off somewhere, but it had actually been removed overnight (the car had been parked outside in the road). We saw three or four other Fiestas of the same model driving around locally minus their grills, so it was clear the same person was behind it.

 

A replacement, correct Ghia grill cost all of £15 in Kirby's, so why someone felt the need to nick them is beyond me.

[richardmorris]

Someone pinched the back bumper from my aunt's Astra last year. Parked in front of her living room on the drive.

[omegod]

Wrong as it is they must have pretty impressive spanner skills to strip that much off silently and in the dark  

[twosmoke300]

I'm guessing they don't care about damaging the panels that are left or breaking clips etc

[anonymous user]

I'm guessing they don't care about damaging the panels that are left or breaking clips etc

or cutting the loom

[MarvinsMom]

current model corsa's are the main target for this sort of thing at home.

 

i guess that like the nova years ago, you just cannot find any of these in a scrap yard with a front end still in one piece?

 

its a pretty shit thing to do, but its indicative of the modern world, people don't give a shit about anyone elses things.

 

bastards.

[FakeConcern]

I remember one of my mates telling about a Metro Turbo(in the 80s)reported  in his local paper the turbo being half removed, obviously got disturbed. So this is not a new phenomenon.

[twosmoke300]

I know of someone who had his k jet injectors nicked off a gti years ago .

[danthecapriman]

We had a Sprinter parked in a very secure substation, big fences with razor wire and CCTV cameras on the van. It was left there overnight and the thieving shits came in and removed the entire exhaust and cat.

There was no sign anyone had even been in, let alone touched the van. The driver only realised when he started the engine and it was unusually load!

I've also seen a VW Crafter parked up on the roadside and over the weekend someone stripped the entire front end off and had the engine out of it!

 

Any sort of theft or vandalism is cuntish but these low life's certainly have balls to do it and do it so quietly!

[doobietoo]

I do wonder how long it will be before some Sc3ne or another starts putting Citroen cactus side panels on Gollfs or Festas leading to a spate of Cacti without side panels....it can only be a matter of time....

[chaseracer]

^ Nae chance - plastic doesn't rust.  Not even French plastic...

[D Spares & Tyres]

Garden items seem to be the new scrap metal..

 

Even entire paths and freshly laid turf is going missing!

[rovamota]

Confession time.

 

In the late '70s we grew up close to the Ford Transit plant in Southampton and during one school summer holiday we got into the compound where all the new vans off the line were parked and we decided to prize all of the Ford badges from the back of the new vans. We had pockets full of them!

 

As we thought this was such good fun we decided to expand by taking badges from cars parked in the streets and we ended up with quite a haul as our crime wave expanded over several weeks and even made the news in the local paper, after dozens of motorists reported their car badges had been stolen and the Police efforts to catch the car badge culprits.We had hundreds of car badges but quite what we were going to do with them was unclear, but it seemed fun.

 

Sadly, our reign of crime came to an end when when of our mates, whilst out on black ops, was caught trying to prize the Daimler badge from the front of a hearse at the High Street undertakers premises by the proprieter, where he was duly arrested.

 

He duly grassed all of us up to the Plod and we got a severe reprimand from the Chief Constable of Hampshire Constabulary, not to mention being grounded by our parents.

 

The badges were confiscated and the Police made an announcement in the local paper to anyone who had their badge removed from their car could report to the station and claim it.

 

Several years later the Beastie Boys made VW badges popular and it was common to see a VW sans grille badge, but we were way ahead!

[Tamworthbay]

Garden items seem to be the new scrap metal..

Even entire paths and freshly laid turf is going missing!

we had a ten metre square piece of AstroTurf nicked last summer from work. The people who nicked it were only a couple of hundred yards away but the police said they couldn't prove it. Everyone locally was laughing about it but plod didn't want to know.

[Cavcraft]

The gyppo's broke into my last work place and robbed the bonnet and battery off a brand new Transit. The coppers went straight to the camp but the bits were never found.

 

 

*Oh, and a few years back a local pub had a giant industrial bouncy castle stolen. They found it a few weeks later in someone's garden fully inflated and in use. I have to confess I did laugh when I read it in the paper. 

[robthedonkey]

We have a fleet of over 6000 sprinters actoss the uk we have 4 or 5 cat thefts a week average. The favourite now is to steal the van.... fuck obd theft they are turning up with a matched ezs (ignition ecu) and key swapping them over and driving the fuckers away ....mr mercedes charges 3 hours book time to swap an ezs .... these pondlife remove quarter light take dash panel off swap parts and drive away in an average of 6 minutes!!

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[Kiltox]

 

That kinda Cat D is a great one to buy though!

Plenty of cheap second hand parts about....:

[stripped fred]

One if my mates had a very smart Escort Eclipse in about 1995. He went to drive to work in it one morning to find the driver's door open. He couldn't see anything amiss so started her up only to find that someone had knicked his accelerator pedal! We still to this day don't know why they went to the trouble to remove this and nothing else.

[Negative Creep]

This was done to this Fiesta early one morning near a friend's house. A visiting nurse had parked it at 2am and it was like this at 6am.

 

Nobody heard a thing, and it's 20ft from a main road to a Plod Shop.

 

 

Isn't that just pictured halfway through a headlight bulb change?

[sheffcortinacentre]

mates firm have there defender locked inside unit overnight as while out on jobs or parked in street (employes homes) boneet has been stolen 3 times in last 12months even with various anti theft mods.

[alf892]

This has been happening for years on Transits.........we had quite a few stripped of the front panels and some of the 'braver' ones would also take sears and doors. We even had an astra van done in the car park at the main dealers.

It becomes a real pain when they start chopping looms though.

[LessThanEqual]

While nowhere near as bad as the stuff described above, I had a mud flap stolen from me. Well, someone cut the bastard off presumably for the VW badge that was on it, and left the rest attached. I wouldn't be mad, but these are quite rare to find on eBay, so it was like this for a good month before I scored an entire set for £20, of course with the one I needed being damaged -- one of the mounting points was broken off. It's bloody bizarre what people will do to save/gain a few quid.