It is really hard and quite expensive to fully secure a car. A determined thief can break a window, hacksaw through a security screen etc. Sterlin has only been safe guarded against simple and opportunistic thief. This blog provides details of how Sterlin is secured and the philosophy and thinking adopted.
The bits on the outside have been secured with various locks:
- Each of the four running wheels and the spare wheel mounted on the rear door have a locking lug nut.
- The 4 Jerry Cans mounted on the roof rack are secured within a Front Runner Jerry can carrier and each Jerry Can is locked with a padlock.
- The Roof mounted cargo box is secured with a wire chain and padlock.
- The Front Runner camp table is secured under the roof rack with a padlock.
- The sand ladders are secured with bolts to the roof rack.
- The roof rack itself is only bolted to the vehicle. Hopefully it’s size and weight will deter a thief.
- The awning and roof top tent are secured with bolts but is not locked.
- The decision to use locking lug nuts on the wheels was a difficult choice. As there is always a chance that we will lose the lug nut removal key making it very difficult to change a wheel when needed. The lug nut removal key will be stored in the lock box, so the risk of losing it should be minimal. And we have a second one in the toolkit. The sand ladders, roof top tent and awning are not locked and only bolted and there is a risk that these could be stolen.
When outfitting Sterlin, one of the philosophies was to keep the number of items on the outside of the car to a minimum. Firstly, anything outside is hard to secure. Secondly, it gets pretty dirty up there with everything exposed to the the elements. And lastly, it’s not that easy to get things on and off the roof rack. For these reasons we keep the high lift jack and the shovel inside the vehicle.
Also on the outside of the vehicle is the fuel filling cap. We decided to add a lockable fuel cap to Sterlin with the aim of deterring fuel theft. We rejected the idea of using a padlock through a hasp on the outside of the fuel flap as it is somewhat unsightly. The lockable fuel cap is a less intrusive option which requires minimal effort to install. The lockable fuel cap was available from the local auto shop for under $20 and meets all US state and federal emission test standards. Now we just need to make sure we do not lose the keys.
On the inside higher risk items have been secured with locks.
The Pelican Cases are all lockable with padlocks and the padlocks all share a common key. In high risk areas, the cases could secured together with a wire rope through the padlocks. The fridge is lashed using the ARB mounting kit. In high risk areas, a simple wire rope and padlock would be added. The storage box is lockable and is mounted to the cargo area mounting panel via bolts only accessible from inside the storage box. And inside the storage box is a second lock box for securing important documents. This lock box is always locked unless in use with the key located with the ignition key. The water pump and filter system is secured by pins that can only we removed from inside the storage box, which should be locked. The water tank is not really secured except with lashing.
The rear storage area is covered with a heavy duty space blanket which acts to hide the vehicles contains and also reflect sunlight and heat keeping the rear storage lockers, fridge, pelican cases and water filter system cooler.
The main philosophy adopted with internal storage is to make it easy to lock things and to know that they are locked. If it is difficult to lock items up, we will get lazy and will likely fail to lock something providing an opportunity for a thief.
There are no security grills on the windows or gating off the cargo area. Many overland adventurers install these grills, but we feel this is over-kill for where we are travelling, hopefully we are right. The two fire extinguishers and the first aid kit are obviously not secured and will have to be replaced if stolen.
All the padlock keys are stored together and carried with us but not with the ignition key and lock box key. A spare set of keys for the ignition, padlocks and lock box are also carried with us.
