Cheap vs. Expensive Anti-Theft Products 

Just take the motor with you when you leave your car. Like those expensive car radios back in the early 2000s.

if that potato would’ve worked, that dude would’ve been so mad 😂

From my experience a simple hidden switch that you have to click before starting works amazing. Hide it in reach of the driver seat but not in eye sight. Say under the seat or in the ceiling of a pocket cubby in the dash. IMO momentary switch work best that you hold when starting as a toggle you have to remember to toggle off when you leave the car. For tracking we always used apple airtags but remove the speaker first. Worst case the thief gets a notice on their iphone "AirTag found moving with you" but they wont be able to make it beep so they cant find it to remove it without spending hours. Hiding it well is important, I say hide it under the carpet or epoxy it somewhere under the car and paint it so you cant tell.

The old 'pocket the fuel pump relay' has never failed me

It's so satisfying that the thief went through so much effort tearing apart the car only to have to give up.

Best thing to do is a 1-2$ switch hidden on your fuel pump power wire

As someone with a car in which you can push the driver side window down with your hands (and no interest in fixing it), this video was still a fun watch.

1:26 "Stealing² !" That cracked me up. 😂

Now we know how Donut keeps getting these "$500" project cars

If there is ever a part 2, we need Lock Picking Lawyer on it! I'd love to see what vulnerabilities he would find. Richard still did great as he noted the weak points actual thieves would attack. Lock Picking Lawyer will show us how unsecure these products really are. I have a feeling that the lock cylinders on most of these products can be raked or bumped.

Poor Henry and his Suburban 😂 at least it didn’t get stolen this time! Thanks for including the anecdote! Crazy timing on that lmao

I've always heard that "the opportunity makes the thief", meaning most crimes or theft is not pre-planned, they simply take advantage of an opportunity. Most won't be walking around with bolt cutters or power saws.

What I like about The Club style devices is they fulfill the idea that: 'Your car doesn't have to be IMPOSSIBLE to steal, just HARDER to steal than the OTHER GUY'S car.' (And the club fufills that because it can be seen by potential thieves.) Just like how a thief will walk around trying door handles until they find an unlocked car, and THAT is the one that'll get ransacked (or slept/pissed in, etc).

The simplest way to defeat those pedal to wheel locks is simply to stamp on the pedal and bend the steering wheel. You don't even need tools. The real advantage to any of these devices is as a deterrent - if your car is slightly harder to steal than the one next to it, it's way less likely to get stolen. One good idea I've used, especially on older cars, is to run the ignition wire through a separate switch, like a foglight switch or something on the dashboard. Without hitting that switch, the ignition won't activate.

I appreciate the GI Joe Parody Vid references. "Imma computa!" "Stop all the down loadin!"

The ol' school method is a few kill-switches. My uncle has an old Ford pickup that they built into a rock crawler. The kill-switches prevented it from being stolen a long time ago. I know there are 3 on the truck. 2 are accessible by the driver or passenger, and 1 is accessible outside in case of emergency. It also has a weird ignition system so the thieves just stole his radio and his emergency gear from behind his seat. Good ol' truck. My uncle still has the ol' beast. It doesn't run anymore; but it is a cool yard ornament.

"Aw damn dude, stealing squared" lol. That was perfect.

The Eric Andre "Google, show me this guy's balls" soundbite was so funny 😂

Something that I didn't see them touch on about the Revelco car immobilizer that really should have been mentioned is that these plugs have over 100,000 combinations. This means that any other plug, or a dummy plug, will most likely fry something before it actually allows a thief to get away with the car. The plugs that comes with the one installed for your vehicle have a 1 in 100,000 chance of being replicated in another vehicle which makes this a fairly strong deterrent over all. Save for a thief just cutting it off and rewiring all the leads together to steal your car, it isn't a bad option I'd say. Personally, I'd still have a hidden dummy switch as well just to have two steps all the same.

When I lived in California in 2008 and car thefts went up, my father heard a story about Ravelco and had it installed on all three of our cars. The way it is installed ties it into all of the electronics of the engine, and they tape over it. Unless you know the wires used, it is really difficult to remove. They wrap all the wires together to make it even more difficult.

Can't believe they didn't review the trunk monkey. Best anti-theft device.

What most car enthusiasts do is route the battery cable somewhere in the car and stick an isolator key in somewhere. Even if someone steals the keys if they don’t know where the isolator key is or where it goes, they’re not going anywhere. I’ve already had that system tested when my house was broken into. The thieves managed to find the main keys and the isolator key but couldn’t figure out where that key went and they gave up on that.

Best solutions are for Anti-Theft is: Add a immobilizer / hidden kill switch. And for tracking: Buy a cheap smartphone, buy the cheapest 5g internet plan, add a tracker app to the phone, hide it under a panels with a permanent charger attached to it. The tracking should last until the car battery drains + 5~10days from the phone battery in standby mode. A alternative is hide a apple airtag on the car. Its not as precise as a smartphone with GPS but last ~1 year before you have to change the battery. You can also use both options for redundancy.

Glad your reviews are unbiased - you really put each product through its paces.

2G making all the birds illiterate 🤣🤣🤣. I love James

I love that the revelco solution is literally just to add another key

I love getting all of my car theft tips from Donut

I have an air tag I put in the frame of my truck (even if I told you good luck getting it out). I also have seen kill switches that are so funny like one guy installed on the bottom of a cup holder (he would also have a hydro in his car) so when he put the hydro in the cup holder it completed the circuit. I’ve seen other funny ones like they put a normally open button on glovebox latch…essentially you had to open the glovebox to start the vehicle but after starting you can close it. It's the really stupid ones like that that work. You can also do it through your ac controls, fog light switches, even wind shield wipers…just be creative with it. personally my truck is stick and the gas cap locks so im not too worried

A simple hidden switch in your car somewhere that turns off something important will work wonders.

2G dosent work anymore AT&T discontinued service on that network in 2017, while Verizon shuttered its 2G network around 2020. T-Mobile said earlier this year it would turn off its 2G GSM network on April 2, 2024.

You have the best theft deterrent walking around behind you. We kind need a spotlight of the dogs of Donut. It would be nice to be up to speed on the crew’s pet life!

That 70mai is a dashcam, and it's actually a pretty good one I've been using for 6 months. Not sure who sold it as a rear facing camera especially considering it has collision detection listed as one of the features where it saves the current video clip in an accident folder automatically

If you have a hot car, hidden kill switch is your friend. Especially if it's something like steering wheel button combinations. If you are going away for extended periods you should take your battery out, or pull an engine bay fuse.

The heavy duty clutch pedal lock is not primarily designed for theft. A 988 loader requires a semi truck to move. It’s designed to keep people from joy riding or messing with equipment. I’ve seen people do lots of damage by joy riding in a loader.

On the first lock you drilled, I would have turned the key way to the opposite side so you only see the back of the lock, the best of a cheap way his to put a cut out switch from the coil or diesel pump where mine was at the back of a ash tray Colin from England ❤

The ideal aftermarket car tracking device would be an Apple AirTag but which can be kept fully charged with wireless charging, then you just need any old cheap wireless charger wired in to the system to keep it working.

I used a club in one of my cars way back in the day but I used to mount it on the backside so the lock faced the gauges.

"stop all the downloading!" got me so good, what a reference ahahah

Disklok works on smaller vehicles where the arm hits the screen or dashboard. The lock spins if you try to drill it and you can't cut the steering wheel. Test it again on am appropriate vehicle!

8:57 the sound clips got me rollin 😂😂

One of the things I actually like about RU-vid car advertisements is that their short enough (and specifically in donuts case, well made and enjoyable enough) but long enough to actually go over the details of the cars rather than just throwing words up on a screen or having someone famous drive in it with no emotion. It’s such a boring concept, but to allow RU-vidrs to advertise their cars, they have creative people, who aren’t afraid to rip a car apart, attest to what they like most. I’m glad some companies are smart enough to work with creators; and they better be paying well lol

Totally right about the tracker, thing until you say ok I’ll handle it myself, then they start to freak out a little.

Thank you for giving me ideas on how to overcome those objects 🤩🤙🏽

One anti theft device that comes to mind comes from the made for TV movie The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood where Bo Duke uses a potato sack filled with rattlesnakes as anti-theft device. LOL. Another anti-theft device from the movies is the "Detroit Jock strap" from the 3rd Naked Gun movie and high voltage device from the 2nd Robocop movie called "Magnavolt".

The Lock Picking Lawyer also previously covered Equipment Lock Co's products. They can be good but you want one that comes with an actual keyed lock and not a combination lock as combo locks are much easier to bypass.

The cartel tried to take his truck for sure

Good thing it kept your stuff safe!

The Revelco key reminds me of a "key" I used to make for breaking into vending machines in the 90s, you basically just bent a few wires or bobby pins into the right shape, then twisted them all together on the back end to keep them in place.

8:57 LMAO

The GI JOE PSA quote at 8:59 is legendary. Edit: and again at 13:14 lol.

Really informative video for anyone concerned with vehicle security.

You both need to do more videos together 😂 I love this channel but I finally got to see this duo they probably have more together but this made my night

I've removed plug wires when parking my old Hondas- of course, then I have to try and remember how they route to drive off. However, my new product, Seat Lethal, combines a car alarm and lethality because who doesn't love a dead body in the car. Seat Lethal uses a CO2 cartridge that when triggered, sends a stainless spike upwards thru the seat, impaling the car thief. Mind you, now I don't want to drive my car over bumps....I'm still working on it :)

For me a quick release steering wheel, a hidden battery killswitch, immobilizer and a manual transmission all in one are the best theft deterrent.

I remember an early Top Gear episode where they referred to these devices as "crock locks."😂 I've been calling them that ever since.

I’ve got a buddy with that first dash cam! Works great as a regular old dash cam.

Back when I lived in a high car theft area of Arizona, I just installed a $3 toggle switch that cut out the connection between the ignition coil and the distributor. It stopped at least 2 attempted thefts of the vehicle. (I installed it in the first place because the car had been stolen twice before, then it was gifted to me)

When I was moving across the country with everything I own in one U-Haul, I just took a photo of the fuse box and removed every fuse. Temporary sabotage is the only way. My biggest fear by that point was a tow-away theft. You kind of need to chain the front and rear axel together, if not chain it to a solid object or ground anchor. Using Abus’ thickest chain and insurance lock.

James saying "I love you" always makes me smile

Look at that good boy following them around

Would be interested in seeing more high-tech stuff. That actual car people would use. Like the Cobb anti-theft mode that changes fuel maps on the car. Or a hidden kill switch wired to the fuel pump.

They used to sell a battery with a key fob to turn it on/off. Of course you lose any car alarm, plus all your radio presets, and whatever else the car needs. You’d need to put a different battery in to start/steal the car, assuming you knew it was a “trick” battery. Otherwise, a kill switch works well. Shout out to Cobb - back in 2004 their newly released AccessPort tuner had an anti-theft feature. You could park it with a real time map that allowed the car to start but it would die at over 1k rpm, so you couldn’t drive it. You could still tow it away. There was a bypass for that, but then Suby owners figured a defeat for the bypass - so you could essentially just lock out your ecu and you’d need to swap the ecu in order to start the car. Cobb also had a valet mode that limited rpm and boost. Just be sure to take the AccessPort with you when you park, and not hide it under the seat or in the trunk - you lazy lazy owners! Hahaha

I can't believe you didnt have Drone Mobile in this, the best gps tracker i've ever used. and still use, live updates, incar temp, remote locking abilities and more.

I had a friend once...yup, only once...with a Datsun 510 that kept getting stolen from his apartment parking garage. He taped razor blades under the dash as back in the 1980s, azoles car thieves were reaching under the dash to hotwire cars. He also put a sharp, pointed screwdriver facing up into the driver's seat cushion that he had to remember to take out every time he got in. One morning, the door was open and there was blood all over the seat and parkade floor. He got 'em. 2 weeks later at 3 in the morning the fire department was putting out a car fire in his parkade..

This was by far the best anti-theft or not video Donut has done! I would love to see other anti-theft specialists appear with their designs and whatever else you find and see who does the best!

Having a manual car with a quick release wheel and taking the steering wheel with you would honestly do a lot to prevent theft. Plus these are things that you already want for your car in the first place lol

9:00 that sound bite is wild and I’m sure it went over peoples heads 😅😂

The funny thing about the seatbelt lock is if you have any vehicle built from the 80s or 90s with exposed bolts seat belt anchors you could just take a wrench to it and unbolt the whole seat belt or something from the 60s or 70s where the seat belt buckle was a strap you could cut with a pair of scissors

I love how someone just happened to break into the producer’s car while they were making this video. 😭

If I was ever parked somewhere I was honestly worried about leaving my car overnight I would just take my fuel pump relay out and put it in my pocket lol

I’ve always added kill switches to my cars in hidden locations. On my truck I added one underneath the cupholders and upside down toward the back end.

I think, and could be wrong, that the disklok is supposed to be installed with the arm on it downward towards the seat so that it will come in contact with the theft while driving/turning and supposed to grip onto the wheel depending on the size of the wheel. Kind of like the same premise as the Club.

The Disklok works on many other vehicles with a lower roofline / windshield angle. Would love to see you guys redo this and try to bypass this instead of just discrediting it. I doubt you can get a drill to drill the lock at a good angle if the center console is in the way, nor cutting apart the steerlng wheel would be any easier.

The ECU keylogger killswitches for more modern cars are pretty neat. You set a combination of any of the buttons in your car that go through your ecu... so audio controls, windows, any headlights, wipers etc... and your car wont start unless you run that combination

I installed a JDi Industry Ghost key on my Hyundai Veloster to deal with the “easy theft” problem they have! They make that same product for Hondas as well, you guys should definitely try one of those out!

All need is car -stopper it is coded kill switch costs$100. Can get a series of buttons and then set your code sequence. Buttons can be anwhere and separate from Each other Free pull fuses to starter , fuel pump, take out battery

What i learned as a volunteer firefighter is that it is way faster to just cut the steering wheel with a sawzall or similar cutting tool right by the steering wheel hook on the club and force it through the cut than messing with anything like trying to drill out the lock etc..

Man made it, man can break it. No security device in infallible

The GI Joe PSA reference are great!

Love the content, you guys are great. Another consumer episode suggestion, sorry if you might have done this one, but how about comparing all of the grades of aftermarket LED light bulbs. You could stick to just low beams or you could go crazy and cover every light on a vehicle... Ey? What do you all think?

The 70mai dashcam is actually awesome! I have one. Not if your car gets stolen, but it is a really good value for a regular dashcam!

I get that steering wheel looks, especially on the budget friendly end, are not a full solution; but the added time and tools an opportunist might need can make all the difference. Last year my Kia was attempted on. The would be thieves smashed the darkly tinted window just to find The Club on the steering wheel. Upon seeing that I guess they didn’t have the skill, tools, or time to steal it. They rummaged through my glove box real quick and took off. When I reviewed the tapes from security, it was really just a group of teenagers, they didn’t have a Sawsall or power drill. It did suck to deal with the headache of having my window replaced, but my car survived.

Just bought a four pack of Air tags and magnetic cases for my vehicles. $75 for all for and works great

Used to take the main relay with me before installing a kill switch

One thing you can do that is absolutely free although it is mainly for older cars is disconnecting the battery and switching around at least two distributor cables

One of these days, Donut is just gunna post a full hotwiring tutorial 😂

4:17 this is cool, except instead of a key, it should be an RF thing-a-majiggour, just put the fob on your keychain and then tap to unlock. and if it needs power, you could plug it into the cigarette lighter or USB port. And use a solid core steel bar, 1/2 inch, and maybe the end telescopes a bit to adjust to your car. But the pipe would have to be like really thick too.

In my old truck the easy anti theft was simply taking the primary off the distributor. Not many car thieves take spark plug wires with them.

A small hidden switch is all it takes, as long as it's connected properly.

Just take the steering column with you when you leave that way no one can steal it

The "im a computer" line at 8:58 blew me away. Who references gi joe psa youtube poops in 2024?! So obscure and so awesome lmao.

2 Jeeps, both with Ravelcos, 4 years in San Diego, no issues, I recommend them to everyone.

That 70Mai M300 is the same dash cam I use! I've tried several that cost up to $100 but that one works the best, and has the clearest picture in the videos

18:36 kinda reminds me of resetting an oil light on a BMW Z3 , looks almost exactly the same 🤣

My dad had one of those revelco plugs in his B2200 truck in the 90s, but he almost never took it off unless we parked downtown.

just disconnect the battery or something like that idk (bonus: deflate your tire and fill it in with a pump when you get back)

If I had to look for anti theft solutions, I think I would go for a kill switch or a removable steering wheel

I really like that DIY fuel pump deactivation, instead of using the fuse box put in line.

the ravelco car immobilizer can be cracked with a paper click you can clear as day see there is only 2 actual contact pins just bend a paper clip or wire n insert into the two holes you see a metal sleeve in

Best anti theft in my experince: •Manual transmission with a J shift •Hidden kill switch.