Nothing is easy! Even the easy stuff is hard.
Upon discovering a Wrangler with electric door locks could be easily defeated by raising the unsecured hood and using a couple of 9 volt batteries to unlock the doors, and because all that stuff under the hood is susceptible to thievery, I wanted something to at least make it harder.
After reading a bunch of reviews, I decided the Mopar hood lock was the way to go, strongly influenced by the fact it uses the existing ignition key.
Then, I find out I need a special pop riveter to handle the 1/4" rivets. Then I realize to use the riveter on the two lower holes, the grill has to come off. Normally that wouldn't be too much of an issue but to get my grill off, it looks like I'll have to remove the winch and mounting plate - uuuugh.
Well I then read that this lock is easily defeated by moving the hood safety catch with an ice pick, coat hanger, etc. A coat hanger properly bent could probably defeat the lock faster than you could open the hood with a key.
So, I put in a 'blocker' as several have done and tested it - that fixed that problem.
I mounted the lock with just the two top rivets; I'll probably dismount the winch and plate next weekend and install the lower two rivets.
Well, I'm almost there and I do have some pretty good protection against raising the hood unimpeded. It might not stop a determined thief, but it will the causal opportunist. It's a whole lot better than nothing.
Now to install lug nut locks and then an anti-theft to harden the winch mount, then some way to lock the winch lever in place to make it more difficult to steel the syn rope.
Thieves are a lot of trouble.
Upon discovering a Wrangler with electric door locks could be easily defeated by raising the unsecured hood and using a couple of 9 volt batteries to unlock the doors, and because all that stuff under the hood is susceptible to thievery, I wanted something to at least make it harder.
After reading a bunch of reviews, I decided the Mopar hood lock was the way to go, strongly influenced by the fact it uses the existing ignition key.
Then, I find out I need a special pop riveter to handle the 1/4" rivets. Then I realize to use the riveter on the two lower holes, the grill has to come off. Normally that wouldn't be too much of an issue but to get my grill off, it looks like I'll have to remove the winch and mounting plate - uuuugh.
Well I then read that this lock is easily defeated by moving the hood safety catch with an ice pick, coat hanger, etc. A coat hanger properly bent could probably defeat the lock faster than you could open the hood with a key.
So, I put in a 'blocker' as several have done and tested it - that fixed that problem.
I mounted the lock with just the two top rivets; I'll probably dismount the winch and plate next weekend and install the lower two rivets.
Well, I'm almost there and I do have some pretty good protection against raising the hood unimpeded. It might not stop a determined thief, but it will the causal opportunist. It's a whole lot better than nothing.
Now to install lug nut locks and then an anti-theft to harden the winch mount, then some way to lock the winch lever in place to make it more difficult to steel the syn rope.
Thieves are a lot of trouble.