Here’s an interesting little story for you. A bit over a month ago, I walked to my car early one morning prior to my 45 minute commute (hate it). Before I got in, I noticed something was… off. I couldn’t quite figure it out, so I got in, and drove away.
Four inches later, I felt something very wrong with the wheel. I thought, perhaps there was something under the car, causing a drag or something. So I got out, looked around. Didn’t see anything, got back in, and drove off.
Five inches later, I knew something was very wrong. I looked closely at a wheel and noticed the lug nuts were loose. A second later I realized the hubcaps were missing! I recall thinking, “what is this, Detroit circa 1974???” When I went to the trunk, I couldn’t find the jack kit, but I thought maybe we had accidentally moved it into the apartment. Luckily another Civic driver pulled up a few cars away, and he let me borrow his to tighten the lug nuts.
I decided at first not to bother with insurance, figuring new hubcaps would just get stolen again.
About a week ago, my wife took the car in to get the tires rotated. When I took the car in the evening, I noticed a massive pull to the right. I asked my wife about it, she thought it needed to be ‘broke in’ a little bit (much like her shoes), but I assumed the rotation had messed up the alignment.
Earlier this week we dropped the car off for a wheel alignment, but the dealer informed us immediately that it was not an alignment problem. The problem was the fact that the wheels were not the ones that come with the car!
The fact that thieves stole my tires is somewhat surprising, as I live in a decent residential part of San Francisco.
The fact that thieves stole my tires and left other tires in their place, not to mention the lug nuts, is just plain weird in my book. Looks like I got hit by the most polite thieves around…
p>
Wow, that is crazy! (And crappy and inconvenient.)
I wonder why the left replacement tires? Maybe they’re easier to get ahold of than cinder blocks – you probably need something to keep the car propped up while pulling the other tires off? Or maybe by leaving replacements, it would take longer to be noticed or if they were caught in the act they could play it off as a good samaritan thing?
Are all four times the same? It looks like the treads are in decent shape in one of your pics. Maybe they were involved in some illicit activity and they didn’t want these tires traced back to them. Though maybe I’ve read too much fiction.
San Francisco seems a little scary… at least for Civic owners. Hmmm. 😉
That IS janky…
I’ve been thinking some more about this… Jeremy is it possible you did not have hubcaps at all? If you had alloy wheels of some sort they may be worth something (mine have special lugnuts to theoretically prevent theft), regular wheels I’m not so sure. Especially since it looks like they left you a decent set of tires. Though I can’t really tell what sort of whels those are – maybe it’s worthwhile even for regular Civic wheels if they’ve given you cheapie, bent ones?
Does this thing always look this ghetto?
But seriously, thieves could have come in with a small floor jack, popped up the front or side, yanked the wheels, put on the replacements and been away in about five minutes.
When I lived in Germany and worked for a car company, there was a rash of thefts of ENGINES from the S600’s. Granted, the V12 engine in that car was worth 75,000$, so its theft was not surprising. they finally caught the guys on video?
Know how much time it took to get the engine out of the car on the street?
SIX MINUTES!
Pulled up with a van, rear to nose of the S-class. opened the doors and out popped a telescoping crane. By that time, a guy had jumped out with pneumatic drills, wire cutters and steel cutters and hacked everything clean. Chains were tied around the engine, then to the telescoping crane and everything was shoved back into the van and they were off!
It was, AMAZING!
tivoboy: Did they leave a replacement engine? 😉
I forgot to mention at my former condo, two cars had their windows smashed and the air bags removed! Also in a decent, quiet neighborhood. I actually saw a suspicous vehicle (very dark tint, backed into a spot in a corner of the lot and it didn’t belong to my neighbors – only 16 units in my building/lot) lingering that day and let the police know when they came by asking, but without tag info my observation was pretty useless. In the four years I lived there, that was the only incident. So either they only needed a few airbags or they smartly rotate their target locations.
Haha – no my car doesn’t usually look quite that ghetto.
The wheels should look radically different than what you see… i’m sure if you check flickr you’ll find some nutty honda civic enthusiast. 🙂
No, in the case of the Mercedes thefts, there was no replacement,
but that does remind me of a friend in NYC who parked his V12 Jaguar in a garage. Came back from a month abroad and drove his car away.
When he woke up the next morning, finally awake and drove the car down the street he said it was running a bit rough. So, he pulled into the station and popped the hood and what did he find.
A V-8 from a Jeep Cherokee in the place of the V12 Jaguar breed.!
they had fulled excchanged engines on him.
Hey man I told you i’ll give em back when i’m done with em. I needed something fancy for my juggling act.