For those of you who don't have an alarm system fitted to your vehicles? stop! and think how much equipment you have on board and what you would do if your vehicle was stolen, what would you do if any of your equipment was stolen? would you be out of work/business, if you can't afford to replace it?
I like many of you have worked hard to buy my equipment, I have also worked hard to upgrade my Trailer into a very nice portable secure wfp System that some of you may have seen in recent posts, well I'm dam sure I don't want some toe rag to come along and steel all my hard work and investment.
When I built my trailer, I sat down and thought how apart from chains, wheel and hitch clamps can I protect it?
Then I hit on the idea of fitting a car alarm to it, so I sat down to design a system that would be activated by anyone who tried to lift or move it, so I designed it around a mercury switch and connecting the alarm to my indicators just like a car or van.
I paid a visit to Halfords to check out there car alarms and read up on the specifications, I even opened the box's to read the technical data supplied
I must admit I was very disappointed with the data supplied and also the alarm system its self.
For what I wanted I would have to have spent out for the top of there range system, I knew I could find better, so I continued to shop around.
I paid a visit to Maplins and did the same there, opening all the box's and reading the data sheets and getting funny looks from the staff, but I must admit I like playing games with the staff, I was a security engineer for 15 years and I know my alarms, I like to ask the staff questions I know the answers to, and listen to all the errors they come out with, and the best part of it is putting them right, and its all done in fun I may add.
BINGO! I found a system that suited my needs and it had a programmable shock sensor, 2 remote key fobs, were Halfords only had 1
you can programme the siren for 5 different sirens or a multi-tone to identify if it was my car or trailer that was being tampered with, and to top it all, it has its own battery back up, complete with an override key switch.
If you were to fit this sytem to a car/van it has a built in engine immobiliser as well.
For those of you who leave your van doors open, you could programme the systems shock sensor to activate if someone was to jump in the back of your van when you were away from it, or you could programme it to give the built in warning signal if you were to jump in and had forgotten to deactivate it, if you ignore the warning and continue to move around in the van, the alarm would activate.
Because I have a trailer system, I have to wire mine to a seperate battery and I use a wheel chair one that lasts for weeks on end, fitted to a car/van it would be wired to your vehicle electrics and no need to worry about your battery.
I now activate my alarm and the indicators flash, if the alarm is activated the alarm sounds and the indicators flash, just like any car/van alarm and I never needed my mecury switch.
The Shark system is available from Maplins at £39.99 down from £49.99
The Maplin system is 100% better than the Halfords one and all for the same price, it is a four wire installation that any novice can install, but if anyone gets one and needs any help you can email me and I will give you all the help I can.