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by to11mtm 546 days ago
TBH your response makes me realize there's possibly a decent use case for bicycles with the right diameter tubing.

> You can try a less reputable mechanic, but they're gonna be pissed when the cops come knocking asking about the stolen car sitting over there and you might not be going back there any time soon. So if you can't find and remove the air tag relatively quickly, what options do you have left? Probably makes more sense to abandon the vehicle and try another one with a lower risk of winding up in jail.

Depends on the skill of the chop-shop or it's folks and where you are.

A fun thought experience would be how much suspicion a flatbed tow truck with some form of faraday cage around the car, below a cover would get from LE.

Agree with your general 'deterrent' concept, I think the main challenge a lot of folks run into is getting lazy with placement. Glove/console boxes, the 'pockets' on the back of front seats, are all stupid easy. Technically anything in the interior, probably can be 'found' with sufficient detection capability.

No, you put that thing somewhere weird and ideally a PITA to get at.

This honestly gives me the idea of finding the right spot in my WRX front headlights to make it not visible; If the spot I'm thinking of will work, they'd literally have to pull off the front bumper to even get at it...

2 comments

Not sure what year your WRX is but my my suggestion would be "cup holders". And I don't mean "leave it in a cup holder"--pop the boot off the hand brake and there's like one screw and some clips to remove the cup holders from the center console and then an absolute _ton_ of space underneath. Even if someone _was_ looking there, there's room to hide it (hell, it's carpeted so a discreet hole in the carpet could hide it well).

If you put it towards the back near the center console storage, even with a phone someone's going to be checking the cup holders, the center console storage, down beside the seats, the seat back pockets, under the seats, _in the seats_, etc first. Then rechecking them. Then checking them again. Like you say, those would all be "normal" places to put it or drop it.

But you'll be able to pull it out and replace the battery or something in like 20 minutes when you had to do it once a year with nothing but a phillips screwdriver.

Alternatively, if you don't mind listening to it rattle around sometimes, from what I hear from people who have dropped rings and things into the under seat vents... you basically need to remove the entire interior to get in there. I'd get the 10 year battery first though.

There's a bunch of bicycle accessories available specifically for hiding Airtags on bicycles. Under the bottle cage and under the saddle are two popular options.
> under the saddle

Bruh depending on where you live that means you get to track the saddle on a bike with no seat.