Went down to my car yesterday to run some errands, and the tank was on empty…and it had been 3/4 full just the day before! Looks like some lowlife’s been helping himself to my gas…grrrr!
I’m now out $35 for a locking gas cap, as well as the $45-$50 dollars that gas represented. Makes me want to bite something!
Redwolf
Yikes, Red. Given the price of gas, the locking cap sounds like a good investment.
A few years back, a local fellow was out camping with his truck and camper in the forest when he awoke in the night. There was some kind of noise outside. Yep, someone was hanging around outside his camper, so he quickly dressed, but as he opened the door to go outside he heard someone running away. Silence. It was too dark to mount a chase through the woods, so after checking his campsite to ensure everything was secure, he went to back to bed.
In the morning, he curiously poked around and found nothing amiss other than one tiny problem; someone had removed his gas cap from the truck and left it on the ground. When he headed into the woods to see where the intruder had been headed, he stumbled across a massive pile of vomit.
It seems that the crook didn’t realize that this truck had TWO gas tanks, and one had been converted into a holding tank for the camper’s portable toilet. The gas thief had picked the wrong tank. 
Jef
Videotape the scum… then have them arrested.
I was talking to the lady at the automotive store where I bought the gas cap, and she said there’s been a rash of gas thefts here lately. Some of the thieves have gone so far as to cut the fuel hoses when they couldn’t get into the gas tank via the cap! I hope that doesn’t happen to my car.
I don’t have a videocamera, and have no choice but to park on the street, so videotaping isn’t likely to be an option. I guess I should call the cops and see if they can patrol the neighborhood a bit more, but I can’t think of what else to do.
Redwolf
I went to the auto parts store recently to buy a locking gas cap for my car. When I told the sales clerk what I wanted, he gave me a big grin. “No locking caps,” he said. “We’re all sold out.” That is what happens when everyone gets the same idea at the same time.
Apparantly, there’ve been a large number of drive-offs at gas stations, too.
The gas station I visted the other day was just getting their pumps changed
so you have to pay inside. And I had really grown to love pay-at-the-pump.
Wait . . . are you telling me that the gas cap on my car, which is protected by a door that can only be opened from inside the car, is not secure?
I need to go get a locking gas cap, too?
If you have to open it from inside the car (and if you lock your car), it’s probably as secure as a locking gas cap. My Sable doesn’t have the kind of fuel door that can only be opened from inside the car.
However, if what the gal at the auto parts store was telling me is true, you still have to worry about people slashing your fuel hose and getting at the gas that way.
Redwolf
Gawd, why would anyone bother to steal petrol in the US when it’s so cheap there! We’ve been paying about £4.50 a gallon here recently. What’s that…about $8 a gallon? Over here, you steal a car with a full tank then just keep the petrol and throw the car away! 
Steve
Mind you, my little diesel car does 60 to the gallon and my wife’s Honda Jazz does 45…American cars look so big…
That’s because they are.
You have dainty, curvy, little streets with polite drivers. Very English. (Don’t deny it! I see them in movies all the time.)
We have huge raceways with cell-phone-obsessed road-ragers.
Which would you choose . . . complete invisibility and certain death in a matchbox or . . . some degree of vehicular presence, i.e., “land barge,” offering a faint chance of survival.
I believe the reason car companies started putting the little door over the
gas cap was in response to gas theives. I hear locking gas caps became
really popular during the gas scare of the 70’s.
Most of us have little choice but to drive everywhere…so gas hikes really, really hurt. I go through a tank of gas a week (and this in the little Toyota Tercel, which is a real sipper) just getting my daughter back and forth to school (and no…before you ask…there are no other transport options). It’s just the way things are here…it’s a driving-based culture.
Lambchop’s right about the safety issue too. I drive the Tercel around town, but if I have to go on the freeway, I want the metal in the Sable around me, because the car coming up on my arse is likely to be a giant SUV driven by a maniac soccer mom with a cell phone in one hand and a Big Mac in the other.
Redwolf
Red, I’d suggest a bluff - on a window near the gas tank, put a little sign that says “this car is being videorecorded for security. Gas thieves and vandals will be prosecuted.”
Might at least make them move on to the next area…
Redwolf, for the price of a couple of tanks of gas you can buy a security camera and a monitor (which you can hook to a VCR to record). My brother has installed some that even work at night, in the country, with almost no external light source. Now he’s starting on microphones to go with the cameras … we don’t cuss in the back yard - little brother is listening. :roll:
BUT … nobody tries to steal anything around here.
Judy
There have been features on the news here about siphoning and cars driving away from gas stations. One car dealer had his cars siphoned. Imagine having to fill up a lot full of used cars with gas at about $1 a litre. I’m not sure how having to pay inside helps. You can still just get in your car and drive off. Getting someone to hang around outside and take down licence plate numbers might help.
Some people have lights on their porches which go on as you approach the house. You could get one that goes on when someone approaches your car. I’m not sure it would scare anyone off. It would be better to hook up the triggering device to something that would make a loud siren noise.
Ah, but you see, the problem with most actual security measures (such as real surveillance cameras, motion-operated lights, etc.) is I park on the street. Most of us do around here…few of the homes have off-street parking available, and those that do can usually only accommodate one car. I can’t legally install anything down there, nor would I have a place where I could mount something if I wanted to (and if I were to mount a video camera, it would probably be stolen by the same people who are stealing the gas!). Also, here in the mountains, motion-sensitive lights end up simply being an annoyance to the neighbors, as they come on whenever a deer, raccoon or skunk wanders by.
I like Avanutria’s idea of a sticker. If the problem persists, despite the locking gas cap, I may invest in an inexpensive car alarm as well, much as I hate them.
Redwolf
What’s worse is you can’t do anything to protect your property. Meaning you can’t set booby traps or anything. You’d get sued. Take the instance above. I’m surprised the would-be gas stealer didn’t sue the camper because he didn’t label his tank a sewage.
Redwolf–have one of our resident whistlesmiths make you a triple low D whistle. Should be about 10 feet long and 10" in diameter.
Anyway, hide yourself in the shrubs and when the miscreant comes along, leap out, brandish your whistle, and give him a whistle lesson he’ll not soon forget! 
Brewster
Years ago when I worked for the Parks Department, if we had a long day of grass-cutting ahead we’d take a spare gallon can of petrol for the mower which we’d hide in a bush somewhere. Once, we had a spate of thefts of the spare petrol. One day we planted a can of diesel instead of petrol, which was duly stolen. We never had the problem again after that!
Steve
Reminds me of something my husband did at work.
They were having a spate of food thefts from the communal kitchen. Someone would go to get his lunch and it would be gone. After this happened to Tony (twice!) he started lacing his meals with liberal amounts of habanero pepper, which he loves, but which will send most sane people running screaming for the water cooler. One day he went in to find a single bite of his lunch gone, and the rest sitting on the table. He never named names to me, but I guess a particular co-worker took the rest of the day off, and after that, no one’s lunch went missing again!
The pepper was kind, actually. I had suggested Ex-lax laced brownies 
Redwolf