Camera, Motion Detector, or Car Alarm Input

[Deputy Dan]

This post has something for everybody: guns, a truck, game cameras, and dirty rotten scoundrels. Only thing it's missing is Mil vs MOA but the thread is still young.

Short story first - got in my truck Saturday morning about 10:30 and drove 20 or so miles to my son's house. Mostly highway. Spent about an hour trying to set up my chronometer before abandoning the project for the day (mostly due to the heat of the day!) and heading home. About 4 miles down the road, at about 70 mph, I feel what I thought was a flat. I took my foot off the gas, pulled over to the side of the road, and actually made an easy right turn onto a side street. As I turned, the back end dropped and my passenger-side rear wheel rolled past my truck, across the street, and into the weeds.

My regular mechanic who worked on it says there is NO damage to the wheel or tire. All the lugs were sheared off and there was some damage done to the brake drum and components mostly due to dragging it on the road and up onto the deck of the tow truck. Mechanic says it's all consistent with someone having removed the lug nuts, because there's no evidence of wheel shimmy or wobble. Nobody - that I know of - has touched the lug nuts in about 6 months. I confess I don't (well, haven't until now!) walk around the truck checking the lug nuts on a regular basis - and haven't noticed any missing when I occasionally glance at the tires looking for low tire pressure. It's a 2001 truck - and doesn't itself (yet?) have an alarm. I can't imagine anybody trying to steal a wheel, let alone just the lug nuts. But, here we are.

I'm in a pretty low-key subdivision but there's a fair amount of traffic on my street. The truck has been parked at the end of my driveway, near the street. The neighbor across the street has a motion activated flood-light that goes off if I step outside my front door, but where the truck has been parked the passenger side is hidden from the floodlight and generally from view. His light goes on any time a car passes between our houses. But I can see how it would be possible for someone to approach the passenger side of my truck without setting off the neighbor's light. I don't think he has cameras or records anything, but I'm going to check anyway.

I'm thinking about putting some sort of camera(s) up to keep an eye on the driveway. Problem is if I mount one on the house and aim it at the street it will take pics any time a car goes by. I'm also concerned that the neighbor's light will mess with any night vision/IR camera or sensor. I can mount a camera perpendicular to the truck, but it will still likely pick up passing traffic, and again will have the neighbor's light. Only other possibility is on the mailbox post, aiming it back towards my house, but that puts the camera itself in an ideal spot to be noticed - and stolen.

About the only other thing I can think of would be some sort of "jiggle" alarm in/on the truck itself so if someone moves it significantly an alarm will sound. I suppose that's what a car alarm does . . .

All in all - relevant to this forum because, among other things, my response to any active alarm is likely to include carrying - if not brandishing - some sort of firearm. And my wife accuses me of acting like a mama bear when it comes protecting my truck.

Thoughts??

 

[Maggot]

I had that happen to both passenger side rear wheels, on a one ton dump truck, full of sand and portland cement, at about 60 mph on a busy highway. I kept it out of the ditch but it was, to say the least, an interesting experience.

 

[Jareth Cutestory]

The lugs/studs shearing off are either from being way too tight or loose.

under torqued: which would have caused vibrations and thumping prior to failing, as well as destroying the rims bolt holes

over torqued: will eventually just pop off, and can cause a cascading failure of the rest if all equally over torqued.

Highly doubt someone did that at your house. Do you go around pissing people off or live in a bad area?

If not, tell your tire guy to lay off the ugga duggas. replace all the studs/lugnuts (costly but will last you another 20 years.)

 

[Deputy Dan]

Not a bad neighborhood and haven't pissed anybody off (unintentionally) that I know of.

No damage at all to rim bolt holes, so under torque isn't the likely problem. "MIGHT" have been over torqued, but I'm pretty sure I'm the last one to work with the tires (several months ago) and no air tool was used. I'm capable of only one ugga dugga any more - been fifty five years since I could go to three with a cross-bar tire iron. I tell ya - youth is wasted on young people!

Last time the shop had the tires off they torqued at least one nut down so tight I couldn't loosen it. Took it back to them and they had to really work on it to free it up so I could then rotate the tires. I can't recall if it was the same wheel or not. I'm not an engineer so can only wonder if the prior stress could have caused a cascading failure months later under normal torque. My engineering education ended at A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown and the most I can recall from that article is that gravity is a bitch.


Update - the guy across the street checked his camera and there was something that set off his motion detectors in the early hours one morning last week that might have been somebody/something at/near my truck. Inconclusive, but worrying.

I may invest in new lugs/nuts on the remaining three wheels though - just to be safe. And maybe a game camera (good excuse to get one without the wife insisting it come out of the gun budget!).

 

[kenny1773]

I had a problem like that for years. Literally the lug nuts on one of my cars were loosened 12 times in a couple year period. We always managed to catch it before the wheel came off. It became a regular thing for us to check the lug nuts before driving. I would literally torque wrench click all the nuts on that vehicle every morning when I woke up.

It was either someone my wife pissed off while driving that car - YES there was a specific incident someone followed her home and she was dumb enough to drive home, and the problem started a few days later
or
It was my daughters insane exboyfriend that we had to call the cops on a few times
or
it was a combination of both (exboyfriend knew the lug nut story and may have taken over the task to drive us nuts)

I had 2 cameras, never caught anyone on them (they were 2060p with optical zoom and motion sense record to a 2TB hard drive) The cameras could easily pick up my 30 lb dog

I set tripwire explosive devices in the weeds / bushes from the back side of the house that led up to the driveway, one of these was tripped one night and after that we never had another problem.

I never could find or catch who was doing it, my cameras were not hidden, it was possible to come up from the side rear of my property and avoid the cameras, that is why I put some boom traps in that path and concluded that it was most likely the exboyfriend that kept doing it. He would have gone through the extra effort

I tried to use some wireless motion sensors around the van to alert me to any movement, but fucking damn animals kept setting it off at 3am That was my best idea, but fucking animals


unless it happens again, I wouldn't worry about it. Put a wrench on the lugs before you drive, I got it down to only checking 2 per wheel so went fast. When they were loose, they were all loose.