Stainless pipes? What kind of vehicles were they selling?

 

Well, I dont remember but I might have assumed wrong that most new cars have stainless exhaust systems.

 

They will waste their time under my truck, straight 4" no cat/no muffler!

 

Onadise exhaust pipes.I have a set from a 79 ford 1/2 ton. They just don't rust. They last up to 5 years or more on a vehicle. They are also expensive to have installed. Its like having galvanised metal exhaust. Kinda hard to weld without fumes.
Besides those Cats are expensive enough to replace.
So these thefts seem to be happening all over in pockets. I remember when people had aluminum siding on their homes and people were stealing the sidning of homes for scarp.

 

They just caught a group of cat thieves in Chicago last week. They had one guy that would roll under cars with a battery sawzall and hack it off while two more would sit in a lookout van and roll down the street.

It's certainly a more common problem than most people think.

 

One way to recover the precious metals is acids. As far as scrap copper goes, my favorite out of Detroit made the paper. Two knuckleheads. One chainsaws the power pole down while the other collects the wiring. One (or both I can't remember) ends up riding the lightning. Crispy critters. Evolution is a wonderful thing.

 

There was story in the news here about some jackasses trying to steal copper wire out of a building that was set to be knocked down. They forget to make sure the power was off before cutting in, crispy critters like Lectrocuted said.

I know my local scrap metal yard wasn't accepting copper wire for the longest time, most likely a law suite on their end if they're caught buying stolen wire.

I'm not to worried about the cat thieves, 3 trucks and 2 cars at my house with zero cats.

 

Nature is weeding out the stupid for sure.

 

It is almost tempting to wire something into the security system on my Explorer to keep people from messing with them simply because I don't want to deal with the hassle of them being taken.

 

I wish there was a way we could rig up a 12volt to 120volt inverter to apply a "slight correction" to a would be thief.

 

I was just talking with a good friend about this someone stole two 100' welding lead sets from him since christmas right off his work truck that was parked in his driveway so now he is setting up security cameras and a sensor that hooks to his doorbell and will let him know if someone is on his property.

 

Copper wire stealing from construction sites has also gone rampant up here. Theives would steal the 300 lb spools of wire take them out to a feild burn thespool to get the plastic off and them take the wire in.
Because it was getting so bad the scrap yards start not taking any copper wire that looked like it was burned from a fire.

 

Metal theft is going nuts in the Cleveland area.
In Lorain, someone stole a set of new aluminum bleachers from school field about a year ago.
The converter thieves are hitting dealers every night and are starting on vehicles right in driveways.
A local electrical contractor had a spool of wire stolen and the thieves didn't even set foot on the property. The crooks reached through the fence, grabbed the loose end and pulled.
No empty building is safe, they ALL get hit it seems.
I HATE a thief! I'm starting to think that guy in Texas had the right idea.

3 lowlifes were busted recently when they tried to turn in about 1000 feet of wire for scrap. The wire was for traffic signals and was somehow marked under the outer insulation. It was stolen from a local road project. Now you know why you see those spools of wire sitting at intersections and it doesn't get swiped.

On our railroad, about 2 years ago, someone stole a mile of rail from an unused part of the line. It wasn't a scrap job, but friggin thieves none the less. Loose tie plates, spikes, joint bars and such are always disappearing. You name it, we've had it stolen. Just 3 weeks ago, somebody swiped the 5 chime Nathan horns from our locomotive. Other railroads have had signal cabling pulled out of the ground and even had locomotive traction cabling cut out.

 

Scrapyard prices for steel, iron and non ferrous metals have gone way up over the last four years. Copper prices are well over $2 a pound where it used to be only a few cents before. So no wonder the thieves are doing this.

We use alot of brass and nickel silver sheet in our work. So have seen quite abit of increase when buying any new. Especially with nickel silver as I can only buy this in 12" widths in 16 gauge. I buy it in 36" lengths from a wholesaler who offers a price break if you buy in higher poundages. But it's still quite expensive compared to what it used to be.

As for railroad thefts, I have heard other places being hit....and not just in the US.