Vehicle Tracking System

[satmarshall]

Has anyone installed a vehicle tracking system into the R8?
Looking for suggestions and whether anyone has had problems with them draining the battery.
Thanks!

[R8 England]

not sure where you are located, but in UK most insurers insist on Cobra, Navtrack, Trakker etc etc.

These systems have a very low standy current (typically 10 mA - 30 mA) and so no problems with excessive battery drain, if everything is properly fitted.

[R84ME]

Here's a thread with a couple references.

Trackers - what choices are out their?

[richcliffe]

Cobra Trak on my R8, and no problems at all. Don't think it's a good idea to be without one, for insurance and real world purposes.

[smoothy]

I've had a Boomerang (Canadian subsidiary of LoJack) in my Saleen for almost 3 years, no problems with battery drain, even when stored over the winter. When my R8 arrives in late January, I'm having one installed before the car leaves the dealership.

[MikeB]

Its effect on insurance cost is staggering. Once fitted I was quoted at £665.00 sterling for fully comp with an excess of £550 and 5 years no claims. Got to be worth it.

[Teutonic_Tamer]

not sure where you are located, but in UK most insurers insist on Cobra, Navtrack, Trakker etc etc.

Just a word of caution for those in the UK. Whilst UK insurers may actually list tracking devices from a variety of manufacturers, all the UK police forces are only equiped to work with live data from Tracker, and there is also a reciprocal agreement to work with most police forces in the major western European countries. Furthermore, Tracker monitoring equipment is installed at most UK ports.

Cobra and Navtrack certainly don't have any of the above.

[R8 England]

With great respect Teutonic Tamer, I disagree!!!

Tracker requires that the police cars are fitted with a Tracker receiver. This is supplied to the police by Tracker (4 aerials in a small array on the roof), and receives direct radio signals at relatively short range from the target vehicle, identifying position by triangulation only (no co-ordinates)

Only a small percentage of police cars have Tracker receivers fitted, so you need to be lucky to have one in the area at the time.

Cobra/Navtrack, and indeed the new Tracker "Horizon", use GPS. This broadcasts the GPS position by using SMS messages to the Cobra/Navtrack/Tacker control centre who have a massive realtime map of position, direction & speed. This is relayed, live, to the police (in UK or overseas) allowing any police car to pursue.

The advantages is that:

(1) any police car can respond (Tracker: has to be a Tracker equipped police car)

(2) works OUTSIDE UK as well as in UK (Tracker only works in UK) as the SIM card allows roaming.

And, yes, it works. I was car-jacked in 2001 and lost my brand new RS4 at a hotel near Heathrow airport. Within 45 minutes, thanks to Navtrack, my car was on a police transporter, being tracked to a lock-up garage in Slough.

Navtrack (now bought by Cobra), have also tracked and recovered many cars, stolen in UK, in western Europe.

A friend of mine had his car stolen a few years ago, also fitted with Navtrack, and the car was quickly recovered. Not only that, the GPS logs were used to convict the gang, who were all given long sentences for theft and robbery.

So, yes it works, and that's personal experience !!!

Other advantages is that the latest systems have the facility [althought not yet approved for use] to allow Cobra/Navtrack etc, on police instruction, to send messages to the unit, via coded sms, to shut down the engine.