FJ60 Security Hood Lock (1 Viewer)

[emanning]

After a break in and theft of my FJ60, I decided to take its security a little more seriously (apparently all the rust wasn't cutting it).

Here's an option for a keyed hood lock on an FJ60 (1985 shown below). When locked, this prevents the factory hood release handle from opening the hood. There's also an option to integrate a kill switch on your system of choice, which I plan to do but haven't gotten to yet.

The base of the system is this "Hornet 567T" cable hood lock, 7ft long. I found mine on ebay.

There's an example of how this type of lock is designed to work and be installed here:


I didn't want to install the bracket they provided on the hood itself, so I decided to use the pin to block the factory cable from operating the mechanism that releases the hood. That required drilling a hole in the hood latch assembly.

The pic below shows the locking pin through the newly drilled hole. The latch is shown in the "hood closed" position. The red arrow shows where the factory hood release cable attaches and direction of pull when opening the hood. With the pin in the "locked" position, the factory hood release can't rotate the arm in order to release the hood. (The rubber band is there for testing rather than the stronger factory spring.)

I fabricated (roughly) a couple of brackets out of 1/8" x 1" aluminum angle to help guide the pin and hold the cable end. Here's everything mounted under the hood:

Note the bracket on the right requires a new hole in the radiator support piece. Pin is shown in the locked position.

 

[emanning]

The spring for the safety latch had to be relocated:

The lock itself will mount right next to the factory hood release. I only have one bolt in there now and need to work on a bracket for the other since the factory mounting points there are narrower than the lock's mounting holes.

 

[emanning]

If there's interest in more pictures or detail, let me know and I'd be happy to share. More to come on the lock mounting under the dash and possibly the kill switch.

Hold on to your FJ60s everyone.

 

[adamsfly]

Great write up! Your timing is impeccable. I just installed a kill switch and thought if I could have a way to lock the hood I would feel like the truck is more secure from theft short of putting it on a flatbed.

 

[emanning]

Agreed, short of winching it onto a trailer the goal is to make it as hard as possible to drive away with it. And now that the hood is lockable, installing a GPS tracker under the hood is also more feasible and harder to tamper with.

 

[OSS]

I had an ignition anti-theft device built into an ignition thingy I got for my cruiser 30 years ago. It was made by Jacobs Performance (who is out of business now).
The way it worked was with a time delay ignition cutoff. A thief could start the engine by picking the lock or hot wiring or whatever normally, but unless the hidden disable switch was flipped AFTER the engine was started, the module would kill the ignition in 30 seconds. If the starter was cranked again within 30 seconds after cutoff (which a panicked thief would surely do) the ignition would be disabled for 1 minute. And each time the starter was cranked, the wait time increased exponentially.

The idea behind the 30 second delay before cutoff is to let the thief move the vehicle a short distance - then have the engine cut off and leave him stranded and obvious while stalled in the street.

That thing worked exactly as intended. 25 years ago someone tried to steal my cruiser - but he only got 1/2 the way out of the parking stall before the ignition kill cutoff - and he bailed out in panic (I assume ). I found my cruiser the next day sitting out of place in the parking stall and it suddenly dawned on me that my anti-theft device SAVED MY CRUISER

 

[emanning]

Here's the final mounting of the lock itself under the dashboard. The adapter is just a .5"x1"x2.75" block of aluminum with three holes drilled to match the hole spacing of the factory holes on the dash and the lock's mounting holes.