Recommend someone to fit an immobiliser?

[Mario149]

I'm looking to get a Thatcham Cat 2 immobiliser fitted to my F355 before or shortly after I take delivery of it. Can anyone recommend someone to do this in the London area?

TIA

[The Milfman]

Can't recommend anyone in the London area but was just wondering why a CAT 2 and not a CAT 1?

[Mario149]

The Milfman said:

Can't recommend anyone in the London area but was just wondering why a CAT 2 and not a CAT 1?

Cat 1 is a full alarm system, which has 3 issues:

1) if someone's genuinely trying to steal your car, it makes no difference (same can be said of an immobiliser really) whether it squeals at them so I'd rather not install one and have it go noisily wrong
2) they are a constant drain on the battery
3) they cost about £150 more (okay, not really an issue when you're spending £35k on a car, but why spend money unnecessarily) and doesn't in fact reduce my insurance premium. Wierdly, if I delete the alarm/immobiliser option on my insurance, the cost goes down.... see here

[The Milfman]

All fair points but I would say think carefully regards insurance as this may be an issue in the future, I certainly found all the insurers I spoke to needed it to be CAT 1.

The standard Factory fit on 355s as I understand it is Cat 2 anyway (you can check this with Mike Lester (services) at Rardley).

When do you collect or have you already?

Edited for being special, Mike Wheeler is of course the sales guy.

Edited by The Milfman on Thursday 11th March 09:39

[Mario149]

The Milfman said:

All fair points but I would say think carefully regards insurance as this may be an issue in the future, I certainly found all the insurers I spoke to needed it to be CAT 1.

The standard Factory fit on 355s as I understand it is Cat 2 anyway (you can check this with Mike Wheeler (services) at Rardley).

When do you collect or have you already?

Am waaaay ahead of you, the system I'm going to have fitted can be upgraded to Cat 1 with an alarm Looks like my policy will be with Admiral and they (currently) don't require anything

I'm still waiting for Mike to get back to me with a day, car has to go to Ferrari for the fuel system recall and also squeezed into the Rardley workshop for an annual service and a couple of other things. The wait is killing me!

[jdw1234]

Whats wrong with the one that comes with the car as standard?

[tomtom]

Did early UK cars have immobilisers as standard? Mine seems to have been fitted by Ferrari UK rather than the factory.

[Mario149]

Immobiliser had been removed for some reason. I was thinking about getting the existing (if it had one) one upgraded anyway on the basis that technology that is 14 years old would be a bit obsolete now anyway

[neil-f]

tomtom said:

Did early UK cars have immobilisers as standard? Mine seems to have been fitted by Ferrari UK rather than the factory.

The early F355s had the immobilisers fitted by Ferrari UK as the system fitted by factory was not Thatcham approved at the time.

[AREA]

I bought my car off Mike Wheeler last year. He used WTCR (www.wtcr.co.uk) to install the immobiliser. Did a very neat job.