what a drag, your car got booted
81 thoughts on “Hacking A Car Boot”
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what a drag, your car got booted
Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)
Why did no one think of Thermite? It’s the most obvious solution. Place a little on the most distal part of the boot from the car, light with a magnesium strip, and watch (with welder’s goggles) as it melts the boot and some of the pavement under it.
deflate the tire and the boot will slip off, then you get to keep your tire. : )
I’m going to look into that anti-theft shocking device. Or perhaps I’ll just keep driving my Delorian at 88 mph….
Umm, as to the liquid nitrogen scenario suggested above… it wouldn’t work. I work with LN2 and it doesn’t make metal NEARLY as weak as people would like to think. I’ve done several tests personally with it. So to all the people out there that have seen terminator 2 a few too many times… forget it. Best thing to do in that boot situation is to park your car where your supposed to and avoid the whole problem. If you want an amusing chemical solution I would suggest thermite ;) And no, I’m not going to tell you how to make it.
you break the law
pay your fine
and move on
sam
No comments.
Thank you
that was awesome. I dont really have to worry about boots for a while cuz I’m under 16.
hackaday rulez
this is pretty cool.however, don’t the people record the fact that they booted your car, thus resulting in another boot/arrest if they catch you?
wavecal22@gmail.com
preach what you say and reap the benefits of your karma…
Likely if you tried the tricks (tires that cant be booted, fake or real boots of your own etc), you would still get the parking fine and they would find other ways to get at you.
here is a quick way to avoid parking tickets:
parking illegally is fine as long as there is adequate precipitation, for you can use the excuse that the ticket washed away, works in n.y. lol.
here is a quick way to avoid traffic tickets:
If the cop is in front of you, dont worry as long as you always stay behind him, he cant do much but pull over and let you get ahead, if he does this just pull over behind him or make a turn, they cant do much because they have to be behind you, if they do give you a ticket they are not allowed to because of safety precautions.
If the cop is behind you, this is always the case: just pull over and friendly wait for him to ask the questions, answer quickly with a calm voice and with concise answers, if the cop hears you babble for minutes he will think you are hiding something. Dont ever ask a cop to make a compromise, this is illegal so they will never accept it; bribing is illegal. Dont give them an attitude and if you know you did something wrong, admit to it and he might mitigate the charge, if you did something you will be imprisoned for life; just pull over and once he has stopped drive for your life.
Master locks are easy to pick, just make a friend with a locksmith, they will take bribes.
In ny I never got booted so this must be some deserted place with sheriffs lol.
simply have the clamper come to remove the clamp or ‘boot’ as you yanks call it, give him the cash at which point he’ll have to squat down to unlock it, a firm blow to the back of his neck will knock him out, finnish his job then remove your cash and his note book containg your cars details from his pocket, crude but effective.
“If you want an amusing chemical solution I would suggest thermite ;) And no, I’m not going to tell you how to make it.”
Thermite: 1 part powdered aluminium, one part magnetite, measure by weight, use a magnesium ribbon (or a sparkler) to ignite.
That’ll melt the boot right off, probably will damage the car too.
wtf? all that? all he had to do is pick the damn lock if I known they use just weak ass master locks i’d be charging people to remove them. I can open those within seconds 2 ways.
1.) bump key ( i have the pressure down that I get it first tap)
2.) lock pick (I have this down to where i know exactly how far to push the pick i use in and tap it up once and turn)
i guess i got them down b/c i have about 50 or more of those school black turn dial master locks (for lockers) here taht i cracked all day everyday in the past, and i have 3 of the ones on his boot.. and other types
over at http://www.atlnightspots.com they were talking about this 2.
This article is great, but many commeents assume its a legitimate city government putting on the boot. Many cities, Chicago for example, allow private companies to boot your ccar.
For example, my son went to a Dunkin Donuts in Chicago, and while they were making his sandwich, he walked across the street, and looked in some store windows. As soon as he “crossed the street” a guy from Global Parking Management, Inc. put a boot in his car. He wanted $115.00 to take the boot off. Really, time stamp from Dunkin Donuts says 9:37 pm. Documentation by the guy putting on the boot said he put it on at 9:38 pm.
I drove over, called the Chicsgo police, and my wife who is a lawyer. Two cars responded, but they said they “scam’ people this way 10-15 times per day and its legal. They said it was a “civil issue”. My wife concurred, so I had to pay the $115.00 and then if I want to sue in small claims court to get it back.
It was a total scam. The company puts up video cameras to watch the lot and the guy sitting in Dunkin Donuts had a “Time Synched” audio device around his neck. I paid the $115.00.
I later found out this copany does this at dozens of lots, and because they post a warning sign , you have to pay the $115.00 and then try to get it back!!!
I love this post. I think I’ll put a couple of inexpensive tools in the trunks of my threed cars and next time they can watch me take off the boot, and sue me in “small claims court” for the $115.00.
The police said if I could remove it, but damged it the company could sue for damage to the boot, but it was a civil matter, so I could legally remove the boot.
There is a detailed boot removal article at:
http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/www/Info/boot.html
God Bless You, Every one for this post!!!
I have several welder friends, and being one myself,
1. I would cut the darn thing off with an oxy torch aka hot wrench.
2. Put thermite on it and light it.
3. use the air chisel that is on my truck.
4. DON’t Park ILLEGALY
5. Sledge Hammer.
6. Pry Bar
7. if all else fails I would call my lawyer and have a chat with the people at the parking enforcement office if and only if I knew that I was parked legally
I got a boot a week ago. We were looking at it and start to think that there had to be a place to buy a key for it. I saw the lock and it looks like a one fits all.
Thermite might kill your car.
Cold chisel and a hammer or an abrasive cut off wheel would be the way to go.
First I would try to take it off in a non-destructive manner.
Parking boots are public property.
The parking-control officers who attach them to your wheels intend for them to stay there until you’ve paid off your fines. Removing the boot without authorization, or damaging it in any way, is a crime.
Nevertheless, in cities like Denver and Boston, where the boot has been a part of life for years, the contraptions occasionally disappear. In some cities, more than 10 percent of the boot stock has vanished or been rendered inoperable.
That came as no surprise to the mechanical experts who examined our boot. The boot, they say, is nowhere near as tough as it looks. Anyone with less than $30 worth of basic hand tools and enough dexterity to screw in a light bulb can probably break the boot’s grip on a car wheel in about ten minutes.
The boot is designed to intimidate, our experts say; its toughest parts are the ones that would be the most obvious targets for boot-busting vandals — the lock mechanism, for example. With a special tamper-resistant padlock surrounded by a box made of quarter-inch carbon steel plates, the lock will stand up to just about anything short of a low-yield nuclear device. So our bootbusters ignored the lock and looked for other less-obvious places where the boot could be attacked. It took them no time to discover several major weak points in the boot’s protective armor.
Deflating the tire.
If the boot is going to work properly, it must be properly installed, and that’s not an easy process — especially in the dark, when you have a long night of boot-installing ahead. If the installation is even a bit sloppy (that is, if the jaws that attach the boot to the wheel are a little bit loose), it’s often possible to remove the boot by letting the air out of the tire and simply sliding the whole thing off.
This is by far the simplest strategy. It doesn’t always work — conscientious installer can prevent it almost every time, and some car wheels don’t leave enough room for the process anyway. But veterans of boot-happy cities have told us they’ve removed dozens of boots this way, quickly, quietly, and easily.
The hubcap plate.
A key element to the boot’s effectiveness is its ability to prevent car-owners from getting access to the lug nuts on the booted wheel. Once the lug nuts are accessible, the wheel can be removed and replaced with a spare tire, and the car can be driven away.
If the boot is properly installed, the plate will be tightly secured over the hubcaps, making it impossible event to imagine loosening the lug nuts. But the plate is one of the more flimsy parts of the boot; it’s attached by a half-inch swivel pin that is spot-welded to the frame. As our boot-busting experts explained, spot welds that hold together two pieces of metal of different thicknesses are inherently weak. There are several such welds on the boot, and this one is especially vulnerable.
With a common battery-powered drill and a 15-cent grinding wheel or “cut-off tool”, one of our experts was able to grind away most of the weld on the pin in about two minutes. With a five-dollar cold chisel and a standard hammer, he did the same job even faster.
Once the weld is broken, a quick blow with a hammer forced the pin out, releasing the plate from the boot frame and making it easy to change the tire and drive away, leaving the old, boot-laden tire behind (or safely stowed in the trunk as a souvenir).
The jaw-to-frame pins.
The main frame of the boot — the “arm” — fit into a pair of metal pins on the wheel-clamp, or “jaw”. The pins are a central element of the boot’s structure. They’re also one of its weakest links.
The pins are only about an inch long. when the boot is installed, they appear to be connected to each other through some sort of thick, central rod. In fact, they’re just stuck into holes drilled in the frame, and spot-welded at the bottom.
Even when the boot is assembled, there’s plenty of free play between the arm and the pins. A few strong, sharp blows with a hammer on the top of the pins quickly breaks them free and makes them easy to remove. With those pins gone, the boot comes apart immediately.
The welds holding the lock-box to the frame. For all the effort that the bootmakers put into developing an impregnable locking mechanism, it’s amazing how loosely the lock-box is attached to the rest of the boot. Four flimsy spot-welds hold the entire padlock-and-cover-plate assembly to the main boot frame. It took an expert just a few seconds to chip away one of the welds with a chisel and hammer; when one of our spastic, incompetent, weak-wristed editors tried it on a second weld a few days later, it took less than a minute.
Once the lock-box is liberated from the frame, the entire boot can be dismantled and removed quickly with a ratchet and standard (16-inch) spark-plug socket.
The arm itself.
If all else fails, our experts discovered that they could actually cut through the tough-looking steel of the main arm with a battery-powered drill and a cut-off tool. forget the oxyacetylene torches and the nitric acid — the boot arm cuts like butter with a cheap hobbyist’s tool. By our calculations, a standard drill-and-cut-off tool set-up can cut through the main arm in less than ten minutes.
The padlock keys.
When the parking-control officers come to remove a boot, the first thing they have to do is unlock the padlock. Since the city is buying about 100 of the monsters, it seems highly unlikely that every boot will have a different key. In other cities, like Denver, a single master key unlocks them all.
That means, of course, that an anarchist thug with a penchant for trouble-making (or a wily hustler with an eye for a quick profit) could easily dismantle and remove the boot from some poor innocent scofflaw’s illegally parked car, take the thing home, bust the lock off and pay a less-than-scrupulous locksmith to make up a new key — a key that would instantly unlock every boot in the city.
Of course, the city can always change all the padlocks on a regular basis (although they don’t come cheap). But if we know this city, the pirates will soon be making and selling the keys faster than the cops can replace the locks, forcing the taxpayers to pour ever-increasing sums of money into a parking-law-enforcement mechanism that is neither appropriate nor effective for San Francisco.
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HOA’s now booting cars parked on private driveways to raise revenue. Claim tires touched grass. Booters divide Naples Florida Community. See the whole store at wwwnewbridgewaterbaycom
Deflate the tire then slide the front cap over the deflated rubber, unhook the back of the boot, throw it on to the side walk and drive away laughing like a maniac.
“This article is great, but many commeents assume its a legitimate city government putting on the boot. Many cities, Chicago for example, allow private companies to boot your ccar.
“For example, my son went to a Dunkin Donuts in Chicago, and while they were making his sandwich, he walked across the street, and looked in some store windows. As soon as he “crossed the street” a guy from Global Parking Management, Inc. put a boot in his car. He wanted $115.00 to take the boot off. Really, time stamp from Dunkin Donuts says 9:37 pm. Documentation by the guy putting on the boot said he put it on at 9:38 pm.
“I drove over, called the Chicsgo police, and my wife who is a lawyer. Two cars responded, but they said they “scam’ people this way 10-15 times per day and its legal. They said it was a “civil issue”. My wife concurred, so I had to pay the $115.00 and then if I want to sue in small claims court to get it back.
“It was a total scam. The company puts up video cameras to watch the lot and the guy sitting in Dunkin Donuts had a “Time Synched” audio device around his neck. I paid the $115.00.
“I later found out this copany does this at dozens of lots, and because they post a warning sign , you have to pay the $115.00 and then try to get it back!!!
“I love this post. I think I’ll put a couple of inexpensive tools in the trunks of my threed cars and next time they can watch me take off the boot, and sue me in “small claims court” for the $115.00.
“The police said if I could remove it, but damged it the company could sue for damage to the boot, but it was a civil matter, so I could legally remove the boot.
“God Bless You, Every one for this post!!!”
It’s not a “civil” matter for some private individual to attach anything beyond a pamphlet under your wiper to your car. It is criminal tampering with a motor vehicle, extortion, and unlawful restraint (you couldn’t leave in your car), which is the next thing to kidnapping. The cops lied to you as they don’t want to deal with this crap all day long.
Go back and swear out a criminal complaint against the person who attached the boot, along with his/her employer. When (s)he is picked up by the police, cuffed and taken to jail, (s)he’ll sing a different tune.
This is assuming the lot was for Dunkin Donuts customers, even if the lot was managed by someone else. If it was for Dunkin Donuts customers, you have a good case for a lawsuit against DD. If the lot was not for DD customers but was a regular pay lot, too bad.
I know! Since we do not like people parking here too long then let’s making them park even LONGER by putting on a boot in which the owner of the car has to pay a fee to remove it. That way they can hog up the parking space while making us lose money since other customers could’ve used that spot.
What a genius plan!! :) :)
Yes! I hate boots with a passion and must know how to destroy them. Although where I just moved from they like to tow and hit you with a litany of fees.
college I went to a number of years ago had a permit sticker system, for parking better spots higher cost for permits, and also a free lot with a bus to campus. I returned one day to free lot to find an envelope under wiper. Contained therein was a complete set of stickers including faculty lots and a note “Hope you put these to good use” All cars in lot had a similar envelope. As this was before computer plate checks it effectively stopped booting for semester and generally fouled up the entire parking system.
An acquaintance during the same time lived in a wrecking yard(rent free for watching place at night), drove an older common make car. He would save any current plates for that make put them on his car park where he wanted, switch plates after he got a few tickets. As far as I know they never caught up with him.
getting out of a municipal boot isn’t that difficult. carry an 18 volt disk grinder with a cutting disk. they’re around $50, take up hardly any room in the trunk and in less than a minute you can slice off the shackle and be on your way; with their boot. oh and troll me all you want, if you want. i’m not checking either of the “notify me” boxes, so i won’t know about it.