Parked the Bravo up outside a church in deepest darkest Herts and returned to it three hours later. Plibbed it, opened the driver's door, and Anita couldn't open her door; nor did the internal lock release although the handle did.

On starting the engine the system complained of Anita's door being open. It wasn't.

At this point we had a look around and it was apparent someone had been in the car; the centre cubby was open and a phone cover was missing from the driver's door pocket.

Mutter mutter mumble... tried to lock the car at home and no joy; it insisted that the door was open when it clearly wasn't. I assumed that the microswitch in the lock had died, preventing the doors locking, and that some passing miscreant has been trying the doors on the row of parked cars and found his way in.

This morning I discovered, upon further investigation, the the rubber cover on the door loom was cut - and so were eight wires out of the bundle of a dozen or so. The shape of the cuts (I have a *lot* of experience with how wire looks when it's cut!) indicates a sharp heavy knife has tried to cut the loom in a single stroke.

Repair has been a pain - I should really get a new loom - because the breaks are within half an inch of the door metalwork. Strip, solder, heatshrink. Two hours for eight wires, meh. At present everything seems to be working with the exception of the window - possibly a fuse I haven't yet located.

But I'm baffled. If you're going to break into a car (how?) and don't find anything worth stealing in it (and they didn't open the glove box or the boot as far as I can see) why on earth would you try and cut that loom?

Is the aim for the miscreant to disable the door by (with perhaps knowledge of the design) shearing this wiring loom?

Perhaps this person was disturbed and was intending to return later for a more extensive rummage....

Bad luck, but anyway glad you had a productive Sunday

Dunno. Found the fuse for the window, which fixed that (but killed the rear window, from which I stole the fuse )

After the door I reckon. They've been disturbed and looked for anything worth taking.

I think it was Vauxhalls, a while back, that were getting stripped to order.

Hardly bloody worth it, I'd have thought; there's a full set of doors on the bay at around forty quid each.

Forty quid is nearly a weeks money for some folk.

Was the cut made from the outside with the door closed (cut through the door shut line) or from the inside with the door open?

Maybe it's a way of breaking in, cutting through the loom and shorting the door unlock solenoid wires as you cut?

This is what I was wondering; were the cables cut down the shut line?

That makes three of us!

THat hadn't occurred to me but it could well have been. I'll play with a pointer tonight...

Yep, witness marks in the paint on the leading edge of the door. That answers a lot of questions.

Seems that's now going to be the smart way to break into cars now deadlocks are pretty universal.

Scum should go and work for what they would like, not bugger up other peoples' property stealing it.

Does central control of central locking have a safeguard built in , just in case in an accident all power is lost with occupants inside and the doors locked (and so with losing power, the locks disengage) ??.

And therefore slicing a knife down through the shutline guarantee a door opening ??

Curious.

Actually this point was raised recently in a C4 programme about Extreme Weather 2016, when a car was caught in a dip under a railway bridge in a flash flood with the owner still inside......the car was eventually tipped up (all caught on mobile phone footage), the electrics having shorted out and stopping the doors opening

If it wasn't for a guy chucking a brick and smashing the window the driver would have drowned.

Hmm - this might explain some of what's happened to Hughie's car. I don't know. Clearly the earth wire had been cut at some point in that door joint and there's signs of damage to the window trim.

Not sure if it was an urban myth but many many years ago i was told that the door locks would unlock in the event of the collision sensor deploying the air bags!

While it would be easy in principle to open the doors by default if the airbags go bang, you actually want the doors closed to preserve the crash structure. I wonder if releasing the locks might interfere with that.

Anita's Cupra locks the doors once the car is moving; my Bravo doesn't and to be honest I prefer it that way. If I'm going somewhere unsavoury I can still lock the doors from inside.

Locked or not, the internal handle opens the latch (assuming no mechanical damage). Perhaps more of an issue that the windows are also powered only...

Dropped a note about this to Fiat Customer Services and have a reply; they want to talk to me further about it.

Time for a group buy on stainless steel braided sleeving.

If they (Fiat) adopt some type of "dead lock" system as the BMWs then I'm pretty sure the cut was made through the gap to disable that feature and actually make opening the door possible without the proper key/fob. The auto-locking feature can be managed via the diagnostic/programming soft. I personally don't like it also, and it was subject of criticism over the last two (?) decades...At that point the car manufacturers should think about some solution to protect the loom, step-gap or just plain piece of sheet metal...

With my embedded software/hardware developer's hat on: if you're not ensuring the integrity of the cable but just accepting a floating signal to control a security system, you need sacking.

The way this *should* be done is at a very minimum use an analogue input to the processor with resistors to pull the signal to half-rail if the circuit is cut. But a processor with a fistful of ADC inputs costs a few cents more than one with just digital inputs...