Bump Keys and Blind Robins?

 

Steve loves the American Pickers’ show. He lives on the edge of Summersville not far from the Monongahela national Forest. He makes a living using his Sprinter, a vehicle he acquired at a government auction at a decent price. Steve collects pieces of the past and sells them to antique dealers. He also hunts meteorites and micrometeorites. Steve tells me that he fastens a couple of magnets over the downspout of a rain gutter, so that rainwater flows over them. After a couple of weeks, he finds tiny particles sticking to the magnets. They’re remnants of meteoroids that disintegrated in the upper atmosphere. He sells the ‘space dust’ to collectors.

“As soon as I got this Sprinter, it started to do some strange things. I was looking for memories, cruising around to old barns when the auto headlights turn on, then off, but only once. That night, the auto headlights decided to turn off so I used the manual override. The service light also turned on. Then the ‘door ajar’ light came on, blinking as the door locks cycled on and off.”

I wrote all of the data down. “Anything else?”

“Yeah—the battery goes dead if I let the vehicle sit a couple of days. I took it to several shops but all they did was threw some parts at it. Every time I take it somewhere, the Sprinter behaves, like there’s nothing wrong. Then it acts up after I get it home.”

The vehicle had no known work history. “I heard that it was used as a surveillance vehicle in another life.”

I performed the usual steps: a visual inspection, during which I found a “bump key” in the vehicle. It didn’t belong to Steve so I added the bump key to my collection of jiggler keys. All of the modules were communicating and there were some communication DTC’s, which didn’t surprise me. Parasitic drain on this vehicle was 30 mA, not bad for the Sprinter. Steve and his partner Jeff worked with me on the vehicle. Despite the three of us performing diagnostics, evaluating connectors, scoping the CAN bus, performing ground credibility checks, we came up with nothing. I even used my CAN Bus Shield Interface connected to my laptop but saw nothing unusual on the data bus.

“This was used by the Feds—maybe there’s a hidden tracker somewhere,” Jeff joked. I wasn’t laughing. You can detect some GPS tracking devices by the electromagnetic radiation they emit. They can generate a pseudo-random digital noise source used to correlate against the data received from a satellite’s transmitted Coarse Acquisition data stream. By looking for unintentional radiation of the digital noise or its harmonics, you can pinpoint the location of an operating GPS receiver.

All you need to do the detecting is use a noise sniffer—a cheap AM radio. You need to tune it to the noise. Remember, the “noise” I mentioned isn’t truly noise. The GPS codes include Coarse Acquisition and P-Code. The code streams are made up of zeros and ones—bits or chips. They are noise-like signals but the fact is, they’re generated using a mathematical algorithm.

After you tune the AM radio, add a drop of glue to the capacitor’s tuning post to prevent frequency drift. You have to maintain the radio’s ferrite rod antenna in a horizontal position, with respect to your body, when using the sniffer.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” Steve asked.

“On the back of a cereal box from the 1960’s,” I replied. When I started the Sprinter and a vehicle speed signal was acquired, Steve, Jeff and I took turns using the sniffer. Steve found a hot spot in the dash. We drove back to his farm and I used my inspection camera to search inside the dash.

The squawker looked like a switch cover but Jeff was right. It was a GPS tracking device powered by a bobbin-type lithium thionyl chloride tied into an ignition-feed circuit.

“Wow, Steve—is your wife keeping tabs on you or something?” Jeff said, looking at the unit. It was really sophisticated. We figured the device was used to track the Sprinter in the event that it got stolen. Or maybe it was used in some sort of sting operation. It was interesting that I found that bump key.

“I have to work with some folks in Langley next weekend,” I said, “I’m going to take this tracker to see what they think about it,” I said.

“They might arrest you and throw away the key,” Jeff said.

Steve found a lunchbox, opened it and handed me a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “What kind is it?” I asked, noticing the aroma even through the wax paper.

“That’s an onion sandwich on rye with a generous smearing of garlic butter,” Steve said, removing the wax paper from his sandwich.

“No thanks,” I said, putting the wrapped sandwich back in the lunchbox.

Jeff laughed. He handed me something wrapped in cellophane. “Well then, how about a package of blind robins, Bob?”

“Ever hear of those?” Steve asked.

“I sure did,” I said, remembering my childhood memories. I couldn’t believe it.  I remembered my father buying those at the bait shop and the neighborhood bar. Jeff waved it under my nose. “Smoked and salted,” he said.

“They’re a big around these parts,” Steve said. “Some place by the Ohio River cleans the herring, smokes them, and highly salted with the heads and tails still on. Once the bones fall out, he chops off the heads and tails and puts them in these cellophane packages.”

“They make for a good beer snack,” Jeff said. I passed on the blind robins. I ate them as a young boy but my digestive system today would tolerate them about as much as it would tolerate the onion and garlic sandwich on rye.

“Just pay me and I’ll be on my way, Steve.”

They both milked my hand, thanking me and invited me back to do some fly fishing.

And that was that. I left Summersville and decided to eat “regular food” at a drive-on off the beaten path.

Until next time.