However the ones I look up either dont work at all when i upload them. or they are (like the Adafuit tutorial) a GPS fence.
Removing the "fence" part is trivial. But, that would mean that you'd get a text message every second, saying "here I am", while the car was parked inside the chop shop. Probably not what you want.
So, you need to define WHEN you want a text message, in much more detail than "when I send it a message". "Where are you" "Here I am" ... "Where are you" "Here I am" ... will get old REAL quick.
Yet I never get a response when I upload any of the tutorial codes that I modify to my phone number and try.
Without seeing the code, knowing what you do, knowing what it actually does, and knowing how that differs from what you expect, wen can't tell you why your expectations are wrong and how to align them with reality (or how to change the code to match your expectations).