Friggin' mice

[wpurple]

Was driving home from work the other night and the check engine light came on, scanned it...np bank 1 o2 sensor no good...just changed bank 2 last fall...makes sense

Off to the parts store, was going to change it this afternoon, figuring 15 minutes tops..

Well it turns out not to be the sensor, but the wires to the sensor were chewed all the way thru!!! WTF

Many other wires were just chewed, but now severed.

What a PITA to remove the harness above the tranny (5L AWD) to get enough slack to solder new wires in place...

..not a happy camper.

 

[lynchy wa]

Amen, friggin mice! They took out my 4wd system. I zip tied some bait's in the engine bay and no more drama's. Still find the occasional carcus on the driveway.

 

[1AJeremyD]

That stinks. I had that happen before in a old VW. Little guys went through a $900 engine harness! I just through a bunch of those rat boxes outside and solved the problem lol

 

[Blee1099]

..

 

[wpurple]

I am thinking that it may be a small rat from the size of the bite marks and the size of the wire "it" ate thru....going to tie some delicious rat/mice poison up where the harness it.

 

[Shooey_]

I hear peanut butter works wonders.

 

[Konakid]

I usually get a pack rat a year under the hood. They like to gather up all the mesquite tree beans and pack them under the upper intake and under the fuse box. They chewed off one of my spark plug wires and ate the entire hood insulator! The little bugger also ate the wires completely in two on my front left running light!

I have to pull the battery and put a rat trap with peanut butter in there to kill them.

Today, I'm putting the blower motor back in after having cleaned out the mouse that was in there. This is the second time this has happened. Last time, there were mesquite beans (long ones) in the blower box! I heard the whine as the squirrel cage spun against those! I got on here to find out if there was a way to screen off the entrances for them, but found that it's basically an impossibility.

Beware the Hantavirus, as these mice can carry it, and when you turn on your A/C all that rat pee can be a carrier. My mother in law heard of someone in northern New Mexico that caught the Hantavirus from a mouse in his Explorer heater.

I've started using raisins on the big mouse trap. It seems to be a preferred food of choice for rats, and the ground squirrels don't seem to like them. I'm also going to get some of those little green cubes and put them in there too.

 

[imp]

Pack Rat Damage

Good size, gray color, prefer under-hood locations, have had several bad experiences.

They build nests if vehicle is unused for several days or more. I left for town, engine began missing about 15 miles out, pulled over, found a FIRE burning at ignition coil, intake manifold, plug wires, rat nest next to coil. A plug wire had been chewed completely through, the spark jumping the gap in the conductor set it's insulation on fire, this then spread to coil & manifold. Had I kept going, it might have cost the whole vehicle!

Other BIG adventure was '96 F-150, 95K on 5-spd. manual, clutch beginning to slip. Upon removing starter, preparing to remove transmission, something looked/felt funny in clutch housing: pullked out several petrified mouse corpses. Upon trans. removal, the trouble was apparent: mice had brought lots of grass into housing through 2 vent holes on upper back side, grass wound itself into rope, which wound up UNDER clutch pressure plate fingers, preventing them from returning back to plate completely, thus not allowing full clutch gripping force! I may have a pic of that pressure plate, if I find it, I'll post it. (The vent holes now have screen siliconed over them. They are only the size of a U.S. quarter!). imp

 

[shadowless127]

Thank the good lord I don't have to deal with rodents chewing through my wires, instead I was blessed with rust, rust, and oh yeah, more rust.