Animals in your engine bay

Could be worse, they could eating the wiring & other things... I've had that happen twice this year on my C-Max, first time was in June, second time was just a couple weeks ago. In June it chewed up the engine cover, air intake (to the point where there was a hole in it), nibbled on the coolant resivior, shredded the hood insulation, and also ruined the MAF sensor wire. Had a file a comprehensive claim on it, $250 ded., over $1200 total repair cost. I get to pay an extra $20/6 mo. for years for that! The recent one was just the MAF wiring again, that was $327 at the dealership...

The issue is that the wiring insulation is made of soy based plastics on most newer cars to be """green""", but of course to rodents that smells like food. I've heard there's a class action lawsuit being put together over it, hell the insurance companies should at the forefront because of the money they're losing because of this shit!

>squirrel
>no bushy tail

Bruh, ya got rat rot. Shes a write off.

>The issue is that the wiring insulation is made of soy based plastics on most newer cars to be """green""", but of course to rodents that smells like food.

It's an issue with house wiring too since mice and rats can get into an attic or into the crawlspace under homes. Houses occasionally catch on fire from mice chewing on the wiring. When my house was built, the builder also put in stout wire mesh wrapping around all holes and openings for pipes and wires at the edges of the house and garage. That reduces the number of highways they have to travel through your house unseen once they make that initial hole to get inside your walls or attic.

The mice really love soy-based ink! I had some soy-ink printed papers and they ate it. I still don't know how they got into the garage so I bought electrocution traps and use those to reduce the mouse population. I am assuming they get in through the furnace ducts. I have underfloor ducts and apparently the mice managed to chew into those and use them as highways. There are zero crumbs and all food is secured, so they are there for nesting in winter and hiding from predators in the summer. But they come out and eat paperwork and magazine pages printed with soy ink.

>Shes a write off.
Still too early in the winter season. Later, when they have nothing to eat due to the cold weather is when they might chew on cellulose type objects or even wires.

>Did you report your crime to animal control?
Then I might as well report all the feral homeless stealing all their winter clothing in preparation for the cold and rain. From looking at them yesterday and today, the majority of them wear better stuff than I do. But then I have to buy mine while they just walk out the door with it. Today, as I was coming out of one shop, one of them bolted out the exit door when they got close. The guard is some old guy who certainly doesn't look spry enough to chase some tough-minded homeless guy who could become violent.

Squirrels look like rats anyways when the fur falls off their tail. I and other homeowners hate them because they are able to climb right up the walls of a house and then chew a hole at the base of the roof to get into the attic. Or they manage to chew out one of the screens covering the soffitt holes. Because the holes are high up, it's hard to tell if the screen is there or not.

My CV joints are stuck.
I tried vice grips and elbow grease, but that didn't work.
Thoughts on 2lb slide hammer vs 5lb slide hammer?

At Harbor Freight, the 2lbs is around $25 while the 5lb is somewhere around $45.

>Have you been anticipating dead animals in your car?
If you park outdoors, it's basically guaranteed that rats and mice will try to take advantage of warmth. I saw a big rat last week in the walmart parking lot run out of the bushes at the edge of the parking lot and then up into a parked car.

I bet rats and mice spready by hitchhiking rides on vehicles.

Get the 5lb or the job ain't getting done.

...

>Animals in your engine bay
popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a9998/what-happens-when-a-rat-decides-to-live-in-your-car-16393667/

Anyone here have feral cats in their car yet? Due to the large homeless human population in my area, covered areas that feral cats can hide are mostly gone. The only places the cats can go now are underneath wooden decks and cars.

>idk what a squirrel was doing in my engine though
Squirrels do make nests under the hoods of abandoned cars. They don't just nest in people's attics. It's always a bad sign if your neighborhood has squirrels but you don't see a lot of squirrel nests in the trees during the winter season. That means those squirrels are nesting inside peoples' attics along with all their storaged food items, molding foodstuffs, urine, and poop.

Found this deer hiding inside my Stang

Not my car. It's amazing how the tough deer hide holds the body of the deer together to make a more effective dense battering ram.

>Maybe one day people will manage to take the rat home with them to their garage.

i had it worse, last winter while driving around at night a mouse suddenly runs across my windshield over my wipers then back under the back of the hood where the drainage cowls are. it scared the shit out of me the first time and i thought the damn thing was inside. it did it a couple of times until i was able to whack it with the wiper blades and never saw it again.

also my post from the other thread involving rats in cars;

>notice weird brown slime one day all over my wheel
>looked like something was spraying goo from the inside out
>remove wheel to replace brake pads
>brown goo all over inside of wheel, find dried out spinal cord and tail stuck to inside of rim
>commence wiping and scrubbing

looks like a rat was sitting on top of the rotor and got a free tour of the brake caliper when i backed up.

That looks a special kind of awesome

Looks like a jet engine sucked it in

>idk what a squirrel was doing in my engine though
Roasting his chestnuts on the warm engine!

I don't know why.
But this made me laugh hard. kek

At high speed, momentum means there is not enough time for the body to deform too much to the sides. Since the deer torso is dense (it's basically a small barrel on stilts), in the tiny fraction of time the car takes to move forward 3 feet, the body has advanced through the front grille, thru the aluminum radiator, and into the engine compartment. Fait Accompli. There's hardly any time for the body to splash off to the sides given that the strong deer hide holds the body together. It's what makes the deer damage the car so much if there isn't a big metal bumper out front to deflect the body before it can get into the grille area.

We Veeky Forums now

Good explanation though

I caught a mouse in my car recently, he was living on my cabin air filter

Fuck, my dad cleaned his filter today and found a giant goddamn nest. They had ripped out some of the insulation between the firewall and made a cozy little home for themselves.

Had to change the filters, and sprayed the new ones down with peppermint oil - apparently they hate that scent.

Luckily he wasn't there for too long. I saw him run around my car one night. Then I set up some glue traps and I caught him that same night.

So wherever he drove the car, he could be dropping off mouse offspring and helping their DNA spread around (along with mouse fleas). Your story made me re-check my air filters (the main airbox to engine) and the cabin one. The main airbox would be a great site for a nest as there is a huge air space under the filter for the nest. Shining the flashlight around showed zero mouse pellet droppings. I regularly look all over the garage floor for droppings too. So far, so good. Doesn't seem to be any mice inside the garage.

At least you caught it before the air filter became soaked with urine and hantavirus.

I think there's one more. I just found some droppings in my car.

Got my Caddie started up yesterday for the firsr time in a month... Mouse shit everywhere. He also got into a bag of cigarette filters, some gum and papers. Left trash from te shit he chewed all over tge car.

How do I prevent this shit? Car is already garaged but fucker still found his way in.

>Car is already garaged but fucker still found his way in.
Cars have ducts for ventilation. At some point, there may be a flexible tube and they simply chew that to get in or out. Mouse get into homes this way by getting into the crawlspace and chewing the flexible air hoses or ducts for underfloor heating and cooling. Once in those ducts, it's like a super highway to the rest of the house. Mice have deformable flexible heads and bodies full of cartilege, so they can squeeze through a pretty small opening. So it wouldn't take much of a hole for the mouse to get in to your cadillac duct. Once in, it can chew a hole in plastic to get inside the cabin.

Mouse incisors are sharp and strong. I had trapped a mouse in a glue trap and picked up the trap. I moved an old school Bic ballpoint pen (the one with the hard yellow plastic barrel) near the mouse. As soon as the plastic brushed by a whisker, the mouse turned hard and snapped at the hard plastic barrel. This is not the soft white barrel of Bic pens. This was the hard yellow barrel. The teeth sunk in and I could feel the barrel trying to rotate in my hand due to the fierceness of the mouse bite. Those super long front incisors had sunk into the plastic a short distance almost as much as if I had tried to poke with an xacto knife. I guess those front teeth are self-sharpening.

If you don't know, always better to go heavier

>That looks a special kind of awesome
Imagine you are the new employee at the shop.
Customer brings in that BMW.
Shop Owner doesn't want to clean it out himself.
Chief Technician doesn't want to clean it out and passes the task to you....

It's a hot steamy day with outdoor temperature in the 90 degree fahrenheit range. No one wants that smelly thing inside the air conditioned shop building, so you have to work on it outside in the heat.

I had one under my hood the other day. Went to check my oil and when I popped the latch, she stared at me in terror until I backed away, then she jumped out and ran behind some bushes. It’s my fault she hangs around... I leave food for the poor baby.

It's a bad sign when it doesn't immediately run out from inside the hood as soon as noises start. Once those feral cats start to decide to stay there despite all the noises, you're going to end up with ground up cat like at my former apartment complex. If it doesn't get too hot, it can remain perched on top of the battery. I say battery because that's where cat hairs were found. You know where that cat was located in your case.

Once the car heats up, it gets super hot under the hood. That's when the feral cat no longer stays there and decides to leave due to the high heat. But since the belts are moving, if there isn't much room, it can get caught in a pulley.

If you have to leave food out, leave it out off your property like next to the car of someone you don't like. Then if the cat does get ground up, it will be in that person's car and not yours? My car is full of wire looms and flex or braided coverings over fluid pipes. All those would collect blood and guts and be hellish to remove and replace.

Thankfully, the cats in my car had always left before I started it. I'm glad I don't live at that apartment complex anymore. There were TOO MANY kind hearted people leaving cat food out for the feral cats all year around. As a result, just like if your city sets up well-funded homeless services, the feral homeless will migrate over to your place and live there. Thus, all those people providing services to the feral population naturally increased the feral population.

>people leaving cat food out for the feral cats all year around
No one is that stupid.

That's a famous cliche statement.

>crime
Animals have no rights user.

>Animals have no rights user.
Rights Activists defending those poor animals do.
And they will record you illegally trapping, mishandling, hurting, or improperly caring for animals you detained. And if you happen to kill or maim any, you can be up on charges. What adds poison to the fire is that activists sometimes demand the perpetrator make substantial donations to animal rights charities to show remorse. Not showing remorse actually has additional legal charges in my state of up to 6 months more. So at the very least, you better be crying crocodile tears.