Got to thinking about the thread about the little furries a while back so just for my own mind, I popped open the filter cover. Dam thing was half full of sunflower seeds. Just had the service 2 weeks ago and there was no problem. I don't get to play with my car but about once a week so it gets a lot of down time in the garage. He or it had started to chew on the filter but not enough to do any damage, I will be changing it anyway. Now have a wire cage over the intake. SOB went half way across the yard to the bird feeder and then back to the S-CAR to chow down. Looked for other dammage but I guess that he haden't started on the other parts, I hope.


This might be a thought for a cover for someone to develope, maybe with elastic band to hold it in place. Just a thought?

 

A few years ago, mice got into my '92 Integra's fresh air ducts. They nested in there and in spite of tearing apart the heater and ducts to clean them out twice, I was never able to completely remove the smell. It was so bad that I traded the car.

I'm really paranoid about mice in the car ever since then. Believe me, you don't want this in your stook!

 

What the...!?!? Are you serious?

 

Is this for real? You actually had mice nesting in your intake? Dios mio!

On a side note, when I was a kid, I used to like lizards... my dad once took me to buy a gecko and I couldn't wait to get home before peeking inside the bag at him. Well, he jumped out and ran right into the vents. He didn't last very long in there, but the smell sure lasted. In fact, I'm not sure that the smell every really went away completely. Amazing how such a small animal can smell that bad when it dies.

Hell, now that I think about it, I had another animal in the car problem a few years later when I had a snake. My mom took me to pick up a mouse to feed the snake and we ran a few errands before we came home. By that time, the mouse had gnawed through the bag and gotten loose in my mom's brand new benz. We found him under the seat hiding way up in the adjustment mechanism where we couldn't reach him. Took us damn near an hour to get the f-cker out and he bit me when I finally grabbed him. I never again felt bad for the mice when I saw my snake kill them.

 

Wow! I better check the intake of my BRG Miata. Several years ago I found mice droppings on the valve cover and urine stains over the same. The aluminum really discolored .

I always read how in storing cars it is good to put a rag into the exhaust pipe, etc., to prevent animal infestation in such places.

 

Two words:

Hanta Virus.

Two more words:

Incurable hemorrhagic

Four more while we're at it:

Micky is a vector

 

My wife and I happened upon a recently killed mother Opossum and noticed several small, shivering balls of fur hiding in the bushes on the side of the road. We collected 5 babies, but when we started to drive off, only 4 were seen in the basket sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat of her Mustang GT. I spent the next half hour feeling around under the dashboard before managing to gently extricate the wayward marsupial from WAY up under the dashboard.

They were raised at an animal rescue clinic and released back into the wild. One fun fact that I learned from this experience is that Opossums do not carry rabies because thier body temperature is too low.

 

I had a similar problem except in my case it was voles. During a particularly harsh winter I took the beater to and from work for about 2 weeks not driving my Corrado but keeping it in the garage. I also was storing my car cover in the garage for the beater and due to the snow, ice, etc. I wasn't putting the cover on the beater. After a little bit of a thaw I got to wash the beater and went to put the cover on only to discover a hole all the way through it plus droppings and a urine smell. Needless to say I was pissed but didn't think anything else of it. I went to start the Corrado and nothing. I popped the hood couldn't see anything wrong and investigated further. When I pulled the air cleaner cover off I found out where the remnants of my car cover had gone along with the voles. They had built themselves a nice nest in the center of my airbox. Currently I have no choice but to store my S2000 outside with a car cover over it and I have to say I am paranoid about some little rodent deciding to do the same thing.

 

I had this happen in my snowmobile, last winter. Well, I assume it happened before winter, but that's when I felt the effects.

I have a 1985 Ski-doo Safari 377 (old but fun ). I finally got to ride the thing last winter, since it's the first time since forever that we've actually gotten decent snow here in NH. I went for a long ride with the family, and about 500 yards from home, it stalled. The engine just died. The pull cord was locked up.
That means...... blown engine. Metal shards on the sparkplug.
Blew a piston.

Before winter, I was doing maintenance on the machine (replaced ski shocks, but a gas shock replacement in the rear, cleaned, greased, etc.), and discovered a mouse nest in the air filter.
I thought I'd cleaned it all out, but... apparently some was left, enough to get sucked into the engine and blow it apart.

Luckily, a friend of my Dad's is a snowmobile mechanic so we got it fixed. I now have some plastic screen over the intake, fastened with a Zip-tie.

Could something similar be done on the car?

 

My Grandmother had a problem with one of her cars once. She took it to her mechanic, and he found a ton of dog food in her air cleaner. She used to keep the dog food in her garage, and mice chewed through the bag and stashed it in her air intake.