Rodents ate my car (well not quite but they had a go)

[Lovemyev]

I remember watching an electrician posting a video on YouTube recently, when he went to a customers house that had a few spot lights, that suddenly stopped working.
Quickly he discovered that it was not the lamps, but after some testing, he found that the lighting cable between two lamps had been attacked by rodents that had entered his attic space.
He made a few phone calls to his cable suppliers and they told him that when producing the protective covering, contains some vegetable oil to allow flexibility.
The rodents have a fantastic sense of smell and it is this that causes them to chew on the casing / sleeving of the cable !.
How true this is, I don’t know TBH.

 

[Tig170]

Its common on an ICE car - infact I'm pretty sure I've either seen a mouse, or found evidence in most of my cars in 35 years. To be honest suprised to find this in an EV due to the lack of warmth (I've stuck a heat camera on the MG4 after a 5 hr road trip - the hotest was the tyres, which was around +5°C above ambient temp).

 

[Rolfe]

Hah yes. I'm always surprised when I go out to the car after pre-heating it and there's still frost on the top of the bonnet!

 

[tommasov]

This morning I found this. I cleaned everything, but I'm pretty sure they went deeper.
At the moment the AC Fan is not working.
Let's hope it's not serious. I'm very sad.

 

[jamakr4]

This morning I found this. I cleaned everything, but I'm pretty sure they went deeper.
At the moment the AC Fan is not working.
Let's hope it's not serious. I'm very sad.

Maybe check the fuse (I think the blower is not connected to the HV system).

 

[tommasov]

Maybe check the fuse (I think the blower is not connected to the HV system).

I'll check the fuse. This morning when I left early everything was working properly, so I assume the damage wasn't done overnight. Then I turned the car off for a few hours, and the fan stopped working when I turned it back on.

 

[Lovemyev]

Rodents are attracted to the plastic insulation of the cables.
They can smell the oil that is used in the manufacturing process, it's makes the cable flexible.
They bite at the outer shielding of the cable and sometimes go straight through the the copper wire, which is extremely thin anyway.
This is the cause of your problem unfortunately.
Homes can be affected in the same way, if they get access to your roof space it's a nightmare to get rid of them.

 

[T1 Terry]

WD40 sprayed on the wiring will keep the chewing pests away, but not really practical for stopping them building nests in the airbox, unless you want the WD40 perfume through the car ....

Maybe you can find where they got in and make a metal mesh grille to stop them getting in again ..... insect screen wouldn't be resistant enough to their chewing, more that perforated stainless sheet type of stuff ....

T1 Terry

 

[Pete G]

Rodents attacked our zs ev. They chewed on the battery case and ate a hole in the brake booster vacuum hose.
Fortunately no other damage, i replaced the hose at home with some plastic tubing and all is well.
Since then I have sprayed the wiring loom with a spray I made from Cayenne pepper tincture.
Also I have sprayed the loom with a product called Scat ( in Australia) It is a spray you make up with water and the powder , which is Aluminium Ammonium Sulphate.
So far so good.
The rodents where I live a very hungry. So I am crossing my fingers that our car is left alone now.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

Possible prevention strategy?

 

[Pete G]

I did have a similar situation to a cat in the engine bay once.
I went to start one of my ICE cars many years ago. For some reason I decided to open the bonnet and check the oil and coolant levels.
Well in the engine bay was a rodent eradicator in the guise of a 6 foot long carpet snake.
I had to convince the snake to get out of my engine bay before I could start the car.
It took a while. Grasping the snake by the tail to extract it, it decided it liked it there and wound itself around lots of engine bay parts. So I had to wait until it relaxed a bit, then pull a bit more of it out of the bay. Then it would tighten up again. So repeat process. Wait patiently , snake relaxed, unwind it a bit more. It took a while.
But there were no damaged wiring bits in the car that night.
On another occasion the snake was not there to help and a rodent ate my radiator hose.
That cost me a new head gasket and a mornings work to replace the gasket. Fortunately I noticed the temperature guage go sky high before the engine was killed.

 

[T1 Terry]

Not near as messy as starting engine with the snake still in there, sad really, but the smell of roasted snake where it had wrapped around the exhaust manifold was something I would rather avoid repeating. Getting the bits out of the fanbelt V grooves on a Cat 3208 in a forklift is not a nice job either .....

T1 Terry

 

[T1 Terry]

Not near as messy as starting engine with the snake still in there, sad really, but the smell of roasted snake where it had wrapped around the exhaust manifold was something I would rather avoid repeating. Getting the bits out of the fanbelt V grooves on a Cat 3208 in a forklift is not a nice job either .....

T1 Terry

It was a red belly black snake, not deadly, but still poisonous, so not a harmless snake, but still, hate to see anything die like that ....

T1 Terry

 

[OriginalBigAl]

It was a red belly black snake, not deadly, but still poisonous, so not a harmless snake, but still, hate to see anything die like that ....

T1 Terry

Another reason , never advertised , for getting an EV . No heat and the only uncovered spinney things are the driveshafts .