Mice under the bonnet Arghhhh!

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ioweddie

ioweddie

MB Enthusiast
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Joined
Sep 16, 2012
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Location
Winford Isle of Wight
Car
AMG Line Premier Plus Estate C220d
Just had my almost 3 year old S205 serviced and Mot'd prior to the warranty running out.
All good except noted on the service sheet is rodent ingress under the engine cover, the mechanic took me out to show where the little blighter has nibbled some of the insulation from the injector connecting wires and another bit on the fuel return pipe, nothing too serious at the moment but needs taping over and extra protection adding. plus I need ideas on how to stop it getting back in, so far I have set six traps and ordered a supposed very sensitive humane one, plus some peppermint oil.
Any other sensible suggestions are welcome. Car is always garaged when not in use.
 
As an immediate first step. Get some mouse/rat poison to put under the bonnet/engine cover. You can get ‘systemic’ ones that are like golf ball shape & size. These cause the rodents to head off in search of water and not to die inside your engine bay.

If they do start to eat your wiring they can do untold amounts of damage.


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Under the bonnet you say...? Was there a rattle...?
 
stick some moth balls under there , they hate the smell. I assume that you don't drive the car much.
 
Certainly deal with it asap. I didn't realise we had mice in the garage when we moved in 4 years ago. Had a ton of stuff in the garage for a year or two after the move & a close down of one of our offices.

Meant there was so much stuff it was evident until some time later. By then they had nibbled through a lot of stuff including bits of a brand new Maserati 4200 full leather interior O had spare. Sons of b1tches!

I had various traps down after that & the best ones were the little wooden ones with yellow plastic looking cheese bit on one side with the snap over the neck bit. I know many will say it is inhumane but I couldn't risk them doing damage to any car in there especially the 4200. They could cause 10's of k's of date in no time. They are very humane in the fact that the spring is high tension and their demise is very short & abrupt which is the best you can hope for.

I also placed some mixed nuts & the red pasta type food in trays next to the traps. It took a few months and maybe 8 or 10 mice were dealt with & didn't return. Until 2 years later when 2 arrived & were dealt with by same traps I had still left down. Nothing since & the garage is much clearer now.

They ate all my seeds/nuts & red stuff & pasta bait so that did the job. Also the were attracted by peanut butter as well. The little plastic cheese like bits on the traps seemed to work the best & always attracted them. The traps are cheap & effective in my experience. The more the merrier though of different types. I had about 8 traps out at the time & have left 5 there all the time now.

I tried the humane traps first but they weren't very effective. The mice are too clever to a point. To prove it was mice & to see what was going on I put and IP camera in there for a few months recording 24/7. Really interesting to get an insight & watch their behaviour.

One night I saw a mouse & this was in darkness at night so pitch black. The camera had great night vision. It walked up to the humane trap front entrance, sniffed around, moved lots of bits of blades of grass or any debris it could find & put it on the door step to the entrance blocking the entrance. Then walked off knocking the front overhead door down on purpose with its tail as it walked off! Clever little blighter....well not so clever but you catch my drift.

Luckily there were no evidences of damage to any cars. My advice is act quickly & deal with it quickly. They can cause a lot of damage very quickly.
 
I was advised by a professional pest control guy that Mice cannot resist chewed toffee in a humane trap. I have to say, that proved true for our garage.

There is a video on YouTube of an RS8 that has a rodent infestation in the chassis that required a new harness with engine out. Very expensive indeed.


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Well I've spent an hour checking every thing and luckily its limited to just a couple of sleeves to the injector wires and a bit of the fuel return outside casing. I have used decent electricians tape to cover the areas and it all looks good, gave the surrounding areas a dose of WD 40 and set traps in the garage. I will leave the car on the drive for a while and keep and eye out just in case. I'm impressed with the dealer 'Esplanade' for spotting it as not that obvious until you look closely. I have been very lucky.
Just got to ensure it does not happen again.
Thanks for the replies, give yours a look just in case, you will have to remove all the plastic covers and use a mirror for the awkward nooks and crannies,
 
did you look for rodent entrance holes in the garage?
if you have any rat holes you shudd plug them ASAP.

those dirty M-Fokkers finds their way in and starts a new colony in places safe from threats.
 
kowalski said:
did you look for rodent entrance holes in the garage?
if you have any rat holes you shudd plug them ASAP.

those dirty M-Fokkers finds their way in and starts a new colony in places safe from threats.
Click to expand...

Remember rats etc can extrude their body through a hole the size of their head = tiny. They do not require an entrance as big as their body. This can make finding their route in and out very difficult. We used a professional in the end, who smeared every single opening with a dob of lard. This meant the mouse hair stuck to the edges leaving evidence of its entry/exit.


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brucemillar said:
Remember rats etc can extrude their body through a hole the size of their head = tiny. They do not require an entrance as big as their body. This can make finding their route in and out very difficult. We used a professional in the end, who smeared every single opening with a dob of lard. This meant the mouse hair stuck to the edges leaving evidence of its entry/exit.


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Click to expand...
Wouldn't lard attract the little bastards?
 
I live in a rural area and contribute to my own problem by feeding the birds, albeit well away from the garage, my neighbour on one side had a pony in a stable, which backed on to the side of my garage. The Pony has been gone a year or so and the stable also, so the vermin appear to be finding a new home in my shed and garage. I'm going to clear everything out and lay poison, traps, peppermint oil and anything else to alleviate the little blighters, just hope the don't turn their attentions to my bungalow LOL
 
Try Cayenne pepper. Rodents hate the smell of this and it can burn their little noses if they sniff too close. Garlic is another plant that drives them away. Anyone who has ever handled a hot pepper knows that we wear gloves when handling them, or suffer the burning sensation when we accidentally rub around our eyes.
 
When I had horses we used to have a problem with rats (and probably mice) in the stables. My horse hated them, I found that an 18 hand ,1 tonne horse stamping on them seemed to cure the problem!
 
DrFeelgood said:
Wouldn't lard attract the little bastards?
Click to expand...


This is very true. We had reached Rodent Armageddon by this point, still with no clues to their access points. Ratman (Darren is his real name) assured us that we need to understand very quickly what our enemy was and Lard was the way forward (it may not have been lard it was white paste that looked like it?

But it worked. He could tell the difference between Squirrel hair, rat hair, mouse hair etc. He also explained that they need huge intake of water on any given day. SO ensure that they have no access to water (or drinking stuff) in your garage. That includes weeping taps etc. I believe that up to 75% of their daily intake is fluids.

Our enemy turned out to be a mixture of rats & squirrels and eventually required a full re-wire of my garage and also the (detached) house attic. They caused absolute carnage in a fairly short space of time. A six month contract with Darren (we still prefer RatMan) finally rid us of them. But that included the dreaded council inspectors for humane traps etc. Once in? hey tend to want tostay until there is no food source or warmth for their young. Keeping them out is the trick. Apparently, they are attracted to plastics used in electrical cable insulation (some say it is the actual current) but Darren said not as he worked in houses where the electricity had been off for some years but the chewing continued.
 
Caught 3 in the traps so far just another hundred or so to go LOL
 
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