How do I stop mice eating my car?!!!
In short…you can’t…certainly not here in Central France.
One nested in the air filter in my freelander, caused damage to the MAF and cost me a fortune !
Most times when the bonnet is opened on any of the cars, there is a pile of nuts and other debris in the corners by the wing / bulkhead.
On an older 3 series BMW they munched the wiring to the electric soft top…back in the UK they munched the wiring loom on my Mums Honda Civic…
Seems they have no brand loyalty lol
A neighbor put poison under the bonnet of his NC whilst overwintering in his barn. In the spring when he took the car out, the smell from the heater was dreadful. He wont be doing that again.
If its a lone agent, I suppose you could try baited live or lethal traps overnight in the hope you trap him or her.
Bon Chance
richard
Get a cat?
Take a look under the engine cover, the nest may be under there, it just pulls off upwards. Some easy chewing/nesting material under there.
I was just about to suggest looking under the “rocker cover” too as someting chewed that stuff on mine.
I assumed that the material was there just to muffle the sound of the injectors so replaced it with some bits of sound deadening material left over from when I treated my doors
Doing my head in!! Also found nest in my motorcycle air filter!
ive got poison everywhere in the garage with the bike.
Unfortunately the car lives outside.
They don’t seem to like my wife Hyundai!!!
This time of year wood mice/yellow necked mice are looking for a nice warm base to over-winter, if you can move the car regularly so it’s not a static object, which their base would be. That reminds me I’d better move mine around!!!
Traps are better than poison.
Hi,
I had this problem last year - the mice particularly like that nice soft spongy covering over some of the pipework around the engine on my MK3.
Both my husband, and a mechanic friend, suggested spraying / wiping the engine and engine bay area with WD40 - as mice do not seem to like the taste! I tried this, and it seems to have worked for me - I do re-apply the WD40 occasionally (especially this time of year!) and I also have a mouse trap situated behind the car in the open lean to where it lives (obviously make sure the mouse trap is somewhere safe where dogs noses, etc, cannot get at it!!!)
I use the car every couple of days, but that did not deter them, until I started using the WD40 - so it is worth a go!
Good luck!
JMK
Sounds like a cheap solution
I’ll give it ago
We use Dettol to dissuade the foxes from doing the marking business in the garden. The snag is that it only lasts a few day. The cameras show the foxes don’t come back for a few months. A less greasy alternative to WD40?
We did have some flashing lights/ultrasonic repellers which were highly effective but the solar cells all failed after a few frosts in only a couple of years, so none left now.
I have this mouse repeller in the garage. No mice since installing it, but I have no idea if it is effective or not, in the same way that throwing confetti off the open top of the tourist buses keeps the elephants away in London - how many elephants have you seen there?
This isn’t a new problem. In my 42 years working for BT it was always a problem in the underground network, customer premises and even exchanges. They will chew through cable sheathing and insulation allowing water in to corrode the wires and sometimes chew through the wires. Even fibre cables aren’t immune. Water doesn’t affect them but the fibres used are strands of glass half the thickness of a human hair and they will chew straight through those too.
In the auto industry there has been a shift to wire insulation made from soy, as well as rice husks, wood, peanut oil, corn and other sugars. Critics charge that plant-based plastics give off a faint vanilla smell when warm, turning vehicles into a moveable feast for pests.
A quick search online lists many different repellents for rodents including ammonia, pepper and peppermint oil. If the car is garage I would suggest spraying any or all of these around the area where the wheels sit. A mouse won’t jump up into the engine bay. It will climb up the tyres
Jays fluid is also said to work, it also works with moles according to my neighbour !
I was trapping ( with lethal traps ) around 3-5 mice per night in my veggie plot one spring ( seed sowing time ), and throwing them on a pile at the bottom of the garden for other wildlife to eat, which they did with some regularity.
Our biggest problem is the eddible dormouse, which I believe is a big problem in a small part of the southern UK as they are protected.
At my lake last winter we even had one hibernating inside the kettle…it had squeezed down the spout. When my other half went to make a drink she had the shock of her life when attempting to fill the kettle. They look really cute but love eating wire insulation ( amongst other things ).
I love nature…but it dosen’t half cost us some money at times
We got rescued by an adolescent Jack Russell Terrier (actually the other way round but he’s forgotten that). He was a difficult dog to deal with but he proved to be an expert mouser. We had a nest of them in our garage about ten years ago but he sorted them all out in one morning - he instinctively seemed to know they they were based in the garage loft and when I let him loose up there he frantically dug his way into a cardboard storage box to get to their nest and killed six in about two minutes. He laid them all out in a row for my inspection!
Unfortunately he did the same with my pet canary(!) and he will not tolerate hedgehogs, which he sometimes drags into the house and we have to rescue from him.
Wonderful little dogs. My sister’s one had only three thing in her mind; sleep, eat, kill.
It was dead easy to persuade her to take some exercise, we’d look out the French window and get excited, and the little dog knew we could see better from on high so believed us when we suggested there was a squirrel or rat in the garden. Fifteen fruitless minutes late we would console her and make sure she had a drink. Sure enough she would need to go out again in half an hour. Several repeats during the day meant she was flaked out at night and didn’t need to be walked (nightmare.)
Walking them can be a nightmare! We have an American written book about training Jack Russell terriers. It says in there that some of them will never be safe off the lead in public!
Ours has settled down a bit in his old age (apart from the hedgehog thing, he got another in the lounge about three weeks ago) but in his youth he was very prone to cause trouble with any other dog, irrespective of the size difference. Before we finally adopted him we took him to the vet’s for a health check (he had been found wandering and was starving and injured, probably been hit by a car). Although he only had three good legs at the time, he took one look at a huge Great Dane in the waiting room and flew at it! One bite from the Great Dane and he would have been a goner. Crazy dogs, but totally loyal and lovable when you get used to their killer instincts. Just a good thing that they don’t grow to the size of a German Shepherd or they would need to be in the zoo!
Does that foam actually do anything? Could I remove it altogether? Could it be replaced by something more durable?
Theyve been at it again last night!
Car surrounded by traps and poison now!
I do hope the poison is in containers not just scattered about!!
Hi. Have had similar problems on cars. We stay in the countryside with no street lighting and I now have a mains LED work light under the car on a cheap timer. It comes on each night about 6pm and goes off about the 6am in the morning. I adjust the timer regularly as the nights get darker or lighter. I put it in place from about the end of September until March and this seems to deter them. I have a trap in the engine bay as well just to catch any that do try but, with the light, this has never been set off. The LED light uses very little power and as long as you make sure it’s protected from water (seal up and joins, etc., with tape) the light goes on working without any issues. The light I use is ?Faithful Power Plus FPPSLTL20 SMD LED Task Light. It’s 20 watts and has a useful extra power take off so works well in it’s intended role as a work light. It is about £35 from Amazon but I find it a pretty cost effective solution overall - with the timer, I know it will be coming on each night even if I’m away for a while and not using the MX5. I suppose it depends on how easy it is for you to get power to it but I use a single socket extension lead well sealed with a plastic bag. The light is right under the engine bay and this keeps it pretty well protected from weather anyway. Just remember to remove it when you wash the car. If you park the car on a soft surface you can place the light in a slight depression so that you can drive off over the light/power lead without any issues. Hope this helps as I know they can be a complete pain. I tried various things like peppermint oil and so on but none of these worked as well as the light.