Mice in the Machine

[johnvincent]

Cool story...

Wanna start this off by giving a shoutout to Sparkey, who hooked me up with his old DLX seats which were in way better shape than mine!

Being lazy and generally low on free time, it was a while before I finally decided to swap the seats out on my '83 DLX.
Thanks again, Sparkey, for being such a pal with those seats! Made such an improvement on the interior. (Also - I kinda dig the vinyl DLX seats more than the SR5s but then again, I've never sat in an SR5 chair. They seem easier to clean too...)

ANYWAY.... I take off the front seats. Then I get around to the back bench when, low and behold...much to my surprise...I found an old mouse nest. Maybe they're baby rats - can't tell. Anyone else know? There were 6 mummified little rodents and, of course, a ton of rodent skat. So gross! Probably explains source of that funky smell I couldn't quite place.

mice.JPG

Those guys were probably under my seat for years. I bought the car in April 2014 and it's been passed around for quite a while.

Has this happened to anyone else before?

[Petros]

I have found similar in the squirl cage heater fan, it was in a car I bought that had not run for 5 or more years. first time I turned on the fan mouse nest flew out all the vents. Had to take it all appart and steriize all of the ducts to get the mouse smell out. I wonder how much dead mouse parts were blow around into the air.

Another time my daughter, who almost drove here Suzuki everyday (in collage) said her heater fan was making a funny noise so she did not use it. It has just sat for the weekend, fourtuantly I had the time to pull the fan motor (very similar design to the Tercel), acess was easy, you did not even have to pull the glove box or the housing to get the fan out, just three screws and it drops into the passenger foot well. Anyway, there was a freash mouse family, killed by the fan, guts everywhere, in the a new mouse nest. the "funny noise" were seveal of the tails were outside the fan cage and were whipping the inside of the housing. I showed it to her like "look! I found the sourse of the funny noise!", she was grossed out. I said good thing you did not use it, would have put mouse guts all over the inside of the ducts. Looks like she did the mouse family in when she turned it on, instant death. Unlike me, if it makes a funny noise I use it anyway, and ignor the nosie until I get a chance to open it out.
come to think of it, daily driver heater fan just started making a "funny noise" figure some leaves got down in there, but who knows. heater does not put out much heat anyway, need to flush out the heater core.

Lots of the Tercels and honda's I have rescued from the crusher had been sitting for years, all of them had nests all over (not all of them mouse nests). I pretty much figure I have to pull out the whole interior on those cars, and clean it down to bare metal with soap and water, bleach and lysol, before I put it back together. Recently had to do that with our MPV 4wd after it sat for a year waiting for a new timing belt. A real PIA, but there is no way around it, worth it. Nothing like a smell of freasly steriized and cleaned car.

you should clean out all the compartments under the trim, and the heat ducts too. the "fast" way to clean the ducts is to turn fan on high and spry lysol or similar down the intake, switching it from defrost, heat, vent, etc to get all of the ducts. Best is to rully remove them and clean them of course, but at least you can serizige them fairly fast, and make sure there is nothing in the ducts that can make you sick. there is a product specifically made for that in fact called "sani-fresh" or something similar, for heating/a.c. ducts.

[dlb]

i had a very similar but likely far worse-smelling incident that i chronicled on here:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8994&p=65107

great pic of the mummified corpses. i wonder what killed them. god, it's disgusting to think you've been driving around with those things under the back seat for almost a year. disgusting in a funny way, though.

[Sparkey]

Johnvincent, Funny story. Glad your enjoying the Seats, and Glad you found the Mystery smell.

[ARCHINSTL]

OT a tad, but I cannot resist: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10296&hilit=mice
Tom M.

[johnvincent]

HAHAA EW!! you guys have way worse stories than mine!