Snails attacked my engine!

[topfuel]

I think BruceWE4 and TurboDave just solved the mystery
I've been a mechanic for 16 years and have had to repair
mouse damage numerous times. Not too long ago I had to
replace an entire engine harness on a guys car because of
mouse damage, and 2 weeks later the car came back with
more chewed wires Very costly...
I've seen air cleaner boxes filled to the top with dog food,
old bread, nuts, bird seed and whatever else they can drag
inside. I've never seen snails, but like TurboDave said,
"We don't know from snails" in this area.
Worse yet is when they get inside your car, I had a car
with an odor from the vents and found a dead mouse trapped
in the heater case, NASTY...
One funny thing is, they like blower motor fan wheels,
I've had cars come in with blower wheels packed full of
sound insulation padding. Imagine the mice sleeping soundly
in your blower wheel, then waking to the sound of you
flipping the blower switch to high so you can defrost the
windshield
Bottom line Ken, get rid of whatever is using your car as
a home before it gets ugly.

 

[bruce]

So the obvious conclsuion is a French Guy or Gal that likes Escargo was living under the hood.
Er, maybe they thought it was ThisCarCanGo......

 

[ACLR8R]

A couple of years ago my neighbors cat crawled up into their engine bay because it was warm. In the morning they started the car and the cat got caught in the belts, it made a horrible sound and mess!!

 

[BUICKTR]

IT'S TIME TO TAKE THE SALT OUT!!!!!!

 

[Ken Cunningham]

Yes, this is making sense. Thanks Dave and the whole crew. I was perplexed by a couple of things that I didn't put into my earlier posts: 1) there was a peanut shell among the snail debris; 2) a chewed off piece of the hood insulator was laying over by the heater box. Snails bringing up a peanut didn't make sense, therefore my conjecture that perhaps vandalism was at work. And how could snails chew off a piece of the insulator and move it over a foot?

But a rat crawling up into the compartment could account for all that weirdness. My car is parked outside in the driveway at night. No squirrels in the suburbs here, few mice. But rats do live in the palm trees hereabouts, and there is a palm on the bank next to my driveway. Time to go about some rat extermination, I think.

 

[fc227]

Last winter I decided to go and start the car up for it's once a week winter deal. I had the hood open on it two days before this, But did not start it. I usually check the oil every time before I start the car. (It’s an old habit my dad got me into.) .

So I let it turn over until oil pressure comes up pump the gas a couple times (carb turbo), she fires off. So I'm looking at the gauges in the car making sure everything OK and look up out the windshield and there are two little eyes looking back at me. He or she had started building a nest just above the windshield wiper motor. So I popped the hood and seen it run across the cowl and down the passanger side fender well I run over to that side of the car And I grab shovel that is near the house and start chasing it around the yard. While this is going on the MS & kids where watching at first they did see the mouse. Then they did, I chased this mouse for 10 minutes. Never did get it. But I figured it would not come back, so the next day after I cleaned the partial nest out, it came back and started to rebuild. Cleaned it out one more time, and that mouse never came back after that.

But the rest of the family got a kick out of it.

I live in the sticks so there is plenty of critters out here. But the darn mice are everywhere.

 

[Ken Cunningham]

Closure

Brought back this old thread to bring some closure to it. The quick update: I caught the rat that did it. For more, read on...

I was about 95% sure that TurboDave had it right when he said that a squirrel/mouse/rat was bringing the snails up into the engine. But I was hemming and hawing about where it happened (the car sits in my driveway each night, but I wasn't 100% sure that it happened there), and what to do about it. Then my son drove my wife's car to school last week and said that it lost power on the hills and the check engine light came on. I plugged in the scan tool and read that there was a "Misfire in Cylinder 5" (Gotta love OBD2 and its very specific error codes). Popped the hood and found the #5 plug wire chewed through to the core. Now that iced it.

Since I had to replace the wires, I decided to do the plugs as well. I will never complain about changing the Regal plugs again! The Grand Am v-6 is a royal PITA. There is just no access until you remove all 3 ignition coils, two mounting plates (w/ 2 nuts all-but-impossible to get a socket on), and a wire loom. Then when this is all done, each of the 3 plugs in the back are just as hard to remove as our only hard one, the last one on the p/s (#6?).

Not wanting to do this again, it was time for action against the culprit. Given my wife's sensibilities (she volunteers at an animal rescue center) I had to try a humane trap. Luckily, a TruValue in Oceanside rents them for $4/day. Over 2 nights the culprit stole the bait w/o tripping the door. He was just too light on his feet. So I had given him his chance to go easily. I returned the trap and bought a 'snap trap'. Friday night he took the bait and didn't spring the trap. Obviously, I'm dealing with a crafty one. Last night (Sat.) I worked on the trap to really clamp the bait (bacon) into the trigger. It worked. This morning a large rat was under my car in the trap.

I'll consider myself lucky if the only damage done is what I aready know about, because it could just be that there are other wires or hoses that have been munched by this miscreant.