How do you keep rats out of your engine?

My car’s transmission has been acting up, so I opened the hood Saturday to check the transmission fluid. There was a rat’s nest on top of the engine – and the rat squeezing its way down the back of the engine compartment and off to parts unknown. I scooped out all the fluff (including some household insulation – I still don’t know where that came from) but didn’t notice anything else.

Sunday the transmission was really slipping. This morning I took the car into Victorville to the local (as if anything in the high desert is “local”) AAMCO shop. I expected the tranny to be kaput. After looking it over the mechanic said “I have good news and bad news.”

Uh, oh!

The good news was that there was nothing wrong with my transmission, a fact it cost $59 to find out. The bad news was that the rat had chewed up a lot of wiring in the engine compartment, including the electronics that controlled the automatic shifting of my transmission.

Now the car is at an electrical repair shop, and I have no idea how much they’re going to soak me for fixing it. I just hope it’s less than the cost of replacing the transmission.

I read someplace that the rat population, even in “nice” neighborhoods in the city, outnumbers the human by about five to one. In a rural area like this…who knows?

The real question, which I now pose to wise Dopers everywhere, is how do I prevent this from happening again? What’s a good way to repel rats from a car’s engine compartment?

I may have to start the block heater 30 minutes before I think about starting the car, but at least I don’t have to worry about engine rats. :eek:

Cats

Cats are pretty much Coyote Chow ™ here in the desert. :wink:

I’m told mothballs will help keep them away, but since I’ve never really had an engine rat problem on which to test this, I can’t verify this.

Get a Buick. Rats hate Buicks.

My first couple years of college I stored my car to save money. It dramatically reduced the cost of insurance. Of course I had to worry about rats, so I would use the moth ball idea. A few around the engine and some on the ground underneath. I never had any rat problems over about 8-9 months of storage.

If you have a garage, it may be possible to keep a couple cats away from the coyotes by just leaving them inside.

Good luck!

D-con poison in the area also works well, though it is not family pet friendly and some animal lovers have a problem with it. A cat would also work. I used to get mice nests in the engine area of the lawn tractor. D-con in the shed has stopped that.

I used to get field mice under my hood. I could be 200 miles from home and open the hood and there would be one of those little bastards sitting on the air cleaner staring at me. About the only thing that would work would be to make sure I moved the car every day to a different spot.

What? The coyotes are too good to eat rats? Well !!

Lead contender (so far, anyways) for Post of the Year - 2004

;j

Don’t do anything about it. Tell your friends you drive a mase-rat-i.

:smiley:

I found a powder at Ace Hardware that is supposed to repel rats, but it is crystals of fox abd bobcat urine. I’m afraid if I sprinkle that stuff in the engine I won’t be able to stand sitting (?) in the car. Another suggestion was to prop the hood open overnight every night because the rats won’t go in if it’s open. Trouble is, you have to chain the hood down over whatever you prop it up on so it won’t blow off. We get some pretty stiff winds up here.

I set a couple of those sticky traps. Maybe I’ll catch the little buggers and dispose of them (humanely, of course).

I tried the D-con for mice in the garage and the mice stored it in the open spaces on the underside of the hood of the car. Then, when the hood was opened, the pellets would rattle around and some would fall out. I went back to good old mousetraps. Between the house and the garage I’ve trapped at least 15 of them this season. And I’ve found a 2-3 left at the back door by what I assume is a stray cat in the neighborhood.

Though rats, like dogs, are among the few creatures to have acquired the human taste for peppers (living on the garbage behind the house is almost as potent a ‘domestication’, as sharing the Big House with Massa), it remains an acquired taste, nonetheless.

It sounds like your house is far from others, so you might actually have some hint as to whether your rats like the stuff. If so, periodic application of capsaicin (tabasco sauce, medical rub, pepper spray, etc.), mixed in water or oil and sprayed, might act as a deterrent.

Use Scotch Bonnet or strong capsaiscin not a mild jalapeno - you don’t want to just season it for their dining pleasure. “Oh good, here comes the waiter with the pepper mill.”) Be careful not to get any on yourself when spraying or working on the car later.

It should burn off hot engine surfaces fairly quickly (not a problem). It’ll also wash off the wires to a fair extent on driving through heavy water (not a huge problem in the desert, I’m guessing) or spraying with a hose (probably a good safety tip before repairs.)

You will have to re-apply, and your car may smell like a spicy entree sometimes, but I think it’s worth considering.