This may be a bit OT, but I am posting this warning based on what I have just learned. Wife's new 4Runner started running rough with lots of idiot lites on steady. Long story short, back at the dealership they diagnose problem is rodents eating wiring. This coincides with my seeing a squirrel hanging around the entrance to the garage. I thought that was strange. Internet search reveals that for some years now manufacturers have been using soy based wiring that is like candy for little furry critters. News to me. It is so prevalent that I think a class action lawsuit is in order and I am surprised that there has not been a recall. So, I don't know if rodder aftermarket wiring has or is going this route (supposedly done to make them more biodegradable in the landfills) but if you are buying a loom or kit, you might want to ask. Obviously, you don't have to have a "rodent problem" in your garage. I think my little pal hitched a ride over from a heavily treed area where the car had been parked the previous day. FWIW.
It's not just new cars,I was in the barn last week looking at trying to get the old '65 Ford truck running again,the squirrels had taken up residence under the hood with acorns & pecans and as a side dish they have eaten up the wiring under the hood. I hate furry tailed rats! HRP
Squirrels love all kinds of plastic. PVC, cross linked PE, plane PE. I am in wire coating industry to support this habit of old cars and we had to develop rodent proof coatings for some parts of country where it is really bad. Pellet gun is best way I have found to keep them away from my house.
Tree rats are an endangered species at my house.One tore into the wire under a neighbors new Chevy truck.
tree rats and ground squirells/mice up here eat any wire coating new or old if the car sits for a while , had one critter eat all my MSd 8mm silicone wires off at the cap plus part of the harness when food got short when it was cold last year . should have seen the lawn tractor , all I had was bare copper wires from the insturment panel down to the engine ate the harness wrap and all .and had no spark plug leads on the coils . this year we have tomkat mouse poison set out for them .
My wife's OT car (still under warrantee) threw a check engine light so I sent her to the dealer. They found the O2 sensor wires were chewed up. Literally the next day, my OT (out of warrantee) car signaled me that my oil level sensor failed. I found the wires to the oil sensor chewed up. Repaired wiring and covered with heat shrink tubing. A few days later, dash light on again, wires chewed again. This time I sleeved some 5/8" heater hose over the wires as a sheath.
I did read about this wire covering a while back. Sometimes the new "ecologically friendly" crap just doesn't work. In the machine shop where I worked we were sold "ecologically safe" cutting oil for the mills, lathes and drill presses, turns out it was made from an animal fat derivative. After about a week the shop was inundated with literally thousands of flies, attracted by the fat. What a mess!
From what I've learned reading about this, all of the critters just like to chew on things. What is pissing me off learning about this is that the soy based wiring seems to attract them and this sort of info has not been promulgated by the auto manufacturers. My wife's car was literally running fine the day prior when she parked it in the garage. Next day to go out and run errands, it is running like crap with numerous lites and I got the squirrel winking at me as he stood in the garage doorway. I think he hitched a ride over from the tree festooned area the day before. My '36 was parked right next to the wife's car with the hood open and there is no damage there. So, I think he hitched a ride to satisfy his soy candy sweet tooth. Honda acknowledges the problem and is offering some sort of anti-rodent protective tape.
In the late fifties, DuPont was creating a plastic for use with water/sprinkler systems. The pipe was donated to the Boy Scout camp in San Diego and it was installed by Navy SeaBees. Within months, critters were munching on it and the whole system was unuseable. DuPont changed the formula and the new stuff was reinstalled the following year and it still may be there for all I know.
Back during the big war there were license plates made of a soy-based product. Goats and other critters on the farm would eat the plates right off the trucks. Seems we are doomed to repeat the past. .
My brother's Toyota truck just had to have harness replaced. I sent him this link. http://www.amazon.com/Honda-4019-2317-Tape-Rodent-40192317/dp/B00AJTG3N0
I had to go to a customer south or the border a while back because the insulation spec from BMW for their cars made in South Carolina was such a tough spec from no smoke and no halogens that when you tried to pull with circuit size wire out of the cardboard barrel, the insulation would split long ways on the wire. They were making crap because some do gooder had the bright idea to keep the car safe if it caught on fire. What a dim bulb!!
I can just imagine how much fun it will be to wrap that Honda tape all over the harness. Tell you what, who wants to go in with me and invest in an anti-rodent tape wrapping company chain. We could make millions!
In my O/T Subaru I had to put chicken wire in to keep the rabbits from eating the hoses. They love that soy based stuff!
Roddent chew in anything soy bean based or not, I solved that problem in my house with a cat, no more chewed out electrical wire (those few not protected by a PVC tube), no more water pipe insulation eaten away. I remember them eating the weatherstrips on customer cars in one of the shop I worked. I had the wiring on a PS2 game station eaten away by rabbits. One of their problem is they need to chew to wear their teeth and keep them sharp.
When I lived in Denver had the rabbits eat the wiring under the hood on my company car parked inside the Denver International Airport parking garage!! They did it twice when it was real cold and food was short.
[QUOTE= So, I don't know if rodder aftermarket wiring has or is going this route (supposedly done to make them more biodegradable in the landfills) Well thought out! So how does the actual wire "bio-degrade"?!!!!!
I guess that the actual wire does not degrade, just the coating. Maybe they were thinking of a StarWars type of scenario with wookies or some creature walking about harvesting the raw copper.
I was just going to start a thread on the very subject of animal damage to car wiring systems. This past week my auto driving lights started flickering on and off with intermittent brights and my cruise control suddenly blows fuses and I suspect a rodent in the midst! It's happened before but not in a while so I'm tearing into it this Friday!
This thread explains an event that occurred a few years ago. I gave my daughter the Olds Aurora I owned, really nice car that rode nice, got decent gas mileage and was fairly quick. She had it about a month and something got in the wiring harness and chewed the wires up, it took $500 to fix it.
The problem is similar everywhere, city-suburbs-country, just varying critters. I keep strychnine pellets (gopher bait) under any car that needs protecting so they have a snack to fill up on first..... available at any farm store. .
I'v seen a few of these cases in my gig. The worst was an OT car that the owner kept in a garage where he also stored his dog food. The engine valley under the intake was PACKED with kibble.
The loggers around here hate porcupines. They will eat the wiring and hydraulic hoses....anything that is rubber or rubber coated. Leave some equipment overnight and it won't move by morning.
i got a barn cat just for this reason. nothing else seamed to work, traps, poison, repellent. both my cat and dog are patient enough to wait them out. they both appear to do it out of the love of the hunt.
A friend had his late model truck wiring chewed many times from ground hogs. Can't shoot enough of them. Ago