NE14RoxCJ

Hmmm. I found 2 pages from a porn magazine behind the headlight on my TL the first time I looked close at the battery. I have NO idea how that got in there?? The car was owned by a woman in Dallas.

Majofo

But the real question is... where's the rest of it??

id hit it

Well, I came across this post and figured I'd add my photo as well. My car sat for 5 months pretty much untouched, and smelled something foul. I had a few people get in and smell it. They claimed it was fine, I knew otherwise. I found a whole peanut, cracked in half and a nest.

calsdad

Sorry to revive a really old thread - but I've run into a similar issue with my 2006 TL. The car sat for a few months because I it needed a timing belt, and I had a backlog of car repairs to do on other vehicles.

A couple of weeks ago - I cleaned out the entire interior of the car - and found that a mouse had obviously been into the glove compartment (torn up paper towel shreds and some mouse poop). So I got the timing belt fixed finally late last week - and when I drove the car to work the next day, I find there's all sorts of crap blowing out of the vents - and a pretty nasty smell that I recognize as a sign of mice (I've smelt it before in my barn when I cleaned out their damn nests).

Looking for some internet advice - I ran across this thread , and I've already taken apart the cowl - and I've pulled out the glove box and so forth and even pulled out the cabin air filter.

Here's what has me a bit perplexed - it's not obvious that they got into the car thru the cabin filter. There's not hole chewed thru it that I can see - but they've obviously been inside the car because I found more chewed up mouse junk on top of the glovebox backing plate when I pulled that out.

Any idea where else they might be sneaking into the car? I'm going to have to start pulling apart the ventilation system so I can clean it out - I'm taking nfnsquared's warning seriously since just driving to work made me feel a little sick for about half a day. I suspect there really is a deposit of mouse junk up inside the ventilation system somewhere.

Any help appreciated.

nfnsquared

Not to alarm you, but look up "Hanta virus" and find out if it's endemic to your area. If it is, I wouldn't set foot in that car until the duct system has been professionally disinfected. Hanta virus is not endemic to my area, so I went the DIY method with Lysol. Good luck and be careful!!

calsdad

Thanks.
I wasn't familiar with Hanta virus specifically - but I knew there was some pretty nasty things you could catch from mouse droppings and so forth. I checked out the CDC site - and apparently that is widespread all across North America, even into Canada. Doesn't seem like there is really any place that you could not potentially be exposed to it.

I started taking the car apart this afternoon. The cowl area was clean. So I pulled out the glovebox and the cabin air filter. The air filter itself had a lot of stuff stuck in it on the intake side, but there were no obvious holes thru it where it looks like anything ate thru it. So I pulled out the blower motor - the inside of the blower motor housing appeared to be pretty clean - other than a few small pieces of obvious mouse type stuff (some chewed up foam and seed husks and so forth). Something obviously has been eating some of the white soundproofing pads that are under the dash though. I pulled off the passenger side kick panel in the footwell - and something had ate up the white pad on the backside of that panel pretty good. They ate up one of the white pads under the dash in the blower motor area too. So whatever was in there was both inside the dash area - AND inside the HVAC vents.

But I still can't find where they got into the car and traveled between the HVAC venting and the underside of the dash.

So I pulled out the center console vent section - and looked down inside there and didn't see anything obvious. I also contorted myself under the passenger side of the dash and shined a flashlight into the vent duct where the blower motor hooks up - and that looks pretty clean too. I did notice that something had been eating the white soundproof pad just behind the center console vent section though. Looks like what I'm going to have to do next is pull out the left and right dash vents and see what I can see in there.

I remembered tonite I've got an inspection camera in my toolbox - so if I can get the dash vents out - maybe I can snake the inspection camera into the ducting and see if there's anything obvious inside the ducts before I start pulling it any further apart.

The thing that is baffling me though is - how the hell did the damn things get into the car - and get into both the ducting AND under the dash. Thinking about it a little - I'm going to have to check the door seals and maybe around some of the wiring grommets on the firewall and see if they chewed their way in thru one of those routes.

I'm also going to look into something like Agent Orange or maybe a napalm strike on my lot to try and take all the little bastards out.

calsdad

Anybody know if there's an easy way to get inside the compartment that has the heater core in it? I've pulled a whole bunch of stuff apart - and haven't yet found the smoking gun on where the crap that was blowing out of my vents was coming from.

I've got the blower motor out - pulled out the dash vents, pulled the console out, etc. I've got a Snap-On endoscope type inspection camera and I've shoved it as far into the ducting as I can get it - and I can't find any real evidence of mouse infestation in the vents themselves so far - there is definitely some random mouse debris in there ( I had wads of stuff blow out of the vents along my small things that looked like mouse droppings) - but I can't find what seems to be the source. The stuff was mainly coming out of the defroster when started up the car and turned that on to clear up the windshield - so I'm thinking there *might* be some junk down inside the heater core compartment.

I pulled out most of the console (the rear section) - and found a mouse next right inside the shifter mechanism. There *were* white sound insulation pads on the inside of the two trim panels on either side of the front section of the console - those were both eaten away - the passenger side almost completely. I also found what looks like mouse droppings under the storage compartment area of the console.

I don't want to drive the car again until I'm sure the HVAC system is cleaned out since I don't want to be ingesting mouse crud every time I turn on the heat or AC system.

If anybody is interested - I found a place that makes a nice long flexible brush made for cleaning out car HVAC ducts:

24" Wheel Woolies Vent Brush - Braun Automotive Brush WWSMVB24
24" Wheel Woolies Vent Brush - Braun Automotive Brush WWSMVB24 | eBay

The brush is mounted on a flexible plastic rod so they should be able to reach right up inside the ducting.