Mice

[MontanaChinook]

I'll be parking my camper at a friend's house while I figure out how to get it and a car to where I'm living for the summer. Might be up to a month. He's out in the mountains a bit and has had a problem with mice chewing through spark plug wires in cars that sit there.

I'm getting nervous about an infestation in the Chinook. This thing is full of nooks & crannies. Any advice on how to help keep them out? Poison is not an option.

[WME]

Dryer sheets. mothballs. Maybe commercial stuff.......http://www.mouse-free.com/

[kgibson4]

Urinal cakes. Don't take them out of the cellophane, just cut a few small holes in it. Spread several cakes around the engine compartment. Probably the same in the coach...? Don't know about that; haven't tried it.

[snail powered]

Stainless steel wool stuff into any openings in the coach such as around the holes where the vent pipes from the waste takes go through the floor. Hardware stores sell it. I put that in the over-sized holes for those pipes that they drilled into the floors. I also squirted a small amount of spray foam in it too to secure it in place and keep out the drafts and road dirt. Don't over do the spray foam or it will push the stainless wool up out of the void. There was also a big gap around my gasoline filler tube where it ran down through the floor so I did the same treatment to it. The foam and wood is just soft enough that it won't cause an abrasion issue for the pipes and filler tubes and it can be dug out if ever that needs to happen. In other words it is reversible.

[Back East Don]

Urinal cakes.

I know this comes from being basically a 12 year old at heart but this is a funny name for a product. I should probably try being a grown up but figure it is too late at this point. Couldn't you just imagine commercials for it with some sort of snappy jingle?

[MontanaChinook]

Alright, I'll look into that stuff.

Thanks

[Derek up North]

Buy your friend a cat?

[bufbooth]

put a rubber snake under the hood, and get some metal screen and put it over the top of the engine,

that is push the screen down over the top of the engine. The screen makes it hard for the mice to travel

around on the engine. This worked for me to keep the mice out of the manifold area. Also, pull your air

filter out and put a metal screen in front of the vent inlets, they love to make a nest there. For under $20

you can get a metal mouse trap (mice go in but cannot come out) that will hold up to 30 mice.

http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4003/Pest-Control/Mouse-Trap-Multi-Catch?pricode=WY726&gadtype=pla&id=H-4003&gclid=CKW46-3NssUCFQaPaQodYCMAQA&gclsrc=aw.ds

[linda s]

Boa constrictors love mice and they are very clean and quiet.

Linda S

[MontanaChinook]

I read something about peppermint oil on cotton balls around the camper, and keeping the hood open. I'm going to start there and see what happens. I have a Weber carb so my air inlet is non-existant.

Sounds like the best method is putting up a barrier around the entire vehicle of maybe 1' tall metal sheeting, because the mice can't climb it. But that'll require material and construction, and I'm just planning to drop the camper off this afternoon and leave it without spending much time.

I'll see if my friend has some metal mesh though. That seems like a good idea. But honestly, spark plug wires are replaceable. If they make a home in some hidden hollow of my camper...that's what I'm more concerned about.

[snail powered]

Don't worry so much, you can plug up any potential mouse entry holes in a very short work session. There is a very small, finite number of places that are potential entry points to the interior. Get a piece of cardboard to lay on, an inspection mirror and flashlight and crawl under the rig.

[zero]

I've yet to see anything on this planet that will stop New York mice from getting into a car, truck, or camper. I'm sure it varies by the mouse-breed. I've had them chew holes right through a 3/8" thick plywood panel, hard plastic, and even through thin aluminum. One of their favorite places to nest is inside the air-cleaner of the engine, insulation jacket around the hot-water heater, and inside the heater-AC blower-cage. Steel mesh can stop them but you can't wrap the entire camper with steel mesh.

As to stuff that is supposed to irritate them? I've tried Irish Spring soap, dryer sheets, moth-balls, electronic devices, etc. NONE worked. In fact, after awhile - I was finding the soap, sheets, and moth balls half eaten up.

I've had nowhere near as bad a problem here in Michigan. I suspect because the grass is shorter around the vehicles. Mice don't want to run across fields with short grass and poor cover - or paved roadways.

Hey, maybe the mice in other parts of the USA are less aggressive.

[Vanman]

Guess I got "lucky" with my Mom's old Dodge Caravan up in Washington state. They were starting to chew all the rubber lines under the hood, left the brake lines at the wheels alone. I spent an entire day wrapping that hard plastic spiral tubing protectors around everything in the engine compartment. Didn't cost too much and it worked My back hurt for a few days is all. These were the kind that has a bushy ended tail, never did see 'em but you could see all the brush strokes in the dust.
The damn ones that would get inside the house would eat anything, even the wiring for the alarm sensors. Finally gave up and went wireless for all the sensors.

[snail powered]

Oh bushy tailed wood rats...known by their common name....pack rats! You can throw shiny Mardi Gras beads at them . Or leave out tiny shiny button batteries for them andmaybe they will swallow them.

One piece of good advice is steam clean your engine if you ever do get mice in it to remove any trace of rat/mice pee because that is what attracts more mice.

[MontanaChinook]

Well it's left there now. I really didn't have time to do much; just dropped it off and quickly unloaded anything I thought I'd need before I figure out how to get it to my house.

We put a couple mouse traps around the engine bay, pepperment oil in the coach, and the hood is propped up.

Your camper might only have a few places to get in...maybe mine does too, but it's really not so easy as crawling under the camper and looking around. Under my camper is about 6 inches of space, which makes it pretty hard to get under there, especially on dirt and not pavement, and my camper, anyways, has all sorts of different surfaces sticking out, cracks between them, bulges and boxes and places I can't see into.

I was half way under there earlier this spring trying to figure out where all the dust was coming from, since clearly there's a direct path from the rear wheel wells into the coach. One really dusty road and I'm cleaning a thick layer of sand/dirt off every surface of my coach, shaking it off clothes, cleaning it off forks & spoons...

My camper has holes in places other than just the holes they cut. All sorts of places are separating from each other and leaving gaps. And they aren't places you can see. They're tucked up in between areas. I tried to get expanding foam into them, but I still get a crazy amount of road dust inside if I drive down really dusty roads.

Anyway, it is what it is for now. I'm not stressing about it, or I would have just left it in front of someone's house in town. But this place is the one place I know it won't annoy anyone's neighbors, so I'm just chancing the mice, and wanting to do whatever llitle quick things I can to help keep them out while I work out a way to get it down with me.

[zero]

You haven't had fun until you hop in your car/truck/RV on a cold stay, turn on the heater and get nice warm air coming out the vents enhaced with mouse piss. It's happened to every vehicle we own. I usually have to remove the entire blower-assembly to get even half the odor out. One day, my wife started up our Subaru, turned on the blower for the heater - and it started making awful noises and then finally stopped working. I pulled it out and it had around 8 mouse babies in it that got "blended" in the blower-wheel. What a mess. No adults found though. Seems they "abandoned ship" pretty fast.

Another time - I started up my Chevy diesel truck and drove it 120 miles. I ran very hot - almost boiling over the whole trip. Otherwise, it seemed to run OK. After getting to my destination - I noticed the fuel gauge was at half-tank. That was weird. Usually 120 miles on a full tank hardly makes the needle move. Truck usually gets 21 MPG. This time it got around 9 MPG. My little kid helped discover the problem. He was playing around behind the truck and stuck his small arm up the tail-pipe and it was covered with soot. I saw that and figured I had a severe air-intake problem. Yeah, sure did. The intake manifold on the V8 diesel was plugged shut with a mouse nest.

[Maineah]

I'm not sure how well it works but I really have no problems with mice. I have captured quite a few with "Gluey Louie’s" on top of the tires. It's a super sticky stuff with bait I kind of figured they can't jump real high so they must be coming up the tires.

[shibs]

I winni had all the wires chewed through, thanks for mice, Now I store it on a asphalt.

How do we prevent mice from getting into the airbox? steel wire ?

[shibs]

You haven't had fun until you hop in your car/truck/RV on a cold stay, turn on the heater and get nice warm air coming out the vents enhaced with mouse piss. It's happened to every vehicle we own. I usually have to remove the entire blower-assembly to get even half the odor out. One day, my wife started up our Subaru, turned on the blower for the heater - and it started making awful noises and then finally stopped working. I pulled it out and it had around 8 mouse babies in it that got "blended" in the blower-wheel. What a mess. No adults found though. Seems they "abandoned ship" pretty fast.

Another time - I started up my Chevy diesel truck and drove it 120 miles. I ran very hot - almost boiling over the whole trip. Otherwise, it seemed to run OK. After getting to my destination - I noticed the fuel gauge was at half-tank. That was weird. Usually 120 miles on a full tank hardly makes the needle move. Truck usually gets 21 MPG. This time it got around 9 MPG. My little kid helped discover the problem. He was playing around behind the truck and stuck his small arm up the tail-pipe and it was covered with soot. I saw that and figured I had a severe air-intake problem. Yeah, sure did. The intake manifold on the V8 diesel was plugged shut with a mouse nest.

JDE, you have a good helper!

[toyohome]

I've had the same problem and found that retail available Tomcat blocks really do work. A block or two inside the motorhome and under the hood will definitely get rid of them. The rodents chew on the very tasty blocks instead of wires. It works!

If you don't like the poison methods I would recommend you get, instead of Tomcat, Just a cat. But you have to get one that is very hungry. The problem then is getting rid of cat pee odors inside the MH. We'll address that here in the forum following our rodent discussion.

Recently I discovered chewed wires under the hood of my ToyoTacomapickup. I put a Tomcat block there and shortly thereafter, noticed it had been chewed on. Then I discovered a water moccasin near the truck with a fat bulge in his belly. Two problems solved with one poison block! It works!