So I decide to start the car today, as I have done every few weeks since I put it away for the winter. This time I decided to see if the A/C was still working. I turned on the fan and the blower motor was very noisy and no air was coming out of the vents. I looked under the dash, into the blower fan (with the lever in "Max AC) and could not believe my eyes. The heater fan was completely plugged with insulation. Apparently last fall the squirrel that kept poking his head out of the grille of the car while it was parked outside the garage decided to build a nest there. One of the cats got the squirrel before I put the car in the garage for the winter., but not before he left his legacy in the car. Rather than going through all the work that would've been required to take the fan motor out I simply grabbed my sidecutters and snipped the plastic screen out to gain access to the fan. After doing so it was quite easy to scoop all the insulation out. I didn't take any "before" pics, but I did take an after (BTW, after pulling the insulation out, the A/C still works perfectly):
maybe this is why mine doesnt blow real hard
I had mice in my heater box the winter before last...yeah, they filled it up with junk, I had to pull all that out when I got the car back out, plus a dead baby mouse fell out, and the vents smelled like mouse pee for a year...ugh.
I hate rodents getting into the cars. Mice got into my Fairlane from the previous owner. I pulled the choke to start the car and all kinds of $%^! came falling from under the dash. The seats and headliner are all chewed through... I'm just afraid of what I might find when I start tearing the interior apart.
i had the same problem with a mouse in my old fairmont wagon.
That's why I have a cat ;)
My brother bought an old bronco and left it sitting outside for a few months, and he left the title in the glove box...it got chewed into little pieces. ooops.
Be thankful he didn't eat your wire harness.
In my experience they like to get into heater boxes...never understood why.
But they did that on my dad's Reliant when it was sitting, they did that on my Mustang, and they did it on my Thunderbird.
Same here...Car sat for 15yrs, so it made a nice home for some 4 legged creature.
(http://www.redspar.com/pics/rat.jpg)
+12
My buddy was telling me about something funky that happened not too long ago. Here in NE Ohio we have a major Delphi plant that used to be Packard Electric, where pretty much all of GM's wiring harnesses were made. Well, Delphi here is still mostly GM. My buddy worked for a contract company for Delphi. I guess a few years ago, in select neighborhoods, a lot of homeowners were getting outside cats so they'd keep the squirrel and chipmunk populations down. The critters were getting into the engine compartments of then brand-new GM cars and chewing on the engine harnesses. As Delphi investigated, they found it was only ONE wire that was attracting the animals (I think it was blue/pink).
Turns out, that was the wire the Delphi chose to enclose in a peanut-oil based sheath.
Oooooops. ;)
I also had a nest in my blower motor. I bet if you pull your fender wells out,you wil find a nest in there also............I did.
When I got the TC I had to pull the box out because it was stuffed from one end to the other. I soaked it in really strong cleaning solution called Awesome and the smell went away.
a squirrel got into a family friends 86 GT Vert one day while we were all outside bbqing and ate a chunk out of the side of his seat.
That's why I keep my car in a closed garage.........
When I pulled the fenders off I didn't find any nests in the fender wells (though that was where the insulation in the blower motor nest apparently came from), but I did find a nest under the battery tray AND under the air filter housing. I got them both with the shop vac.
Aerobird Motorsports: I, too have a cat. In fact, I've got four cats. The problem was, when I moved into this house I had about 40 squirrels, thanks to the big oak and maple trees nearby. Between me with the traps and the cats with their teeth I'm down to about one or two squirrels. I trapped seven of the s in the basp00get until I found the hole they were getting in...