I am going to share a few things on Dead Mouse Hunting. If you found this thread, then you know what I am talking about. Some kind of smell is coming from your beautiful car, and you know it's got to be some kind of dead animal, but you have no idea where the smell is coming from. Maybe you've come to the Corvette Forum, hoping for a little help from other Corvette owners who have had the same problem. Well, that's my story anyway. So sharing a little of what happened with us, hopefully will set others on a similar path to freeing themselves of this awful disgrace. So here goes...



First thing...a super important lesson to know about such an awesome car, if you happen to be reading this and don't have a mouse problem yet.

Plan ahead and store your Corvette where mice will not get at it! Do whatever you can to avoid this problem. To have to search out dead mice and nests later is going to be a lot of work and if you aren't determined to find them, and meticulous about searching, you will want to give up!

Second thing...

I have the added blessing of having my husband, a long-time Harley Davidson mechanic, with tools, knowledge, and ability to dismantle parts of this car without damaging it, and me being a smaller woman to be able to crawl around inside the car and search out signs of mice. So, be sure to know what you are doing when you get into things, and know where it's wise to stop and let a professional take over. The last thing you want to do is get rid of mice and be left with a really messed up car.

Third thing...

The smell of dead mouse can be found by following your nose. Yes, this is disgusting, takes a lot of courage to go back time and time again and smell around for its source, but if you do this, it will lead you the right direction. Determining where to look is a little bit of trial and error, but it is true, the smell gets stronger the closer you get to where your dead mice are.

Now, there are lots of details on how we finally found our mice but for those who likely will want the short story, no time to read a long forum post, and want to just get started hunting...

You are looking for evidence of mice, anything that has been chewed is a big clue, plus watch for leaves, acorns, pine needles, etc. in places they ought not be. If you find them all piled in one area, you definitely have a mouse problem. Here are the places where we found evidence of ours.

Outside the car:

- The spare tire tray underneath the car.

- The lower side panels outside the passenger side door. They could be on either side but ours were only on one.

- Take off the shorter side panels that give you access to the battery on the drivers side, and to the heater box on the passenger side. Watch here for signs of mice. It's where we think their main nesting spot is, but because we didn't take this area apart, we may still find more here later.

- There was some evidence of them chewing around the windshield wipers. They chewed a hole through the tubing that brings up the wiper fluid.

- There were also some chewed up areas around the battery.

There are probably many other areas a mouse could be found outside the car, as you see in these forums, they can be anywhere. So you have to follow their trail...use your nose and eyes and look carefully around at everything under the hood.


Inside the car:

- We found loose chewed up fabric under the passenger seat. A little more investigating and we found they were traveling beneath the carpeting from the back of the car, chewing the underpadding and taking it up to the front of the car to build nests. The carpet itself looked fine. You can see here how much of the padding needed to be removed.



- Under the dash. We only had to take apart the lower passenger side because there was no smell on the driver's side. Don't take apart more than you need to, and if you do, be careful here, nothing comes apart too easily, nor does it go back together easily, either. Label every screw or bolt you take out and where you took it out of. (we ended up with three or four leftover when we were done) You will need several different types of tools for this area, but this was a favorite spot for our mice, and necessary to open up to get them out.

- There was a nest sitting atop a piece of metal framing above where all the wiring is under the passenger side dash. We luckily only had one chewed wire. You can see the underside of this area in the picture below.



- There is also in this area, an opening in the side of the car that allows wires to feed from the interior of the car, through a rubber boot, out to the door panel. This opening also goes back, down and forward, allowing lots of room for little mice to crawl in and get trapped. This is where we found three out of four of the dead mice, finally getting them out by the use of an age old tool - the coat hanger.







- We laid on the floor with the passenger seat out, and used a flashlight to shine up underneath the dash looking for other signs of nests. We were not comfortable taking anything out higher up near the air bag, so use your own judgment on this if you find you have a problem in this area. My advice is don't do anything that you are too unsure of yourself in. This is my dad's car I was working on, so I wanted to be extra careful not to create new problems for him.

- Before taking apart the a/c and heater and digging into the vents, we turned on the air, then the heat and carefully listened and smelled. With the windows closed the smell remained the same and there were no obvious problems with the system. With the a/c off and the windows down, and top off, the smell got worse, so we declared the a/c system all clear and the problem somewhere else. Had we suspected there was a problem within the a/c system, we would have gotten some professional help taking this apart.

Finally, there is no point in trying to cover the smell with air fresheners, carpet cleaners, etc. while you have a rotting carcass somewhere. The smell just isn't going to go away, not for a very long time. So keep hunting, and don't give up. It took us three weeks to finally decide we were ready to put the car back together again.

Most people we've talked to recommend Bounce dryer sheets to ward off the mice. The car is full of them now, but nothing helped the smell go away until after the dead mice and their nests were removed.

Post a reply if you have comments or any questions. We'd be happy to respond, but hope that this doesn't happen to anyone else! These cars are too valuable to be attacked so mercilessly like this!

Good luck and happy hunting!

Janet G

 

Cliff notes................PLEASE

 

so did you find the mouse yes or no?

 

Oh my God. Your thread is so timely. My ZR-1 has had that smell for a couple months now and I've been trying to figure out the best way to find it. Maybe I would have ended up doing what you did, but now I can follow your tips and hopefully find the source sooner rather than later.
Thanks

Oh and your pics aren't working for me. I just get a blank screen

 

Good tips! One obvious hint not mentioned: DO NOT use poison, as the mice will crawl back to their nests in your car to die, which causes the smell problem.

If you think you have mice in the car, set traps in the interior and under the hood and check them often. I've found they LOVE walnuts, and walnuts last pretty well (the trap can sit for a couple weeks, you don't have to rebait it as often as you do with cheese or peanut butter).

Maybe others have had luck with Bounce sheets, but in my experience they do not repel mice.

 

think I'ld just trade it myself

 

Use your nose to find the smelliest area....

 

That must be Yankee ingenuity

 

look at the bottoms of the door framework (need to lay on the ground, use a mirror, etc)...you'll see a 'water drain slot' near the front and another near the rear...these slots have 'vacancy' flashing neon signs only visible to small furry long tailed vermin that can easily jump from the ground to the door sill...once inside the door, the mice are channeled to the dash by the wire bellows between the door and dash.

fab a screen to 'snap' into each (four total) slot, or even the racer's best friend (duct tape) over the holes will keep the little monsters out.

 

My vet sat for 5 years,the mice had a big nest in the nose by the headlight.They also had a nest on top of the engine.No smell of a dead one.I was worried maybe they chewed up some wires,but so far so good everything seems to work.

 

Had mice nesting in garage before I got my Vette. Got in my car and backed it out and started driving down the street. A mouse appeared from under the hood and ran across the windshield and jumped off the car. I was doing about 35..... Guess he didn't want to ride in a Ford.

 

It was probably Bush's fault.

 

I found four dead mice, very small. I never found anything alive in it.

 

I really hope you don't have to go as far as I did with this. If enough people post here what they know, then it saves the next person lots of trouble.

 

I got some good laughs here reading the posts. Thanks for the comments, and the additions to it. My dad's gonna like all of these. Yankee ingenuity : ) when you want something done, well, there's always a way to do it. Have a great day everyone.

 

Recommend using a dead cat!

 

I am starting to notice some nest materials and droppings on my valve covers which concerns me. Anybody use moth ***** as repellent?

 

What I find especially lovely is when they crawl into the exhaust pipe and get fried on ignition. I remember I parked over at an ex's dad's house for about a couple days during a trip and little did I know he had a major packrat infestation. Right when I came back to start it up I heard the engine sound strange, the almost with thunder...boom, out fires fried little "jerry" at 400 miles an hour out the right rear dynomax pipe. Carbon-fried special recipe. After the curled-in-a-ball black carcass cooled off you could almost still make out that special "I'm f*&^% sideways" look of terror as he probably heard the engine turn in that last split second.