Long story short: On tuesday the blower started making a weird noise for about 10 seconds. I turned the car off and back on, and the noise was gone. Now it smells like decaying flesh whenever I turn the a/c on. So I pulled the blower out and there is mouse blood and flesh all over the place.

I've tried getting a vacuum down the air duct to see if I can find the carcass, but it gets too narrow for my vacuum hose. Any suggestions short of pulling the dashboard off?

The long story:

I left the vette in my garage for about a week. I came back to it and the battery was dead (left the radar detector plugged in). So I popped the hood and found a family of mice, just as surprised to see me as I was to see them. I grabbed one right then and killed it. I caught another one later with a mouse trap, but there were two more at large. While driving to work, I heard one scratching in the wheel well behind me. I'm pretty sure that one managed to kill itself on the interstate. So I was down to one. The traps were still set up and baited in my garage, but I wasn't catching anything. Turns out the bastard was in my HVAC system just waiting to throw itself into my blower and get chewed up by the fan blades. Now I have a mess...

If you have any ideas for cleaning out the ductwork I would appreciate it.

 

Post that in the car care section, you may get better replies and ideas there. Sorry for your trouble. That just stinks !

 

WOW, not a pleasant experience. I can see a partial dash tear down in your future to access the vents for a thorough clean out.

GM and SEAFOAM both have aerosol cleaning products to eliminate (mold) smells in the vents, but I don't know either would clean out the blood/guts you're dealing with.

I recently had a pack rat get into the engine compartment on my new truck. He ate the foam surround around the air intake...would have gone into the intake if I had not heard him chewing. He escaped the first time and then ate part of the hood insulator on our Trailblazer. A glue trap finally got him.

My Z16 is six feet in the air on my lift.

 

When I purchased my 99 C5 in 2008, I drove home on the freeways, I could detect the odor of burning hay or something. When I got home and parked the C5 in the garage, popped the hood, I could really smell some farm odor, pulled the plastic valve cover off and, found a mouse home with hay. They even liked the C5 so much they built a home and started eating the hoses (found teeth marks on the hoses). So I guess I had 351 hp, but lost the 1 somewhere on the freeway.. Spray lysol in the intake while running the AC and vents, then let it sit, that my help. Good luck.

 

Also, post over in the Car Care Forum to get some input from the Care Detail folks. They may have some tips for you regarding getting rid of the odor.

 

The C5 HVAC ducting and blower motor unfortunately seem to be a desirable habitat to mice. After I found evidence of an uninvited guest, I sealed the entrance ways to my garage...haven't had a problem since.

 

Gross!

 

Sorry to here about your misfortune. If you're just trying to rid yourself of the odor, then probably some of the previous advice with sprays, etc can get you there. But if you're looking to clean blood, guts, and carcass then I think a tear down is inevitable.

BTW: I liked the long story better

 

My worst fears!! My car is going to sit in the garage all winter, and I know there are mice in the garage. I guess I should start with the traps now. I was going to put a trap next to each wheel hoping to get them before they climb in for a ride. Good luck, I may need any advice that you get!!

 

NASTY!

Pics?

Thanks,Matt

 

Well, I was able to make a reducer hose for my shop vac. I used a couple lengths of decreasing radius clear tubing and duct tape. Worked pretty well. After an hour and a half working with it, I managed to pull out the front half of a mouse, a few leaves, and a couple bits of the hood liner that the bastards stole.

I guess I will keep working it tomorrow, might need to go smaller still.

I have a picture of the one I caught, while it was still alive... But i cant figure out how to attach images (guessing I dont have enough posts to unlock that feature)

 

You have to use an image hosting site like photo bucket and then link the pictures from there, little confusing but there is a good writeup in the help section.
And you are luckier than my friend who's turbo ate a mouse..... He was in the process of building the car and somehow a mouse got into his intake.

 

I'd have to say that in order to really get all the parts of the mouse out of the car, you will need to tear down the area and clean it out. Sucks, but better than keeping some of that stuff in there.

 

The airborne disease could be bad chit.

 

I remember some storage suggestion like placing steel wool in the exhaust pipes. Doe anyone have a checklist to help reduce issues like mice etc?

 

I did a search and Mouse Lung can be a horrible way to go! Better get your things in order, there's not a lot of time left

 

buy an ant farm, and put the ants in the ac vents... they'll eat the mouse, after a week or so spray some raid in there and run the ac... should take care of it lol!

 

You could also use "Flesh Beetles" to rid the ducts of the decaying mouse remains.

Or just leave the windows open and allow flies to lay eggs. The maggots hatch, eat the decay, turn into flies and all you (might) have left is hair and bone.

The solution might be as bad as the problem...

 

My cats eat em

 

There is stuff that the dealers use that gets sprayed in through one of the vacuum lines to get into the internals of the HVAC system...the things is, as potent as the chemical is, it will only mask the smell of the rotting carcass for a short time before it comes back. The only true way to be sure is to the ducting out and give it a thorough cleaning. The only other thing you can do is to let it continue to rot until it dries and is fully decayed, at that point the smell should be pretty minimized and the chemical spray can do it's job better....second thought, stick with the first option