Not to mention they can also start fires chewing on live wires with a 12v system.

 

That's what works for me. I get mine from Lowe's.

 

I have dealt with attacks from mice multiple times. Had them eat various bits of wiring, some of it in really inaccessible locations, at least to me! One winter they mounted a full out attack on my spark plug wires - that was some expensive rubber snack.

Oh yeah, I can shoot one solution down - guard cats. I have barn cats - 3 fat lazy ones and I still have mice.

 

Sooner or later the mice will get around to the tasty wiring and leather seats so get rid of them ASAP. I used some glue tabs that I ordered from a pest control company hard card board about 3 inches by 7 inches. Placed them along the wall of the garage and around tires of car. My guess is they use the tires to climb up to the car. I put a dab of peanut butter at the center of some of the tabs. Good luck.

 

I got mine from Amazon today and nailed two each of them on four pieces of wood and placed them in the garage already. Also made four more for my daughters garage. Thanks for the tip!

 

Blue Demon:

You will be able to tell within a few days if the mice are taking the bait. They will slowly chip away at the blocks and die within a day.

I also use the plastic container from coffee and place it over the wood block and bait.

I have used these for several years and have no mice or rodent problems here in the desert of New Mexico. I am really in the desert and desert mice/rodents are seen all over.

Richard in New Mexico

 

Good recommendation.

 

I had most success with the linked humane trap below. Put some chocolate in it and you will get every single mouse in your garage guaranteed. Mice are like humans, they love sweets and can smell chocolate across the room. No poison, no dead smell, no guts on the floor, no further money wasted on poison and the last trap you will ever need.


I had 5 in the trap after the first night. 2 more a day later and since then all are gone. I put the trap in a box and actually gave them a nice ride out in the woods. Not sure they enjoyed 0-60 in 4 second a couple times.

 

 

Problem with the poisons is your dog or cat getting a poisoned mouse or rat. I like the old fashioned traps. They work. Another thing is if you see one mouse, there are probably a dozen.

 

Two years ago I got in my GMC 2500HD diesel pickup and saw the CEL on before I even put the key in the ignition. The truck started normally but wouldn't shut off with the key and I had to pull the ECM relay to stop it. The only stored code was loss of communications with the transmission control module. The next day the truck operated entirely normally with no lights or operational issues. Randomly for the next two months maybe one day every two weeks it would have the CEL problem. I bought the Helms manuals (truck was out of warranty) to understand the control system, made some measurements, and found that a mouse had urinated in the upper level of the UBEC (underhood bused electrical system) and the corrosive urine had created a conductive residue in the next level of the UBEC "sandwich" where bare copper wires make the interconnections between various circuits. When the humidity was high enough the residue was sufficiently conductive that leakage from the primary 12 volt feed would slowly charge the switched 12 volt line and when the voltage rose high enough then the ECM relay was activated providing full 12 volt power to the switched bus.

After this I keep several old fashioned mouse traps and in the intervening years I have caught 2 mice. Because I have a German shepherd and some barn cats (which do a great job of protecting the tractor) I don't want to have poison around which can cause secondary poisoning of the animals if they eat a dead/dying rodent. I look upon checking the traps every couple of weeks as required maintenance and I keep a box of disposable rubber gloves in case I have to remove a dead (and perhaps decomposing) rodent from a trap.

Photos below of mouse damage to my pickup, this is the wire interconnection area that lives under the fuses and relays and the green corrosion is courtesy of the mouse. It took about 3 hours of reading and an hour of measuring to run down the problem. The replacement UBEC was $50 from a parts yard via Ebay and since it just plugs in removal of the old and installation of the new was less than an hour. So sorry Mickey but if you or your relatives invade my garage you are going to find your neck caught between a spring loaded piece of steel and a wooden base

 

Nice detective work.

 

Thanks! I restore vintage amateur radio gear as a hobby so my electronics troubleshooting experience and test gear came in very handy. I hate to think what the cost would have been getting the dealer to troubleshoot such an intermittent problem. Ultimately it probably would have been covered by insurance (comprehensive would cover animal damage) but I wouldn't have known that going in and the deductible would have still been expensive.

 

Were you able to make voltage measurements across a range of humidity conditions in order to figure out that the combination of mouse urine and corroded copper was becoming conductive under some conditions and not under others?

 

I did and it was pretty easy to rapidly increase the humidity in the garage with a couple of mist humidifiers. Once I pulled the UBEC I confirmed how rapidly it responded to humidity. I also monitored the resistance between the two buses (batteries disconnected) and the drop in resistance as humidity increased was clearly a causal relationship.

The real key was watching the switched 12 volt bus when the batteries were reconnected. Although it should have no measurable voltage with ignition off it would climb steadily over about 15 minutes (probably charging some bypass capacitors on the bus) and then once it reached around 9 volts the ECM relay would be activated applying the full 12 volts with the ignition still off and at that point the CEL would also come on.

There is always a bit of luck in finding these oddball problems but experience greatly improves the odds.

 

I would never have thought to run misters to increase humidity for diagnosing an electrical problem.

Your explanation of your process of diagnosis in this case is invaluable. You say experience helps, but it helps to read situations like yours.

Reminds me of a guy I know who was troubleshooting problems in the fuel gauge system of a Cessna 310. He figured out that a tiny bit of moisture in one of the cannon jacks/plugs in the wiring harness was causing bad readings. The way he figured it out was that he first diagnosed some intermittentness if he wiggled the connection (which apparently was hard to do because of the way the harness was fastened, then he decided to get a hypodermic needle and syringe and slip the needle into the connection by sliding it between the shrink wrap and the cable until the tip was inside the connector. Puffing air into it with the syringe cause the problem to go away.

As in that case, I appreciate the benefit of your experience. Thanks for the lesson.

 

Driver9, you are welcome and thank you for you kind comments!

 

I've heard this too.

 

Bumping this thread since I’ve got a mouse problem- nest build up in the cabin air filter...

... where do people suggest putting the fabric softener sheets at? Also not sure how they got deep into it, so wondering what duct they got into- that may answer my previous question...

thanks everyone.

 

I have no idea how those critters get into the cabin filter, but I've had them also. I don't know where one would put the dryer sheets. I use the old style traps with peanut butter, and the poison bate blocks from Lowe's. So far, so good (I say as I knock on wood).