Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Rodent in heating system

Some kind of rodent has crawled up into the heater/defrost of my 03 Tundra......and died The smell has to be experienced to be believed.

Not sure where to start. Is thier a cabin filter in this model? where? Everything is pretty closed up cant even see where the heater core is. Appreciate any help.

Lefty C

This happened to my car last spring. The repair shop quoted me $900 to remove the whole frigging dash on the 2012 Corrolla and look for the dead mouse. It wasn't accessable from the cabin filter. I said screw that cost...... I parked the car outside and turned the heat up, fan on high and alternated between defrost and heater until the fugging thing cooked away/dried-up enuff to stop stinking. Every day for a week, a few hours a day done a purty good job of it. But hey, now I have an excuse to hang one of them little fragrant crimmas tree air-freshener deals from the mirror..... stylin'.....

I've had it happen several times in our Pontiac Montana. One time, the mouse got hashed in the fan which threw it way out of balance. It was banging on every revolution. I had to pull the fan each time and use a mirror and shop vac to fish the hose through the duct to suck the @#$%^ out.

We had a mouse build a nest in the heater core box on a Dakota my wife used to have. It completely blocked the heater and a/c. That one cost $700 to get out since they had to pull everything out to get at it. Since they already had it apart, we had them put in a new heater core just in case.

It is my understanding that "Drier Sheets" keep rodents out of engine compartments and RV's.

When you can't smell the drier sheets anymore replace with some new ones. Damn those things smell terrible!

Warning I forgot about a few in my Samurai while I had it stored. I drove into town and started to smell something burning. Soooo don't place them close to the exhaust;-)=

Been there done this! One cold morning I started my pickup and bits of toilet paper came blowing out the vents. The little joker had gotten into my emergency roll and built a toilet paper nest in the heater. Being more agile in those days I tore the dash out and vacuumed everything. I had to buy some small flexible tubing to tape to the vacuum hose to get to some spots in the duct work. While I had it apart, I made some screens for the fresh air ducts, seemed to work because I didn't have any more problems with that old truck. When the same thing happened to my wife's Grand Am, I sold it. But I was looking for a reason to get rid of that piece of crap anyway.

Huntsman

Sounds like a plan. Dont really want to tear the dash apart.

Lefty

Left it running for 4 hours...heater on high windows open...
still smells like a dead dog in there
At least no will be asking to borrow my truck.

LC

it'll take at least a week of that chit..... and you'll still get an occassional whiff. Lottsa baking soda on the seats and carpet vacuumed up every few days can't hurt....

Nothing like cooking a dead rodent on a car heater. Should have threw some apple wood chips or some mesquite in there for a nice smoked flavor...

has that thing stopped stinkin' yet? or did you fix, or sell it?

They infested my truck a year ago. I was gone to Africa for a few months and had my truck in the barn out of the weather.

There was a grain storage bin next to the barn and a dog kennel on the other side. Two huge mistakes that have since been solved by selling the dog, so I can use poison now, and running the grain out of the bins and moving them.

The Mice built a packed nest in the air cleaner box, then totally packed into the area under the windshield wipers below the black plastic grate in front of the windshield. They chewed the 1/2" thick felt that was layered over the firewall for nesting material.

After all this was completely cleaned and spotless, We could still smell mice in the truck. Washed cleaned and did everything possible to the seats and carpet.
This is our road trip vehicle for pulling my camper or boat. We spend hours a day on the road traveling. No freaking way we could live with this! There were no mice in the sealed heating unit, none in the cab. While searching under the truck for a way they could get in I found that they had totally filled the box frame on both sides with corn. They also filled in the space in the body between the doors( double cab) this goes up over the top of the truck across the roof! My entire length of the trucks box frame was filled with corn!

There are oval cut outs along the sides of the frame for drainage which were filled with grass and fibers. I used the big Wet dry vac to suck out all the corn I could, At about the 5 gallon point is was mostly out. I also bought a 3' snake arm video camera to see what was in there. I found several nests with dead mice and a hundred dried baby mice. I eventually duct taped a 1/2" diameter hose to the bigger wet dry vac hose to snake it in there and get the remaining dead dried babies and moldy wet nesting stuff. Along with black goo that was likely at one time a mouse or 10. After which I used my pressure washer with the front end of the truck about 3 foot higher then the back to drain out. The amount of stuff that came out after I thought I had it clean was simply unbelievable! I also screened in my airbox to become 100% sealed from mice now.

This was a messy nasty disgusting fix. I have since installed 6 of those metal multi catch traps one on each side of the over head doors. Then added boxes with strychnine poison for moles at strategic places. Also adding a dozen cheap snap traps, and 3 Havahart number "0" traps. In the first week there were dozens of dead mice on the floor from the strychnine. This is not the crap warfarin homeowner product, this is bad stuff, eating this causes death in a minute or so. Never to be used above ground or in the open. Or where a dog could get a mouse that had just eaten it!

Over the course of the next three months I had a five gallon bucket with water in the bottom for drowning the live catch mice dumped in. The bucket was filling with mice. I was catching 6-8 per day for months! I have not caught a mouse now in two months. On the outside of the building I now have 5' of gravel along the outside walls and use roundup monthly to prevent any weeds there. any mouse now will have to cross that open space. I have pulled the poison out and now only have traps. Any mouse trotting in the open along the outside wall is gonna be picked off by the barn owls now!

My shop/barn building in now mine again. I felt is was like taking back a community from a gang!

Well, you shouldn't go hungry if you're stuck in a snowdrift for a couple days.
Miserable rodents. I HATE mice.

The easiest way is to take a dremil tool and cut a access hole into the plastic heater box some thing 5 or 6 inches square that you can get a shop vac hose and a flash light into, when you are done, carefully duct tape or super glue the piece that you cut out back in place,

Stinks a bit on humid days. Starting to get used to it..........

Lefty