Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Damn rodents ate my scooter.... :(

Went to fire up the Honda ST1300 sport touring bike and 'click'.......blinking dash light aka 'F1 code.'

Dug into it and soon found the reason why.
Not only had rodents taken up residence on the throttle body, they thoroughly enjoyed feasting on Honda's 'earth-friendly' soy based wiring!
New (&(&&#@ sub-harness on the way along with, wait for it, Honda's fix: Genuine Honda Anti-rodent chili-pepper infused electrical tape. part number 4019-2317.
Apparently all new wiring should be over-coated with this pepper tape.

Anyone else deal with this soy wire crap with a Honda product?

Don't have a fix, but seems mothballs are supposed to be a repellant. About every couple of years one of our rigs gets hit by a pack rat while parked at a trailhead for few days. They just enjoy tearing stuff up.

Buddy at work once had a ton of exposed wiring for environmental monitoring equipment going from about 5 open green houses to a central logger. Nothing was touched for about 6 years, then one spring it was like every rodent in the country turned on it. UV or oxidation of some sort must have converted the insulation into some kind of tasty morsel.

One More Bite II.

Sold at feed stores. Yellow brick looking.

Kills em dead. Rats amd mice.

not wiring yet. lucky. of course we don't own anything new. Not in a long time anyway.

What I've seen hit was soy based somehow either glue or rubber roof coating on RV campers. Buzzards smelled it and tore either 2 or 3 roofs off at the deer lease one year. Thankfully we own and ancient trailer... LOL at the time. The new one we bought last year, well lets hope like hell... and its survived 2 seasons at deer camp now.

They have done a lot of damage to my car.








Now they are gone.

My friend bought s trail cam a few years back that sends pics back through a cell network. We set it up and got a few great pics of an elk staring into it before it went dead. Went to check it and the elk had chewed up the antenna and ate the plastic coating off of it.

Ordered a new antenna and tried it again and another elk ate the antenna again the first day. Tried it one more time and the 3rd antenna was immediately eaten. He gave up after that because the antennas were expensive and took a week to get so the season was pretty much over.

Bb

Evidently Yamaha uses the same stuff because they ate the wiring harness on a buddy's Rhino.

I buy rat poison by the bucket and keep it out all around my shop. Seems to have stopped the problems.

Rats and rabbits. A friend of mine askes that we help exterminate them at his place. They eat the wiring on everything out there.
22 practice

It’s not just Honda. They have a penchant for German Cars too, particularly Mercedes and VW/Audi. I use Tom’s rodent blocks, ultrasonic plug in repellers and also sprinkle a few mothballs under my cars every few weeks. No issues so far. Chipmunks and field mice seems to be the main culprits in our locale.

Ha! Soy based wiring ??? What could POSSIBLY Go Wrong ?😬

Broomd: Darn that hurts - I hope you can fix it yourself?
My friend down on Big Sheep Creek has had several of his vehicles "wires eaten"! One time the total bill and towing cost him $1,100.00. That was a Volkswagen diesel car. His wifes Toyota SUV got eaten to the tune of $800.00 but that one was driveable to the dealership anyway.
This wire eating has been going on for many years now - but 20, 30 40 years ago it seemed to NOT be a problem. Now and then a Pack rat would make a nest in a lesser used vehicle but eating wires was unknown back then.
Good luck with your motorcycle.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Ford uses it also on their vehicles

Yeah, I got this, but what a pita.....

I thought the Honda branded pepper tape was a put on, but some research confirmed it to be true. I ordered it and will apply to new sub-harness liberally.
I also be using an ultrasonic gizmo as referenced above.

Thanks for the insights fellas......helpful.

I keep my utility trailer at deer camp to haul deer and firewood. Rodents eat the wiring harness like its made of peanut butter.

Gonna try this.
Thanks.

I thought you were yokin' with us!

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Honda-4019-2317-4019-2317-Tape-Rodent-19Mm-20M-40192317/814457385

Cholula tape! Whod'a thunk it.

Its a wide spread problem all kinds of vehicles. There's some trail heads in parks here up in the mountains where its signed to seal up the undercarriage of you vehicle with chicken wire if you're doing an over night hike. The culprit up there... marmots, also attracted to the coating on the wiring of vehicles.

That’s crazy.

Other than that, how do you like your Honda?

Mostly squirrels have chewed up the wiring on my yamaha r1 - they get shot on sight with a pellet gun . Some poison product like BigDave mentioned - looks like the old candy 'chick-o-stick' i ate as a kid - they walk around drunk looking when the pizon is getting them .