Keeping Mice Out

[Tango]

OK. I just got my first Fiat home and its in the garage. We live in the country so mice are a given -- you just can't keep them out with certainty when you are surrounded by fields in the fall. A few years ago, we had a brand new pop-up tent trailer and the first winter we forgot to put mothballs in it when we put it away for the winter. Next spring, mice had gotten in, chewed through the end roof and made a disgusting mess of the inside.

I also had a lawn tractor engine ruined by mice. Very expensive little pests.

My question is: how have you dealt with the same problem? I see threads about fixing mouse-chewed wiring and upholstery, but how to you avoid it?

I have had good luck with mothballs or flakes in the tent trailer, but the residue smell is not something most people enjoy and it is hard to get rid of. However, I could sprinkle some in the engine compartment and maybe in the trunk. My daughter, who has worked for a few years at a northern camp, told me that they use cloves -- the spice -- sprinkled around as a mouse deterrent.

Any ideas?

Tim

[So Cal Mark]

get a cat

[Tango]

Wife hates them. Why antagonize She Who Must Be Obeyed so soon after buying a toy?

[htchevyii]

I use traps in the garage, where I can keep an eye on them. I like the traps because I don't have dead rotting mice/rats stinking up the place. My storage garage is 15 miles away so I use Deacon.

[So Cal Mark]

have you seen those giant sealable bags, sort of like a ziplock for storing cars?

[htchevyii]

I've been considering getting the carcapsule for my Nova, that's in storage. The problem is that I need to move it to put the Spider in winter storage so it might be a p.i.t.a.

http://www.carbag.com/
http://www.carcapsule.com/

[mdrburchette]

I don't have a problem with mice, but the car I just bought has a rat urine smell. Good golly, I've tried everything to get rid of that, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

[kilrwail]

This is going to sound crazy, so be patient with me. I don't have to deal with mice, but maybe this would work and wouldn't be too difficult. Think of an upside down car cover. Get some heavy duty construction vapour barrier and lay out a sheet on the garage floor - it would be 10 ft wide by about 25 ft long. Drive the car onto it; then pull up the extra plastic and fasten it to itself across the roof by using duct tape made into loops (like on a tent) and bungy cords. If you need to work on the car, you could temporarily unfasten the bungies, then reconnect them when finished. I don't think the mice would be tempted to eat through the vapour barrier, since there wouldn't be any bait they could smell. What do you think?

[pope]

I don't have a problem with mice, but the car I just bought has a rat urine smell.

Good Golly Denise, I am not going to ask you how you know the difference between mouse and rat urine!

[mbouse]

i use a full box of moth balls, 25% on the floor in a pie tin in the front, 25% in a pie tin in the back, 25% in the engine bay and 25% in the trunk. the car is parked in a garge with lots of activity. after 15 years, zero mice in the car. we've always had a dawg, and the animal smell might dissuade some rodents, but i doubt it.

others claim that dryer sheets work just as nice as the moth balls but do not smell, but I ain't attempting to fix what ain't broke.

Still others have offered that stuffing some steel wool inside the tail pipe blocks a potential hiding spot.

[Tango]

I like the vapour barrier idea, so long as they can't climb up the folds on the outside. I will have to make really tidy hospital corners like they taught me in the army.

Because mothballs have worked for me before, I think i will try both the vapour barrier inverted cover and the pans of mothballs in various places as suggested. I really would hate to put any in the car interior. Top up or top down? top down is easier to check the status, and with the top up I am really paranoid that they will try to eat their way in...

We bought those high frequency mouse repellant things a year or two ago and it seemed to definitely reduce the number of mice spotted and mouse sign. But I saw one in the garage myself a week ago. Peter may be right, I think what brings them in at this time of year is the smell of something edible and warm air (this is in Ontario) when it is cold outside. But once you see one, there are probably more.

Thanks,
Tim

[launieg]

.

I don't have a problem with mice, but the car I just bought has a rat urine smell. Good golly, I've tried everything to get rid of that, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Denise, PM me with an address and I'll send you some deodorizer that worked well for me on some furniture that seemed to be hopeless. It got rid of the smell 100%. Pluse, it does not cover up with a scent, but actually removes the smell

[mbouse]

top up is the best storage location for the top. cold and vinyl don't have a love affair for each other. windows shut as well. reduces a host of contaminants from getting into the cockpit.

[sptcoupe]

Many years ago a friend of mine was having a bad mouse problem in the separate, three-car sized building/garage he had built to work on/keep his FIATs. He lived in Temecula, CA, which at the time was still pretty much a coastal desert town, and his property bordered a large tract of undeveloped land, so there seemed to be an unending supply of field mice that found his garage and his cars to be a perfect refuge with a great food supply. He was using traps to control them, and used to call me once a week or so and tell me how many mice he had found in the traps. It was usually a dozen or so each week, and I can remember being there working on a car and occassionally hearing a trap snap shut. That's how many mice he had!

For some reason, over a period of weeks, he noticed that his mouse problem sort of cleared up, until one week he hadn't found a single mouse in a trap. He was curious about why, but didn't think too much of it until one winter morning when he opened the hood on a spider to work on the engine and found a 2 1/2 foot rattlesnake curled up right between the cam towers! Needless to say, I demanded a lot more beer to go over and help him out on his cars after that!

I do not recommend this as a solution.....

[Tappy]

http://www.clickscarcover.com/carcapsulesteps.htm

looks cool 2