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Old 04-13-2017, 09:44 AM #16
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OP, change the cabin filter. Sometimes I run without one for a few hours just to make sure everything is clean and dry as wind velocities will be higher without the filter.
As far as rodent screens? Those are just petty challenges to mice and rats. They have a map of your vehicle and like any good first person shooter game will explore all options if they want in.
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Old 04-13-2017, 09:50 AM #17
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Man....I had no idea this happened so regularly and the damage is nuts!!!
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Old 04-13-2017, 10:09 AM #18
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Thank you all for your advice/suggestions. I did a quick over on some suggestions. My k&n cabin filter only had a few leaves. Didn't see any dents/holes on filter. Blower motor area looks brand new. Rear jack compartment did not show anything unusual. Used flashlight as I checked interior. Under the hood did not show signs of any wire tampering (did notice a stand-alone round plug near the eng filter box with nothing connected. Could be an option that wasn't added). I diluted some Pine Sol and sprayed the wiper cowl as well as the carpet, under seats and cargo. Apparently Pine Sol is an irritant. Gonna try to pickup traps and place them as suggested. Again, thank you all for the replies. I'll update after returning from vacation and spending quality painful time with my truck. I may take apart the cowl area first to see if something just died in there and permeating my truck.
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Old 04-13-2017, 10:18 AM #19
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Are you sure it is inside the vehicle?

I had the city set up poison rodent bait in my yard and one of them decided it wanted to die under my hood in the fender area.

Took a while to find it, because it smelled like it was inside.
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Old 04-13-2017, 11:42 AM #20
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I had what I thought was one field mouse living in my Blazer for awhile. I finally put a snap trap in the passenger floor well and caught two with the same trap. Its hard to imagine they were trapped but two in the trap makes me think they were starving. Oddly no damage to the car that I've ever discovered.

Dead things smell really bad. Even small ones. If you just think its a dead thing it might not be, or its somewhere the smell is being contained.

Of course the good news is eventually the dead smell usually goes away after a long time.
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Old 04-13-2017, 09:13 PM #21
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Tell me more about this "rodent screen". While I park in the garage, I know at some point, my truck will be too tall to fit in there.

.
Usually get some chicken wire, the kind you'd use for like rabbit cages that has maybe 8mm square holes. Then pull the windshield wiper cowling out, pilot drill, and use self-tapping screw to secure the mesh over the HVAC opening. Some vehicles you have to pull the dash to do it from the inside (I usually do it this way when replacing the HVAC assembly as it's easy that way).

If I get around to installing a rodent screen on my 4th gen this weekend I'll post pictures in my build thread.

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OP, change the cabin filter. Sometimes I run without one for a few hours just to make sure everything is clean and dry as wind velocities will be higher without the filter.
As far as rodent screens? Those are just petty challenges to mice and rats. They have a map of your vehicle and like any good first person shooter game will explore all options if they want in.
9/10 they get in via the giant gaping hole in the firewall for the HVAC assembly. Sometimes there's a pathetic plastic mesh there, but they chew through that crap or just slip through the giant gaps. I have yet to see rodents get in through the one-way flap at the back of the vehicle for positive pressure, but it is possible. The other times it seems they get in when windows or doors are open (a co-worker told me about a couple that went hiking and didn't realize they trapped raccoon in their car all day, he was not amused and the vehicle was torn to shreds). There aren't really any other ways for them to get in otherwise as the other openings such as body plugs are out of the way enough that they'd have to float to chew through them. I haven't really seen them go into door panels usually either, again probably because to do so they'd have to eat through the plastic door panel as there's no real way to get in there otherwise.

Also so far all my rodent screens have held up and I haven't had any comebacks. That being said, a determined enough rodent will chew right through that flimsy steel mesh, but it seems they follow a path of least resistance and don't really bother trying to eat through it so far.

~

So found my pictures! This is the single biggest animal I have pulled out of a vehicle so far (unless you count the two 2~3ft snakes I pulled from a Prius), about 9-10inches long from head to toe. He was dead a while and good lord did he smell, after this job I just bought a respirator and use it on all rodent jobs. Couldn't be in the car for more than 3 seconds without my body reflexively gagging at the stench. Rigamortis had set in so I was lucky to pull the blower motor out and gently coax his corpse out without him popping (I swear with how rancid that guy smelled I would not have been surprised if he was filled with maggots). I had never actually seen a pack rat before this, so I almost assumed the family had lost their pet chinchilla in the car and it died. Poor guy got into the blower housing but he couldn't get back out and died there, it was probably the cleaner of the rodent deaths I have had to clean.

Dead rodent smell inside 4runner-20160818_125514-jpg
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Old 04-13-2017, 09:24 PM #22
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The best one I saw was when a German Shepard got into a brand new Cadillac... the owner had a little dog that was in heat. She had left the door open while carrying in groceries... in just a few minutes that Shepard had completely ripped the interior to shreds looking for that dog in heat. He totalled the vehicle in 15 minutes. Actually tore through and tore a few airbags. Amazing.
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Old 04-13-2017, 09:30 PM #23
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The best one I saw was when a German Shepard got into a brand new Cadillac... the owner had a little dog that was in heat. She had left the door open while carrying in groceries... in just a few minutes that Shepard had completely ripped the interior to shreds looking for that dog in heat. He totalled the vehicle in 15 minutes. Actually tore through and tore a few airbags. Amazing.
Had a customer bring in their 3 door Yaris for an airbag recall. It was torn to shit, the head rests, headliner, seats, some of the dash, ect. was all missing chunks and torn up. Turns out she keeps her full grown husky in the car every now and then and he has serious anxiety issues. Literally chunks of headliner and side curtain airbag just eaten... poor dog.
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Old 04-13-2017, 11:50 PM #24
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I have an old 95 Nissan pick up I try to drive at least once a week. I keep it in my workshop. I live out in the country and I'm no stranger to all sorts of critters. I went out one night in Feb to fire up the Nissan and go into town and was greeted with battery and ALT lights. I took another vehicle and looked into the problem the next day.

I found a nice rodent nest covering the top of my battery. I cleaned it all up and checked the wiring nearby and the fuseable links by the battery. There was no damage and cleaning things up resolved the issue. I last had the hood up the week before and there was no nest then; so they can make them pretty quickly. I guess the battery was chosen because it's a little warm from powering some computer functions and the clock.
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Old 04-15-2017, 09:26 PM #25
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So got a chance to do my rodent screen this weekend.

Link to my build thread:

Zombie Truck 2.0 MPAV Build!

If I remember correctly the 5th gens are similar in shape/style of cowling, but it's been a while since I installed one on a 5th gen.
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Old 04-15-2017, 09:51 PM #26
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I like. Where did you buy the screen material from? Home Depot?
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Old 04-15-2017, 09:55 PM #27
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I like. Where did you buy the screen material from? Home Depot?
Yeah, any hardware store should carry this stuff. just make sure the holes are smaller than 10mm square so they can't squeeze through it. It's the same stuff I use in customer's cars and it seems to work well, best way to do it is use a ruler to get a rough size and add .5~1" extra length & width wise. Then use a sharpie to roughly mark where you want your holes on the firewall (I then centerpunch them and pilot drill them) and if it's a bit of an awkward shape like the 4th gen, use the sharpie to outline where you need to cut away stuff.

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Old 04-16-2017, 12:19 AM #28
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Its actually fairly common to see rodent damage on toyota wiring harness's. the loom is made of soy based products to make it last longer. A lot of times you'll see rodent shit on cabin air filters. I've seen a rodent chew through an entire dashboard and back into the engine bay.
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Old 04-16-2017, 12:35 AM #29
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Its actually fairly common to see rodent damage on toyota wiring harness's. the loom is made of soy based products to make it last longer. A lot of times you'll see rodent shit on cabin air filters. I've seen a rodent chew through an entire dashboard and back into the engine bay.
It's common on every modern vehicle these days, most everyone switched to Soy based insulation. It's more environmentally friendly you know.
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Old 04-16-2017, 02:20 AM #30
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On my mothers highlander I Just got done cleaning out a slaughtered mouse inside the ac fan under the cabin air filter. The guy crawled in chewed cabin filter and then was detroyed by the fan. I dropped the fan out but then spent 3 hours wiping guts eyeballs and intestines from inside the housing.. still smells like dead rodents
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