I Hates meeces to peices!!!!!

[StevePem]

I went out to investigate why my alarm has been going of erratically lately. I was soon diverted from checking the wiring once I saw some familiar signs!

So had a good look round the boot and cockpit and found lots of chewed up rubber/foam under the stuff in the boot, under the footwell mats and underneath and behind the seats as well as in the centre tunnel.

Looks like the chewed up stuff is the insulation from the heater pipes that run in the tunnel. Hope they have not gone through the pipes themselves!. Can't see any signs of water in the tunnel.

I need to get the T bar off and look behind there and take the centre console out to have a good look and clean but it started to rain so will have to do that later! I took the inspection panels off the side of the console at the footwell and there is no sign of any mess in there.

There was quite a lot of chewed up rubber down near the little box mounted on the bulkhead near your right foot (never been sure what that is but assumed it was centrallocking?) but all the wires look OK.

Cockpit and boot armed with mousetraps now so hopefully I can get rid off the blighters before they do any more damage! I had them two years ago but fortunately they were only in the boot that time. Even so, they destroyed my nearly brand new hood cover and a few other things!

Oh well, thats what you get for living in a house in the middle of a farm!

PS didn't make it the "tune up" day

[gotenks1321]

Your coolant pipes should be fine as I don't remember seeing any kind of foam on them when I had mine out. The handbrake and gear cables on the other hand......

[StevePem]

Hi Dan,

My heater pipes are definitely insulated. Photos aren't too clear but you can just about see that the core is a hard(ish) plastic tube encased in insulation.





I tried to convince my cat she should sit and guard my TF but she soon got bored!


Managed to catch two of them so far, one in the boot and one in the footwell
replaced with a sociably acceptable representation


IMAGE REMOVED SO NO OFFENCE CAUSED

[cejsmith]

your have the RSPCA on you showing pictures like that

[gotenks1321]

How strange, no sign of any here on either the replaceement pipes or the ones in the car

[Tony]

We've had mice in the garage a couple of times but fortunately they haven't touched the car yet. I think there's too much other stuff in there for them that's easier to get to.

It's a good job you didn't have them appear while driving!

[Nick]

Yup i had the little buggers in my garage last year, I used a humane trap and released them at the country park ...they probably got eaten within 5 minutes, but I'm too much of a softy to kill em off...Steve your cat looked pretty hacked off that the traps got them before he did

[StevePem]

I reckon if I let the cat loose in the car she would do more damage than the mice!

Caught another one last night and no sign of anything new being chewed which is good news.

Secondary worry is that I had to top the coolant up after I got back from Benj's run the other week and have topped it up again since then - all in the same time frame as the "alarm" problems starting

Can't remember the last time I needed to top it up before that, certainly before the beginning of this year.

Maybe they have chewed through a pipe or maybe it is just because I had not used the car for a while. Can't see anu sign of water leakage in the engine bay or in the tunnel where the heater pipes run.

Ho hum.

[Nick]

Sorry to hear about the missing coolant, have you checked around the cap to make sure it's not leaking past there?

[StevePem]

The cap is a possibility. I had been out in the car before I started mouse hunting. When I looked underneath there was a small damp patch on the ground which was directly below the "curve" in the pipe leading from the expansion bottle to the engine.

I put some card under the car and no new moisture appeared so could be either, the damp patch was there before I parked up or it was moisture coming out of the cap or even the joint where the pipe joins the tank, trickling down the pipe and dripping..

Hope it is that simple - will have to run the engine up to temp and check it out.

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