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-   -   Rat damage to cars | Protection, solutions & advice (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/2729-rat-damage-cars-protection-solutions-advice-61.html)

I was just looking for it and found the Marten link. Can you point me to the mesh link/post.

I have those doubts too. All the earlier Japanese cars, parked in same place, never had this issue. Neither does one zen and one nano parked on either side have this problem.

Guys dont keep the rat cakes inside the engine bay. Keep it under the car. I placed the cakes under the car and tobacco in the engine bay. Have had no rat problem since 2 months.

One important point is to keep high dosage, ie, multiple cakes for 3 to 4 days continuously. I would recommend a week though

Ok..the thing about rat poisons is that the active ingredient in them is an anticoagulant. It causes internal bleeding in them and they die due to it.This process can take a few days. Keeping 2-3 cakes is effective in taking care of the rat (Singular). You dont need to keep it there everyday. One feeding is enough to kill it. But sometimes it can take upto a week for them to die. Keeping it regularly for more than one day actually results in the rat taking the cakes away and storing them in its nest!!
Ratol is a paste which is highly effective but the problem is that you have to bait it properly to mask the phosphorus smell,or else they just wont eat it. Initally try keeping food without the paste for 2 days (Bread, leftovers etc) and then on the third day bait the food with the paste and place it in the same place. Also ratol has to handled carefully. You can actually see the fumes when you open the tube.
Now the thing is if you place the rat poison under the car it is quite possible that some unintended animal might fall prey to it. Hence i dont think it is a good idea to put it under the car.
Also it would be a good thing if the engine bay is cleaned. Rats pee and poop all over the place and try to make it more like their nest by bringing stuff in. Remove all the litter. I used to wipe the engine bay area with dettol solution+water. This also ensures that if there is any rat activity you will be able to come to know buy its feet marks and dirt that it might bring in.

I am not sure if this is already discussed here. I found this product in ebay. Rat repellent which can be placed in the car bonnet. Not sure how effective this is, have any one tried it?
http://www.ebay.in/itm/2pcs-RAT-REPE...item3cd3ad3120

It has been discussed. GTO tried it, I tried it, perhaps several others tried it.

Whilst I might even buy it again, at least two of us ended up going commercial pest-control way.

Further to my 27th July post, I got my "Oil Sensor failure" issue fixed from Audi South Mumbai and this time the bill was for Rs 5000 odd. The car returned on a Thursday 1 August. I parked my car at a different spot, till Saturday evening and returned to the same spot on Sunday. Driver kept 2 packets of napthelene balls at various places inside the engine. Doused the engine with phenyl. Unbelievably, the dreaded " Oil sensor failure" indicator lighted up once again on Monday the 4th August. Called up Audi and poured my heart out and they promised that they would grease up the under carriage,so that rodents are kept away. In the meanwhile, I also ordered the Rat spray from Autoshine Kandivili.

This time I forced Audi to let my driver evaluate where the issue was and he states that 'the sensor is a tiny Nokia charging pin kind of a protrusion with a thin wire of no coating " which must be snapping when the rodent passes/pushes it. So there is hardly any chewing happening inside my car.
Post 3rd time repairs, the service guys refused to grease the underbody, claiming that their service centre is under surveillance with direct link to Audi Germany and they wouldn't allow such a thing. I gave the guys a piece of my mind along with loads of emotional blackmail ( which only got me a free interior cleanup during my 1st service which will happen in 6 month). The damages were Rs 7000 odd this time.

Not wanting to take anymore chances, below is one idea that I came up with.
Cost of Tarpaulin Rs 2100.
Cost of Ropes, etc: Rs 200

That night, the damned rodent chewed up the tarpaulin too. Made a little hole through the double layer, but there seemed to be no inside entry sign. In the meanwhile, the spray from Autoshine also arrived. Sprayed it to my hearts content in the engine bay and also through the front tire gaps. It smells of Chandan and has a pretty strong smell. I forgot to cover up my nose while spraying and did get a bot buzzed by the fumes. Patched the tarpaulin, and wrapped the car again last night.

Checked this morning and there was no sign of any new damage to the tarpaulin.
Looks like the spray is working.

:deadhorse

Oh my GOD!!:Shockked:

Rodents have truly got you to try all sorts of things to keep them away. This is the first time I am trying to see such an attempt to keep them away.

Rodents mostly get into the engine bay by climbing up on the wheels, don't they? So, instead of blocking the whole underbody of the car, won't just putting a slab or something of a significant height on the inner side of the wheel from where they climb, or blocking the entry point using something made up of metal make sense? Just my thoughts and I might be completely out of place here.

All I can do is wish you luck with the rodents!:thumbs up

Amazing! A car undercover!

But, if it works it works. Good for you!
[/quote]
That sound like remarkably bad engineering for VAG group car!

You might try Sugru as a reinforcement. Not cheap, but cheaper than rat damage. Mind you. I don't know that rats don't like the taste. :eek:

I can relate to all of this man. Go easy with whatever you are spraying in the engine bay. Rats were repeatedly pooping on the cam cover in my engine bay. Every time i opened the hood it would stink of rat poop. I sprayed phenyl liberally everywhere in my engine bay apart from tobacco, pepper, rat poison cakes !! Nothing worked, the buggers would return the next day. Got the engine washed thoroughly ( a big mistake ), water went inside the plugs and the car was misfiring like crazy and the check engine light came up. Changed the plugs and wires to get everything back to normal. Few days later when i was driving back from Pune in the night and the head lamp relay fuse short and melted away. I had to drive down without headlights :Frustrati . Few days back i got a traditional rat trap, bait it with a piece of coconut and kept it near the front tyre. This way i caught a rat every day for the few days. This seems to be working now and i haven't had rat problem ever since. I still keep the trap almost everyday, haven't caught anything in the last few days now :)

The traditional rat trap didnt catch anything, I saw in the super market a kind of sticky glue pad thing, with some strong peanut butter bait smell, that one caught the pesky one.

So if all measures fail try this one, its pretty good.

From today's Mumbai Mirror!
The rats have graduated onto Airplanes now.

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/o...w/22150825.cms

Had a bandicoot nesting in our car, noticed it only when the bugger chewed up some electrical leads.
The technician who came to repair the same alerted us about the rodents. There was no indication of the presence of the rats till this incident.

We tried the rat trap for more than a fortnight, to no avail, till one morning when we noticed that the rat was actually a fat bandicoot, that wouldn't fit the trap we had!

So, ditched the trap, and just used the rat poison (locally available ones) with bread. That seems to have worked, because recently my dad encountered a groggy badicoot when he was about to start for work, the bugger on seeing my dad scampered back into the engine bay and died there and as a parting shot, got stuck in the space near the shocks and the engine.
This was not accessible by hand or sticks, so had to take it to the service center to extract it.
There, the car had to be raised and needed some effort at the service center to dislodge it.
Luckily seems to have been a lone wolf, no further relatives of its appear to have visited after that... touchwood

Very similar case of a dead rat in our car bonnet/bumper. Since the car was parked for a few days, the darn thing began to stink so badly, my drive to the service station was, well.. embarrassing. Nevertheless, the decomposed remnants, along with all the attached maggots, were flushed out after removing the bumper on an incline. Repellants don't work, and poison doesn't guarantee it won't die in your car! :Frustrati

I can relate. A rodent died in my car's HVAC system when the car was barely 3-4 months old. We did not know about it until it started stinking. Switching on the AC or even the blower became unbearable. We took the car to the ASC and the entire dashboard was taken apart to have access to the HVAC system. Then the system was opened to find 'remains' of the dead rat. The enclosure was then washed with detergent & water and some perfume had to be sprayed inside it. The bill came about 550 bucks. Since then I have used rat meshes for catching them. So far it has worked well except once when I had to go out of city for long without taking any precautions and on return found many wires chewed away.:Frustrati

I feel the only answer to rodent problems is to drive the car every other day at least . And if possible park every time in a different place .