Ants attack my Ford Ikon

The entire cabin and boot have been colonised by ants. They have laid eggs in every single nook and corner of the car.

BHPian Sanidhya mukund recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The forum is filled with reports on rodent attacks on people’s cars. They bite the interiors, wiring, wreak havoc in the engine bays and even leave their droppings everywhere. I myself have had my fair share of wars with those wire biters, wherein one of them died inside the wiper washer tank of my Mercedes.

This time however, I got to face something different- an attack by ants. I had not been keeping too well, as a result of which, I wasn’t able to give much attention to my Ford Ikon, which is basically a toy car now, thanks to the NGT ruling. The car was parked inside my closed garage, totally forgotten for the past 20 odd days. This time period also saw a tremendous amount of rainfall, which caused my garage to get flooded. Since I wasn’t able to attend to it, it stayed that way for some time. It eventually dried up, but left a lot of humidity in there.

Today, I finally got the opportunity to open it, and to my horror, this is what I found:

The steering wheel has grown a lot of mould. The carpets have gotten damp and stinky. However, this is the least of my worries.

The real cause of concern: The entire cabin and boot have been colonised by ants. They have laid eggs in every single nook and corner of the car; below the rear seats, inside the boot, in the door jambs, below the carpets, inside the glove box:

To add to my woes, the battery died and the hand brake got stuck due to humidity in the rear drums.

Lessons learnt:

• Never park in a closed garage for a long while; the havoc that I speak of above took place only in a matter of 20 days.
• Humidity is bad for your car. In the monsoons, keep driving every now and then, just to keep the brakes etc., in good order. This only applies if your car is not a daily driver.

Currently, the car has been sprayed with liberal amounts of bug spray. It will soon be sent to the mechanic for a session of deep cleaning which would involve removal of the seats and carpets.

This is how the car looked just about 1.5 months ago. Seeing the car now, in such a sorry state really breaks my heart:

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