No joke regarding rodents being able to eat anything.

My sister's Chinchilla (essentially a giant, fluffy, exotic mouse) probably has the strongest jaws and teeth I have ever seen. Her cage has thick plastic ramps spanning different floor levels. She wanted to make a sleeping area under one of those ramps, and have the ability to enter and exit from either end. Her solution: chew her way through the bottom of the ramp to create a Chinchilla-sized doorway. It took her about a day to do that.

She also uses edible houses made of wood that we buy her. When one house gets old and worn out, we buy another one, and she 'demolishes' (eats down) her old house to make way for the new one.

Pretty smart little animals...

 

All this talk about mice had me go look in my shop for the box of mouse poison I bought last year. Turns out a mouse ate through the box and had a big chunk of poison for dinner. Jokes on him! I usually don't like poison because I don't want one to die inside my walls and stink, but this year is all out war. They dance in the intersections around here in broad daylight.

 

Braided Flexible Conduit systems for use on vehicle wiring harnesses mice will have a tough time chewing thru this.

 

That looks like tough stuff. Too bad Ford doesn't use something like that to protect the truck's wiring. The flimsy covering they use is worthless! Jag

 

I actually had to use metallic flex conduit (like you use in house wiring) on my tractor to keep the chipmunks at bay...

 

My sister had this happen to her GM so the mice will literally eat c%&p! The local Honda dealer said that they are seeing so many vehicles with mice damage that Honda is now selling a tape that the mice can't chew through and are wrapping wiring in this. Maybe check and see if you can get some of this. The dryer sheets lose their scent quickly and just become mouse nest material!

 

Today I upped the ante with the addition of mouse sticky traps. They are going to go. They also chewed the wires on my Golf cart Jag

 

Try FRESH CAB which is sold at Menards. It worked for me as I had the same problem with my 2012 F150. I put it in my 2015 F150 as soon as I brought it home. It is a Botanical Rodent Repellent comes with 4 bags that smell good to me but the mice will not go near it. Change it out every 3 months.

 

I wasted $10.00 on Irish Spring soap..(for my 2003 Pony...I know, this is a F-150 forum but thought I'd jump in anyways...)..put full bars in the trunk, engine compartment, front seat, back seat...and, under the car.....damn mice made a nest in the padding around the spare and in the engine compartment!

Just my 2 cent's worth!

 

Check out # 8

9 Complaints: 2016 Ford F-150 Electrical System Problems

 

Ford needs to address this problem. Why are they trying to save the planet by building biodegradable vehicles? A better, more eco friendly approach is to build vehicles that last a good long time so they don't have to be replaced as often.

Quit trying to appease those who will never buy a new vehicle and build us something that wont rot and become mouse food.

 

I mentioned the soy in post #2 here regarding my 4Runner. They are basically making electrical and other insulation out of mouse food. I think Toyota may have started this before Ford, because there are tons of complaints on the Interwebz. Toyota doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the problem though, and I suspect Ford will be similar.

If they were all smart, they would be covering all the electrical wiring with that tape that AMXDREAMER mentioned earlier that Honda is selling aftermarket. This should not be an "aftermarket fix" anymore. There's tons of evidence that rodents are attracted to the "green" coating.


And JKBrad, you are spot on regarding the shortsightedness. They want to be "green", but they don't consider the consequences, unintended or otherwise. Just like the old cash for clunkers program. People were sending their perfectly good older vehicles to scrap (and the associated hazmat) to get the new Prius (though I recall F-150s were one of the most popular replacement vehicles), when environmentally, they would have been better off driving their old car into the ground, vs creating both more waste and more pollution from producing the replacement vehicles.

 

You're absolutely correct. In many parts of the country there will be 10 year old vehicles rotting away. They would have been otherwise perfectly serviceable except for biodegradable components rotting or feeding pests. The cost to replace entire wiring harness on today's cars 10 years from now will be ridiculous, it's already a daunting job today.

The people who push for this earth friendly stuff the most always drive old cars with smoke spewing from the tailpipe and all sorts or "green" propaganda decals on the back.

Don't get me wrong. I hate waste. Makes me mad that so much stuff is plastic and disposable today. A car or truck should not biodegrade though. Auto recycling is down to a science. We don't put old cars into landfills.

 

Let a few more of these biodegradable wiring jobs burn the vehicle to a crisp when the wires short out, even worse if in someone's garage taking their house out with it, and they will be pressed for a response. Sad that it takes things like this happening to get responses from automakers.

 

Buy a Cat!