Ok guys here we go again with the damn mice getting into something else in my garage. I have had this problem for a while now but i have been catching them at a fast rate. i do not see anymore since my last a week ago. Well back to my new problem. I have a 351c in my 55 f100. The truck did run and drove before many times. The last time i went to move the truck it did not start. The power wires to the battery where kinda melting. HOT!!! well i just pushe the truck in the next bay and left it. Well today im going to see whats wrong ( its been like a year at this time) i put a socket on the bolt at the end of the cam harmonic balancer, get the place? Well i put a ratchet and start to turn the motor over to see if its stuck. it starts to turn but its hard and stops dead. Ok i know to stop here before i break something. I than pull the plugs to spray some oil in to seee if it helps any, when what do i see rat poison. The damn mouse took the stuff the open long tube header and into the cylinder head! YOu can now add words that i can say here! Well my wife hears me and comes to the garage to see whats going on.Well im over it now sorta. i have tried to suck out what i can through the spark plug hole and took the header off and sucked out the exhaust port. What else can i do besides take the head off? Is there a way to turn the motor back off the point im at now. I have tried but the bolt comes loose in reverse. Thanks for your help! Sorry so long!

 

I'm sorry Roger...I'm still trying to pick myself up off the floor. Of all the stupid things!

Are you sure the mouse isn't in there too?

You should be able to back the engine with the balance bolt if it is on at the correct torque to start with, and the spark plugs are all out. But if not, you can do it at the flywheel if you can remove the Bell front cover or starter.

It amazes me how the little bass turd got past the valves. Anyway, if he's not dead in there and it's just the poison, you can put a straw, or curved piece of nylon tube on the end of the shop vac (with a little duct tape for seal) and stick it down into the cylinder through the spark plug hole to slurp it all up. If he's dead in there, you probably need to go get a head gasket kit...tee hee.

If it's just the poison and you can't get it to vacuum out, then put a cup of diesel fuel in the cylinder. Let it sit for about 30 to 60 minutes then try to turn the engine with the bolt again. It should have disolved the pellets. My manual says 90 minutes for rat pellets but most of the folks who have had this happen say 60 is enough (wait a minute, let me get up again).

After it frees up, run it up to TDC and use a syringe with a curved tube on it to suck out the rest of the fluid. Be careful, it's full of cyanide at this point. Before moving the piston, fill the void with diesel one more time and remove it with the syringe again. Finally fill the cylinder with fresh oil and remove it with the syring. Then turn the engine over a couple times with the balance bolt. Change your oil and the filter. It should be ok. After you get the new oil in, and the original problem fixed, pre oil the engine with the plugs out by cranking it until the oil pressure comes up. Install the plugs. Take a test drive -maybe by the pound - buy a mean cat for the barn.

Good luck,
Julie

PS I think I peed my pants........

 

I can't wait until GreatNorthWoods sees this one..........

Ol' Vern finally has someone to commiserate with....LOL

Bobby

 

...LoL!!
I took in a stranded cat for my sister,...didn't see that cat for 2 weeks....
I call my buddy over to help me move a large item... we both go to the item to be moved, and clean-up the immediate area so we have room to move....then we go for ONE beer, come back to move the item ...and there's 5 mice, layed-out St.Valentines Massacre style where there was nothing 5 minutes ago.....Get a Cat! LoL!

 

LOL! i can relate to this story. In 97 the wife and I moved into our new home which had a 2 car garage. She had a 96 or 97 Sonoma that was her daily driver. One day on the way to work her truck just kept a constant speed even if she let up on the gas pedal. Just like cruise control was on, but it wasn't. She stomped on the gas pedal a couple of times and tapped the brakes. Nothing worked! She knocked it out of gear, coasted to the side of the road and shut the motor off. Called a friend of ours who is a jack of all trades to come look at it. He raised the hood and put the prop rod in to hold it up and started to look around. She heard him let out a BIG cuss word and bang his head against the hood hard enough that it dislodged the prop rod and slammed back down nearly hitting his head again! He looked at her and said you got @%$# mice in there! Sure enough there was a nest and 3 or 4 baby mice tucked back up under the breather! Not for sure how that caused the problem but once they was cleaned out the truck ran fine!

 

Of course for all you vengeful people out there, I had a girlfriend who was for all intents an purposes - pure psycho. She dated this guy for 6 months and finally ran into him at a restaurant one night with another girl friend of ours. It was ugly.

About a week later and no calls, she went to the pet shop and bought 25 white mice - 3 males and 22 females, and drove to the guys house and dropped them all down the mail slot.

It's ok though - he drove a Chevy Apache!

J!

 

I could not believe it but one day i caught not one but two mice in one mouse trap. Side by side they, i guess it was a pack they made! LOL!

Thanks Julies! i will have to check the flywheel and see if i can turn there. The balance bolt just comes loose when i try to reverse it.

 

I guess i could top this story with the 4 foot RAT snake that was in the engine bay over the summer going after the field mice that where hanging out in the intake air box. thats a story all in its own!

 

When I brought my 53 project home I wanted to get the 302 that it came with started...After some close inspection I decided that I needed to tear it down all the way when I kept finding whole kernels of corn in nearly every opening of the engine! when I took off the intake, the whole lifter valley was FULL of corn kernels!
Amazing where those buggers can get to.

Too bad about your cleveland...I ditched the "corny" 302 and I am going to put a cleveland in mine too, hopefully I can keep it rodent free.

 

julie, you have a manual on RAT PELLETS???????????

 

Its amazing how the little sob got in the exhaust valve was open so it was a doorway. I did get the motor to turn but i think the starter is bad as well. Today i will try to change it out and see where that takes me. Thanks To all!

 

Oh the joys of living in the country.....mice everywhere. Bounce fabric softener sheets spread out all over the vehicles, D-con in every corner, and the local wild cats that hang out in the yard. But last year one died a different way....it hung itself between the blue plastic outlet box, and the outlet itself., wasn't burnt too badly, but could've been hard to explain that one to the fire marshall. Lucky me.

Since then I've put on wall plates.

 

we always have used a bucket of antifreeze. You have to be dang sure no pets can get to it 'cause once drank, it's a torturous and impending death. makes a bit of a mess as it really tears up their liver and causes them to pretty much hemorrage out every oriface. but it's quite effective. To preclude the mess, we used about 4-6 inches of a'frz in the bottom of a 5 gal bucket with something nearby to help them in. Once in, they can't get out. and we've always had some left over a'frz. As for what to do w/ the very used a'frz? not sure what the right way is, but you can guess what happens in the country.
JML

 

OK, I gotta throw in my two cents worth here...

My wife retired several years ago and at that time she was still driving her '95 Explorer, but only once a week when she did her weekly shopping run and then the total was always less than 15 miles. The rest of the time her car was always in the garage. One time she called me from her cell phone not too lomg after she had left home and said that her car was running a bit wierd and that it really smell odd and it was like something burning. I asked her if she had pulled it over and checked anything but cautioned her about lifting the hood if there was a fire. She said no but she noticed a lot of smoke in her rear view mirror when she accelerated.. I got he to pull it off the street, shut it down and to be carefull checking it while she remained on the phone. She reported that there was no sing of fire or any smoke when it was sitting there. I told her to bring it back home. I started it up out in front of the garage and it did snoke some when I reved it up. I also noticed that when I had reved it up I caused some burnt grains of corn to come out of the tail pipe. That is when it all came to me... My wife is a freak for feeding the birds and squirrels durring the Winter months. The problem is she leaves that stuff laying around un-protected and of course it is a magnet for mice. They had set upon a mission to store as muck as possible in the exhaust system as the could. It would heve been something to see those critters getting the stuff in there as they would have had to jump from the floor to the tail pipe opening. By the time she got the car back home it seemed to be running OK and not smoking as much. I told her to go ahead and drive it which she did with no problem other than it smelling like burnt popcorn. For several weeks the car emitted that odor until everything had been burnt out of it

I used the remaining shelled corn to successfully rid myself of the rest of the mice. I put about two inches of the stuff in the bottom of a tall plastic trach can with tall smooth sides. I placed it so they could get into it easily. I was getting several a day for several weeks so I'm sure they were still coming in from outside as we really had not had other mice problems. They would get in there and gorge themselves and they had no water and could not get out. There is a toilet in my shop and I used it to preside over many a Viking Funeral, less the traditional burning ship, to dispatch the little buggers to Rodent Valhalla. Some of the mice would eat part of the other already dead mice in the can and there would only be partial remains. I have to admit that doing in the ones that were alive was a bit unpleasant but knowing they were canabalistic in nature seemed to make the whole process a bit easlier. Eventually the mice quit coming to the can although I left it sit for months to come.

Both mice and rats can get their entire body through any place they can get their head through. That is why they are able to get into all those places

Later Folks,,,

 

This what we have in the hunting shack....quite effective.