You protect your car’s paint with regular washes and waxing. You vacuum and polish your interior. You take your vehicle in for regular tune-ups, change your oil, rotate and balance your wheels. You drive reasonable speeds and don’t break too fast. You make complete stops and look both ways at intersections. Put simply, you take care of your automobile.
But you may be forgetting one small thing: Rodents!
Yeah, that’s right: Rodents. There’s no irony or metaphors at work here. This is neither a figurative word choice nor a clever literary ploy. By “rodent,” we quite literally mean “any of an order (Rodentia) of relatively small gnawing mammals (as a mouse, squirrel, or beaver) that have in both jaws a single pair of incisors with a chisel-shaped edge.”
So, there it is. Rats and their feisty, furry cousins may be destroying your vehicle. They can get under your hood and undercarriage and chew wires, tear out insulation for nesting supplies, or stash away food and other treasures.
Per experts, rodents simply like the taste. In the last decade, according to mechanic Marc Dueubber of Duebber’s Automotive in Cincinnati, much of the automobile industry has started using biodegradable, soy-based wire insulation. This material is better for the environment when compared to older plastics, but unfortunately, it tastes good too. ”They are drawn to it, therefore they are chewing and eating it,” says Duebber.
This problem is not simply a nuisance, given that experts say this rodent damage can account for $500 in repair costs and sometimes a lot more. The cost can skyrocket when rodents get at the more sophisticated transportation technology in a vehicle, sometimes pushing cost of repairs into the thousands.
And it’s not just your wallet that could be taking a hit. In one scary instance, according to a mechanic, “an acorn, rolling into a crevice after a driver stepped on the gas pedal, kept the throttle open on a late model Ford truck.” In another instance, a driver didn’t notice his brake lines were eaten through before he drove down a winding rural road.
All of this rodent damage can be costly in myriad ways. If you start smelling some burning wires, or your vehicle spontaneously starts messing up, rodents might be responsible. It’s worth checking!