Hello Prius owners, Today I notice rat droppings in the garage after being on a one week vacation in Hawaii. I drove out my car and opened the front hood to see if they critters got into the engine. They did - but have not penetrated into the cabin. The droppings are limited to various horizontal surfaces of the engine bay and the plastic flap that covers the oil drain bolt. It also looks like they left some sort of food above the flap; it looks like seeds or nuts. So I spent the sunday afternoon sweeping the garage and vacuuming all the crap in the engine bay. There's a lot of nooks and crannies I see in the engine bay that still have droppings where my vacuum nozzle can't reach. Also there looks like dried pee on a few plastic / metal parts of the engine. I would love to bring the car to a self-serve detail facility where I used to degrease and powerwash the engine of cars I owned for $4. Do you guys think this would have any adverse affect on the car if I did that? I do see electrical connectors that look very vulnerable to water so I will tape those up. I will also do my best to avoid high pressure water on any sort of connector or wire loom. I used to work in the detail department of lexus during my college years and we degreased and powerwashed the engine bays of all new cars that we sold (including hybrids). However we had high pressure air that we used to blow off the water which I don't have access to now...Also Lexus cars tended to have much plastic shielding or covers in the engine than our Priuses. Has anyone had problems after cleaning the engine bay of their Prius? Thanks!
I forgot to mention that the car outside smells like poop because of all the urine and feces in the engine bay. Powerwashing is my last resort but is heavily considered because of this!
I see there is a discussion in another thread about cleaning the engine bay. Cleaning engine compartment | PriusChat
rats! i have used electrical tape to connect a small tube to my wet vac to get into the nooks and crannies. also, you can get a refrigerator tool that is pretty slim for those areas. i would be very judicial with a pressure washer, you may want to try some baking soda etc for the smell.
Get some cats, that will take care of the mice infestation. You are not alone. A lady in the Gen II section is having a war with her mice too. Common problem with cars today. Be real careful if you wash under the hood. Protect all wiring and especially the igniters for the plugs. If it were me, I would do it by hand using brushes and what have you. Power washing works great, but the water could do some expensive damage to electronics if it were to get inside. Best of luck to you, Ron (dorunron)
The ECU connector cover is worth getting; Protective cap for exposed electrical connections under hood? | PriusChat Unfortunately, it is not installed on any Gen III Prius.
.... Yeah.. as an electrical engineer (or so the piece of paper tells me), I'd be really cagey about applying water of any kind to the engine compartment, but if you have good experience doing this even with hybrids and somehow with good safety precautions (like you're totally grounded and insulated and not gonna get any water on yourself), I suppose? Just remember that the orange color means "high voltage", safety first, risk of damage next (that high voltage inverter in the engine compartment listed in the area of ~$2000+ last I saw the other day and had exposed wiring that, while I presume is somewhat safe, I still would prefer to avoid touching).. Good luck! Your unfortunate tale also puts another count in my motivations for looking into a set of those JDM engine covers, especially that ECU connector cap..
Hi Guys, Thank you for all your input on this matter. So I couldn't stand the thought (as well as the smell!) of rat poop all over my engine bay. Today I decided to gently soap and powerwash inside the hood. The car still runs fine after (knock on wood!) and I urge others to use some common sense if they go this route. No specific order: 1) protect all exposed connectors (see photos of highlighted red circles). There may be more that I missed such as headlight electrical connectors etc 2) do this on a warm day so that the car can dry out (obviously don't do it in the middle of winter where the water can freeze, expand and cause more problems!) 3) park the car outside in direct sunlight to speed up the drying process 4) after the powerwash, drive the car to run your errands. Anything to keep the engine hot will speed up the drying. 5) when taking the tape / plastic protection off of the connectors, be careful when pulling them off. The last thing you want to do is rip off the tape and damage the wires in the process. 6) don't aim the powerwash nozzle directly onto important electrical parts. The goal is trying not to get water into sensitive areas. Good luck!
Since you, or someone else, will eventually work in that engine compartment, and since you've passed perhaps the riskiest part of cleaning, I'd also suggest disinfecting. Ideally, one should use something like a 10% bleach solution and water to address any bacteria from rat droppings, but also probably worth checking to ensure that won't damage any of the components. More to it, also sounds like you need to deal with rodents gaining access to your garage, presuming that's where you regularly store your car (and yeah, I need to as well..).
So.....what are you going to do about the rodents ?? If you don't eliminate the cause you will just be doing it all over again later......and again and again.
It is trial and error here. I sweeped up all the poop in the garage the other day. These last two days, there are no new droppings so I hope they are gone for good (Also there's nothing eatable in my garage other than dead spiders and pillbugs). They got in from a little crack in the garage door and I will have to seal that up. If they are back, hopefully rat traps will take care of that!
Sounds like you have enough of a rat problem to warrant calling in a professional exterminator. If those rats eat the insulation off your wires, you are in for a shockingly large repair bill to replace expensive wire harness(es). You are actually lucky the rats did not do more damage during this incident.
At least it's only rats... In some places (like Mineral King in Sequoia National Park) they have marmots that chew on radiator hoses and wires while you're off hiking in the wilderness in the spring! One solution there (apart from avoiding parking in the worst areas) is to park on top of a tarp, then fold the tarp up around the car and cinch it shut at the roof. Makes your car look like it's been gift-wrapped - but hopefully just for you, and no marmots will think you remembered their birthday...
.... I don't appreciate living in California enough. (On the other hand, rats getting into engine compartments is still an occasional occurrence here to the unfortunates..)
