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Ok, so, rather foolishly, we store our Costco sized bag of dog food as well as the seeds for the bird feeder in our yard in our garage. Apparently, this has attracted rats into our garage. I am not sure how they got in there but now that I think of it I can remember my wife leaving the side door open a few times plus both of the boys like to open the garage door, go riding around the neighborhood on their bikes, then come back to the open garage to put away their bikes. I will need to start making sure all of them keep the doors closed.
So, anyway, my wife's car was working perfectly yesterday (2019 Camry) but this morning she drove our son to school and she told me the "car was shaking and the was a check engine light on". I test drove and sure enough it was like one cylinder was not firing. Stupidly, I took it to our local Toyota dealer thinking it would be a warranty issue but as soon as they popped the hood it was clear a rat made a nest between the plastic engine cover and the intake manifold. The rat had put a bunch of carpet fiber, leaves, and something which looked like the firewall covering material from the engine bay to make a nest. It had also chewed on the plastic engine cover as well as through one of the fuel injector wires for the #2 cylinder.
Naturally, rodent damage is not covered under warranty and my deductible is $500 so I had to pay $175 to the dealer to fix it. If I had inspected it first before going to the dealer I might have been able to splice it together and put a heat shrink on it for $0.20. Oh, well, live and learn. This is the first time I ever had rodent damage to a wire before. I checked on the internet and found that in order to be more "green" Toyota replaced traditional plastic wife coatings with a soy bean based plastic and that rodents apparently love munching on this soy bean based plastic. I would prefer traditional toxic but untasty to rodents plastic.
So, anyway, my wife's car was working perfectly yesterday (2019 Camry) but this morning she drove our son to school and she told me the "car was shaking and the was a check engine light on". I test drove and sure enough it was like one cylinder was not firing. Stupidly, I took it to our local Toyota dealer thinking it would be a warranty issue but as soon as they popped the hood it was clear a rat made a nest between the plastic engine cover and the intake manifold. The rat had put a bunch of carpet fiber, leaves, and something which looked like the firewall covering material from the engine bay to make a nest. It had also chewed on the plastic engine cover as well as through one of the fuel injector wires for the #2 cylinder.
Naturally, rodent damage is not covered under warranty and my deductible is $500 so I had to pay $175 to the dealer to fix it. If I had inspected it first before going to the dealer I might have been able to splice it together and put a heat shrink on it for $0.20. Oh, well, live and learn. This is the first time I ever had rodent damage to a wire before. I checked on the internet and found that in order to be more "green" Toyota replaced traditional plastic wife coatings with a soy bean based plastic and that rodents apparently love munching on this soy bean based plastic. I would prefer traditional toxic but untasty to rodents plastic.
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