A critter under my hood, yikes!
Dear Mike: I have a ‘97 VW Jetta, and some small animal seems to like building his nest on top of my battery. There used to be insulation around the battery until this little guy wanted the top for his home. This car is used almost every day. He has also gnawed through some of the wiring. Last week he gnawed into the battery’s plastic case.
What can I put near the battery to stop this? I tried a moth cake, but it melted.
— B.G., Somerville, N.J.
A: Small rodents can be incredibly destructive when they nest in cars. They’ll chew on wiring or fuel lines, or die and stink up the interior. I’d suggest using moth crystals. Put them in a resealable container. At night, set this near your battery, opened. When you need the car in the morning, remove the jar, close it up and keep it in the car. Lather, rinse and repeat. A few weeks of this should make your unwanted tenant look elsewhere for lodgings. If this fails, you’ll need to resort to poison or traps.
The few times I’ve had issues with this, I just parked the car near the doghouse at night. The intermittent barking late at night lasted only a couple of days, until Mr. Chipmunk packed his bags and found a new condo.
Dear Mike: My pickup had a really bad vibration in the steering wheel when I would first start out in the morning on cold days. I had the tires balanced, and the tire buster said there was over a quart of water in one of my front tires. He said the vibration was caused by ice — it stopped when the ice broke up or melted.
Who would put water in one of my tires? — T.A., Point Reyes, Calif.
A: It’s common to see water inside tires, but not normal. The moisture probably got there inadvertently. Air compressors have drain petcocks on the bottom of their storage tanks and moisture traps on their outlets to catch any humidity that condenses in the hot air coming from the cylinders. (The air is heated by compression as it is squeezed in the compressors’ cylinders.) But those water traps need to be drained regularly — as often as twice a day in humid weather. If they aren’t, moisture can collect in the hose and get pumped into your tires when the air is topped up.
I always use my fingernail to depress the inflator valve in the air chuck just before I fill up a tire, especially if it’s not in my own shop. If there’s any evidence of water, the system needs to be purged — not only the water traps but all the hoses and piping. For obvious reasons, be sure the chuck is pointed away from your (or anyone else’s) face.
I also like to use a water-based tire-mounting lubricant when mounting tires on rims, just to keep the humidity inside the tire lower. Where to find tire-mounting lubricant? There are commercial products, but most shops use a special formula of a squirt of dish detergent in a quart or so of water.
Dear Mike: Recently I noticed that my maplights weren’t working in my 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee. As time went on, I noticed that none of the interior lights were working. I replaced the fuse, and the next morning the battery was dead.
I tried to replace the fuse again after charging the battery, and the fuse blew instantly as I was installing it. Thinking it was a bad fuse, I grabbed a 20-amp fuse instead of a 10. This also blew. I’ve blown several more fuses, including a 30-amp.
— R.R., via Internet
A: If you persist in replacing a 10-amp fuse with larger and larger ones, you’ll eventually destroy your wiring harness, and maybe set your Jeep on fire. Now that I have your attention, stop doing that.
Obviously there’s a short in the wiring harness or one of the interior lights. Someone who understands electricity will need to use a piece of test gear called an ohmmeter to find the short, which probably was caused by chafed wiring or a broken light fixture. In the meantime, carry a flashlight and stock up on the correct fuses.