the weirdest thing you have ever found in an engine bay of any car you have worked on

[Havokk]

As i prep my garage for my jettas timing belt and water pump job , i looked at my old 1970 Yamaha 250cc motorcycle sitting in the corner.

I remembered the day i bought it for 200 bucks and my dad threw on a trailer to take it home so i could fix her up (she was a beater). First thing i did was Gas her up and try to start it. Wouldnt start so i did some minor things on it to try and get her going. Freash gas, check, battery....charged, Oil, Check

Air Filter................HOLY CRAP MICE!!!


A family of mice had made thier home in this Air cleaner box. Seems i bought a motorcycle and a family of mice. Nice nest too, composed of grass, sticks and tons of crap! The mice bailed out and started to scurry (i think thats the term for it) across the garage floor.


So that is the strangest thing i have ever found on any Motorized Vhecial i have worked on.

I thought of this while in my garage today and wonderd what other people have found in thier travels. Id post a pic but it was a long time ago and dont have one of the nest :-(.


So...what have you all found?

 

[Herm TDI]

A few years ago I posted here on the forums.
A thread called "Chimpmonk Love"
I had a problem with the insulation on my fiire wall being chewed but didn't know by whom or what.
When I went to replace my cabin filter I found all of my missing insulation. A pair of local chimpmonks make a damn huge nest (including acorns)right ontop of my cabin filter.
The photos were lost during one of the forum server crashes long ago but still...damn impressive to see.

 

[gforce1108]

A couple of years ago I bought a Yz125 at a yard sale and ended up with a '68 honda scramber and whole trailer of motorcycles and parts included in the deal.

As I was unloading everything a snake slithered out of one of the boxes.

Then a couple of minutes later a tire blew on the honda and scared the crap out of us even more!

 

[thecbdb]

I was changing a fuel filter out on a friend's '99 Jetta TDI and poking around checking things out when I found the ENTIRE TOP OF AN OIL BOTTLE lid and seal ring inside of the oil fill! When I brought it to her attention, she mentioned that she had just taken it to Jiffy Lube for an oil change.

Just another reason to stay away from any sort of "Jiffy" or "Quick" service.

 

[Franko6]

I got one Jetta that a rat had used to store it's winter supply of food under the hood. The next door neighbor's dog killed the rat, putting an end to the 'storage problem'. Every place an acorn would sit under the hood.. I mean EVERYWHERE... there was an acorn. I vacuumed them out by the hundreds.

The rat only chewed one wire through for the oil pressure switch.

 

[40X40]

The weirdest may be my first (AFAIK) diagnosis... My mother was headed to town and I was riding with her. We made it about a mile and a half from the farm and slowed to approach a bridge on our gravel road. As the car slowed the engine died in an unusual manner. She had enough experience with engines to just pull over and not try to continue without investigating. (This was 40+ years ago, security was not an issue, nor was traffic.)
She asks me to raise the hood and see if I knew what was wrong....

I found a thrown v-belt and a two piece cat.

We guessed the cat had been crouched on the warm engine and had fallen into the fan belt when we braked. Both the engine and the cat were killed.. the cat permanently, the engine was revived after a belt replacement and a visit to the car wash. (yeah, it was gross.)

Bill

 

[Mike in Anchorage]

Not quite in my car, but while living in Utah, I was traveling on I-15. I didn't notice the small accumulation of entrails that had leaked from a trick hauling them on the interstate. After getting to my destination, I noted an unusual smell. It got worse and worse over the next couple of days. The newspaper finally did an article that hundreds of cars had the same fate - warm steer and pig entrails spilled on the freeway were gradually spoliing on the undersides of the cars. High pressure spray onthe undercarriage got it tolerable and it finallly baked off.

 

[egibbys]

I found a bunch of nuts and such on top of my engine last December. And it wasn't just a few. There were a lot. Couldn't have been done all in one night. I guess for a while I'd come home and the warm engine was really enticing place to sleep at night and store food. Thought it was pretty funny. I then got a skidplate which was a good solution to the problem.

 

[fixumrich]

A dead rat in a 93 euro van skid plate .. Oh had a 03 tdi wagon for a oil change . And when I plulled the top sound cover coould'nt even see the injector lines ? Mouse city dead and alive yuck ... R

 

[Sip'n Diesel]

haven't found anything too odd yet... however I try to peek in the engine bay at least once a day, even if only to check the dipstick

 

[Proudfoot]

My buddy got into his car after a backpacking trip and started to drive away, but noticed some weird noises and pulled over. Opening the hood to inspect, an incredibly infuriated, blackened, and literally smoking squirrel dropped out from the engine compartment, actually scolded him (I picture the story with the squirrel bearing a raised fist) and then ran off into the woods...

 

[CoolAirVw]

I've seen so many mouse nests and dead mice its not unusual.

But...

An old lady came through the shop and she just wanted trans fluid changed. She had a windstar and it stunk terribly as you walked up to the car and inside the passenger compartment.

I figured out what the smell was after raising the hood and seeing a rotted, stinking corpse of a dead cat. It had obviosly been there a while.

I went in to tell her. She was sitting there in the waiting area, reading a book called, "Care and breeding of Cat's", she had her legs crossed and her dress was up showing her socks, which had a pattern of kittens playing with a yarn ball.

Since she was obviosly a cat lover, I couldn't bear to tell her that her dear "whiskers" was dead under her hood. Not only that but if I told her, certainly she would ask me to pull that corpse out. It had been there so long I'm sure it would just fall to peices. So I said, "We'll have that work done in a jiffy!"

We sent her over to the local firestone, to have that smell checked out, because were a transmission shop and didn't work on anything but transmissions.

 

[4XTaco]

Worst on the TDI was just pine needles and junk from the PO parking it under a tree... that was bad enough to get cleaned out.
A Tahoe we had- nothing exciting but a short ratchet by the battery tray and a pair of needlenose that fell between the radiator and AC condensor.

BUT... a friend of mine picked up a nice Dodge Diesel Cummins the other year. Her Mom was up to visit and they got in her truck and drove to local town and kept hearing weird noises from under the hood. So she was fueling up and decided to pop the hood to be greeted by a very dazed raccoon. She called the local animal catcher who was able to extract it from the engine bay. It was beat up pretty bad and they didn't know how long it was going to last so they ended up taking it and putting it down humanely.

 

[whitedog]

I didn't see it, but I heard that one guy opened the hood of his TDI and found a Timing belt system that was done correctly by the dealer.

How's that for weird?

 

[Antsrcool]

I one opened a hood and discovered the head of a cardinal lodged in the A/C condensor. No body just the head must of exploded on impact

 

[4XTaco]

I didn't see it, but I heard that one guy opened the hood of his TDI and found a Timing belt system that was done correctly by the dealer.

How's that for weird?

^ ROFLMAO

 

[Mike in Anchorage]

I didn't see it, but I heard that one guy opened the hood of his TDI and found a Timing belt system that was done correctly by the dealer.

How's that for weird?

Touché. That's probably the best one!

 

[Bob_Fout]

Touché. That's probably the best one!

I agree. Doggie has the post of the day.

 

[sdeck]

I was having some stumbling issues with my 02 Yukon XL and suspected an air leak somewhere. I took off the plastic top cover and started poking around the vacuum lines and such and saw a patch of fur hiding on top valve cover on the driver's side. As I started pulling/shop-vaccing it out, I found essentially an entire rabbits-worth of fur (including the tail) that looked like it had been packed into all the nooks and crannys on that side. There was no sticks or grass or twigs and nothing "wet". The skin pieces looked like that had been tanned, not just dried out. I had once had a tanned rabbit skin as a kid and this looked like the hide had been tanned then shredded and packed into top of the engine. I have never figured it out. Maybe my wife ran over a rabbit skin and it got blown in there by the radiator fan. IHNFI.

 

[bigwoode]

Was changing the air filter on my 99 Z28, and when I removed the old filter, there were 3-4 pages of newspaper below it. That explained my loss to a 350Z at the track

 

[Windex]

Dead mice, live mice, dead frogs, and one machette on a used car trade in.

 

[FlyTDI Guy]

I've been having an ongoing battle w/bee hives (yellow jackets) and my mostly-parked S10 Blazer. I've found carb cleaner not only cleans up the area nicely but the little bastids drop like lead when hit w/the stuff. Makes me think about all the times I've soaked parts (and my hands) w/it. Does a killer (literally) job on bees, wonder what it's been doing to me???

 

[Lug_Nut]

Two water pumps, two vacuum pumps and an air pump, 6 spark plugs...
It turned out to be a VR6. Seemed goofy enough to me to haul it on out of there.

 

[blandon]

I bought a 1971 Karmann Ghia years ago, and after owning it for well over a year, I took it in to have the main oil seal replaced (this was when I wouldn't have dared attempt such a thing myself).

The mechanic found a 17mm Craftsman box-end wrench just hanging onto one of the four engine mount bolts - presumably it had been there for thousands of miles. I still have that wrench in my toolbox.

 

[greengeeker]

when I took delivery of my 55 chevy, last registered in CA, I found two pull-tab Coors beer cans inside the driver's door...wonder how they got there . I also found a small bag of 'seeds' underneath a bunch of cigarette butts in the bottom of the ashtray.

 

[i_dont_golf]

2 missing motor mount bolts from a crappy TB job on my car. i was lucky enough not to have my engine fall out. not super wierd i guess, but shocking nonetheless

 

[vwrobert51]

had a cust in a vanagon complaining that when he drives he smell a bbq smell, further check found cat roasting on cat converter, also had a bag of coke and a 38 revolver fall out from under dash, cust denied knowing about it (YEH RIGHT ! ) NO WE DIDNT KEEP THE COKE

 

[greengeeker]

^^ the cat owed them some money.

 

[Gotesh]

I don't remember what car I had at the time - this was about 25 years ago. I opened the hood and there was a slice of toast sitting on top of the intake manifold.

 

[JB05]

I found a live possum under the hood of the family '75 Buick. I threw snowballs at it to no avail. The village animal control officer was off duty at the time, but two patrol officers pulled up, put a noose around its neck, dragged it to the front yard and shot it with a 357 Magnum and hauled away the corpse. I felt a bit guilty at the time. No damage to the engine compartment.