So I went out of town this weekend and did a little wheeling on some power line trails at a friends cabin.

I get back to school and wash my car off before it gets too dark and everything was working great. Then I cranked the car up this afternoon to go run some errands and the vsc off, abs, vsc trac, and the e-brake lights all remained on after start up...

I open the hood to find this...


He pretty much destroyed my wiring harness for my Warn wireless winch control which is gonna cost me $60 for a new one and chewed through all the ground wires for my ABS, VSC harness.

So my question is, can I just redo the grounds for the harness without having to buy a new one? Or should I just buy a new one? Can anyone point my in the right direction for part #'s and such?

Hope the little bastard is out of the engine compartment, I checked the airbox and looked around and didnt see any more signs of him

 

i would just get some wire from the auto parts store and some heat shrink and solder the wires back together as much as u can. only replace what needs to be, like the wench wires

 

What a little SOB... That would piss me off. I would say open the ABS/VSC harness enough to where you can cut out all the damaged wiring, then solder on some extensions to bring it back to stock length, solder or crimp on a new lug at the end and re-attach it to the ground point. I'd also take a GOOD look around and make sure he didn't get anything else in the process, you could have a wire that is exposed but not completely cut and you dont want any surprise shorts.

Finally, for good measure, put a mouse trap in there and secure it to the harnesses with some electrical tape. If mousey comes back for seconds he gets whacked!

 

man, you got off lucky. my inlaws live on a couple acres where there are thousands of field mice - bastards wreak havoc on anything that doesn't move frequently and chewed all the way through their Tacoma's wiring harness a few years ago, right where it goes into the firewall as well as the wiring around the fuses. i think that one cost them just shy of $1000 to get it rewired. we decided it was time for them to adopt some outdoor cats that are good at hunting...haven't really had any issues with mice ever since. oh yeah, d-CON also helped

 

You shouldn't have coated all your wires in peanut butter!

No but I agree, you can probably solder back a lot of those wires in a few hours. Looks like you have 1 ground that needs to be re-done and you should be OK...or am I missing somethign?

 

That sucks, man! The worst thing that a mouse ever did to my old Taco, or should I say my Taco did to the mouse, was when one of those buggers crawled through my ventilation system and somehow ended up in the cabin fan motor. I turned it on and my entire dash started to shake violently. I was pissed because it was a particularly hot day. When I got home, I discovered a field mouse inside the drum-shaped fan blade with all of his guts coming out of his bum. I guess it was too many G forces for the lil' bugger to handle.

 

Is it messed up that I cracked up reading this?

 

Yeah this is such a pain in the ass, just not really something I wanna deal with right now.

It is only that one ground that got affected besides the winch harness which isnt crucial to any oem electronics obviously.

Never done much electrical work before like soldering for instance. Yall think this is do-able for a first attempt? Do you think I could find some local mechanic that could just do it quickly for me?

 

Soldering is one of the easiest skills to learn. Buy a decent iron, practice a bit, and use shrink tubing, not electrical tape, to insulate the joints.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLfXXRfRIzY

 

At the autoshop i work at my buddy pulled off a hub cap and found a dried up mouse stuck to one of the clips. We had to chisel it off. Death by spin cycle!

 

Good thing it's not shielded wire. We had an LS460 towed in awhile back with a similiar problem, but it was the main engine harness... I believe the harness itself was $3,000 (not including labor)! I know they are and have been working on putting a pest deterrent in the harnesses or in the makeup of the material.

 

Easy. I learned to solder on the fly while installing my guages and wideband 02 sensor. The main thing to learn is that when you're soldering the joint, you dont just melt the solder on the iron and let it flow down onto the wire. You hold the iron to the wire, heating the wire until it's hot enough to melt the solder, then hold the solder to the wire and it will flow into the joint. It's as easy as that. Get rosin core solder btw.

Also, make a mechanical connection between the two wires by bending them like two J's around each other at the hook, then twisting them back around themselves.... then solder the joint. It'll be as solid and reliable as OEM. Practice a few times on some scrap peices of wire so you don't have to re-do things on the harness. Once you figure it out, you could knock that job out in 1/2 hour.

And yes, a mechanic could probably knock it out quickly too if you don't want to mess with it, but I'd say try it... you'll be surprised how easy it is.

 

Just let a cat sleep in there. Make sure you get him out every morning, mind you.

 

Well I might have to invest in a soldering iron and give it a go then. I'll keep yall updated on the progess.

Thanks again for all the advice everybody

 

I've heard that applying some coyote urine under the hood is supposed to deter critters, but I haven't tried it since I park in a garage. Honda's 3.5 V6 has a rather large cavity under the intake plenum between the heads that makes a nice warm nest for critters. Unfortunately, Honda located a knock sensor in there and critters find those wires very tasty. Fortunately, that part of the harness is a pigtail so it is easy to replace. They eventually came out with a "Texas Pete" pigtail which had several layers of tape & hot sauce covering the wires. The tape even has markings on it of a rat head with the x'ed out eyes!

 

i like the cat idea it put a cat to a good use