Complete vehicle harness, except engine. Rodent damage on a new 760i. Bags are full of the wiring/connectors that get pulled through firewall/trunk/rear openings to prevent damage.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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I had a bunch of mice build a nest in my ductwork in my car last year. I screwed down a metal grate over the cabin air inlet, got one of those electronic rodent repellents and zip tied it under the hood and change the batteries every week. I also got a plastic bin that I park over and throw the rodent repellent balls in there periodically. It was $2k for them to fix it and I don’t want to spend that again. Also curious if anyone has any other ideas.
I had a car that was often hit by rodents. I got some LED light strips and taped a couple of them under the hood, and wired them to the battery with a fuse. It seemed to work.
Those just stay on the whole time and the rodents stay away? And no issue with the drain on the battery after not using it for a while? The repellent that I have under there flashes aggressively but definitely not bright enough to get the whole engine bay.
Could you add lithium cells to that repellant and charge from the car battery? Using some 18650 batteries and a usb-c lithium charger hooked up to the accessories power would probably do the trick. Unless you use the car infrequently / power draw.
Lithium chargers are cheap as chips via aliexpress, just depends on the input voltage to the repellant device & how much power it draws. You could probably add an esp32 to that setup to report back if the charge is falling too low if you really wanted to get invested 😅.
Be careful with that. Have seen battery packs like that stuffed under dashes that have exploded.
Yeah, I think you can buy a repellent that hooks to the car battery, but I use the car somewhat infrequently sometimes and didn’t want to risk a parasitic draw on it.