For the ten winters I've had my Sprite, I've put mothballs in open sandwich
baggies - meeces hate the smell to pieces. I put a couple under the car, a
couple in the engine compartment, two or three in different parts of the
interior, one in the trunk, and a couple of mothballs in the tailpipe. I
also put plastic baggies over the air cleaner horns. I live in the country,
and I've never had any critters show any interest in the car.
Skip Tannen
'65 Austin Healey Sprite
'92 Range Rover LSE
-----Original Message-----
From owner-spridgets at autox.team.net
[mailto:owner-spridgets@autox.team.net]On Behalf Of
cdsorkin@ix.netcom.com
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 1:37 PM
To: spridgets@autox.team.net
Subject: Keeping the rodents at bay
Hey folks:
Since its starting to get a bit warmer around here, I decided to start
cleaning up the Midget for Springtime, and noticed that under the master
cylinders and on the other side near the coil there were the tell-tale signs
of a rodent's nest. Nothing that the shop-vac couldn't handle, and knowing
not what else to do, I sprayed some WD-40 in the area (not harmful to paint)
hoping that the odor would be unpleasant to a small animal, but this
morning, I noticed that the animal had returned. I'd get a cat, but then
instead of a mouse/rat problem, I'd have a cat problem. Any ideas, that
would not involve chemicals (I have a dog, and soon a small child) or snap
traps? Frankly, I don't want to trap anything in the engine bay, because it
would tend to rot/smell, or eat through wiring.
Also, while checking my brake fluid levels, I noticed that the master
cylinder cap indicated to use DOT-3 fluid only. Hmmm... Is there any wat
to tell whether or not I have a non original sort of brake system? Or has
someone just replaced the cap. In the 18 months since I've owned the car, I
haven't needed to do any brake maintenance, so I really don't know its
history. Is there an easy way to tell DOT-3 fluid from DOT-4 just by
looking at it?
Regards,
Charles
'74 Midget
'68 Sprite
cdsorkin@cdsorkin.com
Bloomfield, NJ
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