Stupid Rats

Today I decided to lube up my TC UCA uniballs with some tri flow . When I went outside I noticed a few wet spots under my truck . I touched it with my finger and it was Pink and slippery .I saw my chance and I took it . But no really , looks like transmission fluid .

when I got to the dealer it was now leaking pretty bad . Dealer is less than a mile away from me. The truck has never shown any signs of leaks . All this happened in 30 minutes . I'm now waiting to see what they say . I hope it's covered under the 30k warranty , or that they don't come up with something crazy .


I'll let you guys know what happens .

 

Good luck.

 

Update , I was so pissed of what I saw I immediately thought of the worst . Thankfully it was not my transmission . Rats chewed away at a coolant hose . (Water bypass hose part#16281-0p010).
The truck never overheated ! Barely went past the middle on the temp gauge on my way back home . Check out the damage . Located the part and I will be changing it out in a couple of hours .

 

FYI: If you live in an area prone to little critters, dryer sheets or those bounce dryer bars in your engine compartment will keep them away. Plus your truck smells like fresh laundry when it warms up!

 

Will do ! I park right next to a water drain too so that might be a factor . I will no longer be parking there lol

 

FYI , they can get right in on top of the cabin air filter behind the glove box too , there's a massive hole to inlet air for the interior cabin fan under the windshield cowl on the passenger side , I just evicted a rats nest outta there and put some metal mesh over the intake

 

Also works while camping. Earlier this year in Mojave a woke up to tiny little paw prints all over my engine bay. Luckily they were just looking for someplace warm to sleep and didn't chew on anything.

 

I will take a look ! I'm also checking all the other lines

 

Lucky haha this has never happened to me before .

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/in-cabin-filter.460866/page-3#post-13686597

 

Haha, I thought you were referring to the dealer as the rat

 

So I replaced the hose and topped off the coolant . The truck is still trying to over heat . There are no more leaks . Maybe pieces of the hose are clogging another line ? Any ideas ?

 

Make sure water pump is spinning. Would seem unlikely that the thermostat would fail at the same time, but it's possible. You're probably right about there being a clog somewhere.

 

&$#!ing rats.. I've got some in my garage. I've found a very few droppings in the engine compartment, i'll have to check the cabin air inlet and add the mod. I'm knocking off about one every 1.5 days with traps, hope to increase the stat to one a day with 4- 5 traps setup. I had it bad here last year, got it under control, between 3 neighbours, but that only works if all the neighbours do the same. I use snap traps or their equivalent, no sticky pads, or poison bait, as there are neighbourhood cats. The snap traps are placed inside a wooden box so cats don't have access, and I use Nutella as the attractant.

 

Whole ballpark style peanuts are the best attractant and are easy to affix to traps. you can wrap a little wire around the peanut and shell too. I've killed hundreds of rats and the paste style baits such as nut butters will be licked off the trap not setting it off. 9 t8mes out of ten the peanut can be reused, often without reattaching it.

 

I'll give that a try. Noted that raw peanuts (unroasted) are toxic too them as well. I have a walnut tree in my yard, that they fed off of last winter. The invasive grey squirrels are pretty defensive over the nuts though right now. I'll have to do another last clean up of those to reduce the food cache available to the rats.

 

If you hit them hard and knock down the initial population then just leaving a trap or two out in the future will suffice.

 

Here is something to try against rodents under the hood - get a couple of cans of Corrosion Free rust proofing and spray liberally under the engine on frame members, flat areas where squirrels can build nests, anyplace it will stick. Makes it difficult for them to climb up and around and coats their fur. Other rust proofing might work as well - but Corrosion Free is thicker going on and won't harm electrical wiring or rubber gaskets and seals.

There will be a slight burning smell from time to time as the product drips down onto exhaust headers and other hot parts, but goes away quick enough.