PSA: Rodent proof your engine before it's too late! (P0333 - DIY Knock sensor harness repair)

@badger how are those electronic devices working? Are they effective?
As for turning them off... Use a pin switch or a Mercury type switch to switch a relay and turn them off when you pop the hood.

 

Good idea about the pin switch. My ears are not so good anymore, but my younger friends really complain about it! The devices have been very effective, basically 100% effective. I live on a rural property, and mice and packrats are everywhere. We have had several vehicles damaged my rodents. MY engine is usually dusty from the dirt road, so I can see tracks under the hood if there are any. There are NO tracks.

 

had a dead one under the hood when i bought my truck. didn;t think much of it til i read this. but i had to put a new battery in the wife's buick today and the battery tray was full of rat turds, acorns and even queen palm nuts. so reckon i'm ordering some repellent tonight before they hit it again.

 

Warranty doesn't cover damage from rodents. Anymore than it covers damage from a deer hit.

 

Had to do this to my truck yesterday luckily my uncle who is a mechanic helped (or did most of it) hahah.

 

well I in the same boat as the rest of the thread. Thanks to this thread i got it apart today to find my wires chewed at the plug. I like to replace the harness is it possible with out taking it down farther . Has anyone done this? or am i better off to solder to the wires i have?

 

Soy based wire insulation or not....if rodents take up residence, they're going to chew. It's how they keep their incisors down...not a food source. Medium density material like plastic and wire insulation make for the perfect material.

I use this every few weeks and spray this in the engine compartment...especially wire harnesses. I get it at Lowes.



If you keep your vehicle in a garage, consider setting up traps near the corners of the door. Mice typically travel along the perimeters of a room.

 

Thank you so much for the excellent write up!

My mechanic told me it was the knock sensor code and said it was 15-20 hours to fix this the right way, by replacing the harness. My 2010 Tacoma has 249k miles on it and they cautioned me about getting this fixed because of the high cost to fix and the age of my engine. They wanted me to just wait it out until I blew a head gasket. That was some b.s.

I decided to give this repair a go and it was surprising easy, given it was all on the intake side. After about 6-8 hours, I was able to successfully fix my knock sensor connector (chewed off at the connector) after following this write up! This post saved me a lot of money doing this myself! Plus I got to add a few sockets to my collection (torx set and Allen key set).

One thing that really came in handy was a skinny flexible claw grabber tool. My rats nest was pretty big, so cleaning it out with my fingers was pretty tough. It was crazy how big some of the sticks were that those little suckers were able to smuggle up there. Using a grabber and a vacuum, the rats nest was gone pretty easily, plus the grabber was great for fishing out and holding the chewed off wire while I soldered the new connector pigtail.

Make sure you spray the crap out of your engine with that rodent deterrent!

 

I had a mouse chew my knock sensor wires a few months ago. I followed the steps everyone posted (thank you, by the way) and unfortunately I'm stuck. I got a new pigtail in place and the wires soldered back together, but the code won't clear. Does it have to go through a few engine run cycles to clear? I'd like to know I did the job right before I start putting things back together. Thanks in advance.

 

The code should clear in first start if done properly. Which bank was it on? Did you check both connectors? Did you make sure to solder the correct wires?

 

It was on bank 2 (P0333). The offending sensor's wires were clearly chewed through. The other bank sensor/wires looked fine. Do I need to start the engine to clear the code?

 

You probably don’t need to start the engine but that’s what I did.

Did you verify your soldered the pigtail wires to the correct corresponding red/green or black/white wire? On the pigtail I got, both wires were black.

 

Yeah, I verified that the wires didn't get crossed. There was enough wire attached to the chewed plug that I could tell which end was black and white and oriented the pigtail accordingly.

One other thing seemed weird. I pulled the other side knock sensor out to see if I had a bad sensor too and it didn't give me any other codes for the unplugged bank 1 sensor.

 

We have my daughter's Corolla at the transmissions shop. They said it needed a new gear selector switch and ordered it last week. Yesterday, he went to remove the old switch in anticipation of a Monday arrival of the new switch and found several wires chewed and chewed in two. Little bastards.
I need to get some more cats.

 

Thanks for the great write-up. Got the code Wednesday this week. I'm going to tear into it tomorrow. Thanks to these little bastards.

 

Just finished fixing my 2014. Took about 6 hours not rushing. This thread made it extremely straight forward. I got lucky with where the creature chewed the wire. Was pretty easy to fix the wires (white and black) the red and green on the passanger side are untouched. Thanks again for the great write-up.

 

for me. after the repair I cleared code with scan tool, then started the truck and it never camp back on.

 

Sub'd for more things to worry about.

 

Great walk through. Used it to replace my harness and hopefully prevent having to do it again.

 

Urban legend says moth balls keep rodents a away