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My RAV4 was disabled by rats!

6K views 20 replies 13 participants last post by  BAH 
#1 ·
My 6 month old RAV 4 would barley run this morning. I took it to the dealer and within an hour they called back saying that rats had chewed threw a good portion of the fuel injection wiring harness. $1,500 to repair and not covered by warranty. Thankfully my insurance is going to pick up the repairs, minus a $100 deductible.

Do you think it had anything to do with my avatar?
 
#4 ·
Those dirty rats! Wild animals can wreak havoc. This delayed us from using our cars this morning. My wife was going to put her lunch in the car for work, but decided to run back inside. I took a quick pic. Camera is bad. It was one of two (possibly 3) black bears...

 
#5 ·
Ratty Running RAV due to rats! The "Three Rs" of your car's problems. Maybe a large cat or owl - a real one as well as an avatar of it - as well as rat traps would deter the blankety-blank critters!

If Toyota really are listening to customer problems they should do something about the rodent problems in RAVs, especially with the number of threads and posts on this forum about it all. I lived on farms and in rural areas for years with abundances of rats and mice and had Fords and Chevys without any rodent problems in those vehicles.
 
#6 ·
I lived on farms and in rural areas for years with abundances of rats and mice and had Fords and Chevys without any rodent problems in those vehicles.
Me too. No rodent in vehicles because they much preferred the warmth & food in the barns.
 
#13 ·
why not covered by warranty? It's Toyo's tasty wiring that's at fault
Difficult to prove. And even if this were the case, it is an "extreme" condition that they cannot control (alhough plating the whole undercarriage would take care of the issue but costs $$ and increases weight).
 
#12 ·
nowadays most rat poisons are those which deplete vitamin K from the rats so that as soon as they get a scratch they bleed to death. So the damage still gets done.

So you have to make sure you get those which are "tasty" and kill quickly.
And where would you secure this kind of poison???
 
#14 · (Edited)
The rodent problem in addition to resulting in chewed wires also has involved the RAV4's ventilation system, as in prior threads. Rodent poison containing warfarin takes too long to work and the critters increasingly are becoming immune to it. When I worked in San Francisco the pest control people put out bait to attempt to deal with mice and rats. At least some of them actualy thrived on it!
 
#19 ·
#20 ·
I'm sorry my relatives destroyed your wiring harness. Leave a chunk of swiss or cheddar cheese in the corner of the garage each week, and they will never gnaw on those wires again....

That's a recipe for having more rats - not only will it attract more vermin but it will encourage them to reproduce more and to make nests close by and even gnaw holes into walls so they can nest between the exterior and the interior walls (I've seen this when living in Oakland, CA)!:frown
 
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