This time, solutions to a couple of common garage problems. First is how do you check the brake lights on your car without two people-one to push the brake pedal, the other to walk around the back of the car and see if the lights actually work?  Well, that is unless you do what we’ve done here. We’ve purchased an inexpensive mirror and mounted it beside the garage door.  Now every time we pull into the garage we hit the brake pedal, look in the rearview mirror and we can see if all of the brake lights on the back of the car work and we don’t need anybody to help us. Pretty neat!

Alright, here’s something that doesn’t work-that is rodents and cars.  Now, rodents may be cute as a button sitting here in a cage, but once they’re in your car, you aren’t going to like what they do to it.  Like this for instance.  Here we have an evaporator we took out of a car, rodent nest on it, nasty, stinking mess and a health hazard.  You don’t want that! You also don’t want them to be eating up your cabin air filter and all sorts of different things- the insulation under the hood. They like to make nests out of these things, but the one that’ll really get you is right here.

They eat the insulation off of wire harnesses and they use it to make their nests. Well, that can actually total a car because the damage sometimes is so severe.  Alright, what do you do?  Well, if you take the food source away they’re not going to want to camp out in your car.  You see, most people keep extra dog food, bird seed, grass seed, all kinds of things like that in the garage.  They don’t want it in the house!  Alright, well the rodents love this stuff and they eat the food, take it to the car, they make their nest because they know that food is nearby. So what do you do? Well you always keep anything that could be a rodent food source in a metal cabinet that is sealed so they can’t get into it. Keep the food away-you’ll keep the rodents away. 

 

If you have a question or comment, write to me.
The address is MotorWeek, Owings Mills, MD, 21117.