Ridgeway
LIFE MEMBER
OK this isn't pleasant but worth a mention.
We get a lot of Pine Martins here, in fact we have a pair that live in our roof. They are very common and classed as vermin here as they cause a lot of damage to cars by chewing on cables that are rubber coated, 2yrs back my neighbours Touran had around ÂŁ400 worth of damage to accelerator and fuel cables. Many people have "anti marder" deterrents, electrical, chemical, all sorts really. Till now we have escaped.....
This is where the car bites back !
Last year we changed the Land Rover for a newer model and had it around 6wks before we were about to make the trip back to Blighty. It was all shiny and clean and we were very proud of it, you get the picture.
It was mid July (last year) and it was the Weds morning before were setting out on the Saturday for a night journey. SWMBO started the car up, strange noise, some delay in the engine turning over but then all OK. As usual she forget to mention it...
Saturday I started to load the car and noticed a strange decaying smell around the car, though it was a passing tractor and dismissed it. Kept getting wafts as I put the root box on , I looked around the drive to see if I could see anything, nothing there and so eventually I popped the bonnet as this is where the smell seamed to be coming from. Yep you guessed it, one liquidized Pine Martin... Looks like he had gone to sleep on the fan and got a bit of a shock when he woke up, well for a millisecond at least
Now after getting over the smell I started to try and work out what to do as the animal itself was 100% stuck behind the radiator and fan. I checked for damage and all looked ok, in fact Kenwood should take a look at the LR Discovery blender principal, it's quite effective...
After realizing that this was a pretty big job to strip down the front end of the car and we only had 2 hrs before we set off I decided to let nature take it's coarse. We set out at around 9pm, direction Reims and everyone was happy. After around 5hrs we stopped to get Coffee etc and wondered why the lady on the garage forecourt was heaving as she walked past our car ? OK another 4hrs later we were loading on the channel tunnel.....
With the Landy and roof box we were as always in the single story train section with other happy motorists with us in the same section, boy did they regret it:shout: The smell after 9hrs of being cooked behind the radiator and 3 days of sitting on the drive was to say the least "strong" and it wasn't hard to figure out where it was coming from, I had to say that i thought we'd run over something, what could I say ?
By the time we arrived in Manchester the smell was a touch less but it took some days to reduce and even months to fully go.
Good news was that maggots were spotted in the engine bay 1wk after we got there so the fishing was on
We get a lot of Pine Martins here, in fact we have a pair that live in our roof. They are very common and classed as vermin here as they cause a lot of damage to cars by chewing on cables that are rubber coated, 2yrs back my neighbours Touran had around ÂŁ400 worth of damage to accelerator and fuel cables. Many people have "anti marder" deterrents, electrical, chemical, all sorts really. Till now we have escaped.....
This is where the car bites back !
Last year we changed the Land Rover for a newer model and had it around 6wks before we were about to make the trip back to Blighty. It was all shiny and clean and we were very proud of it, you get the picture.
It was mid July (last year) and it was the Weds morning before were setting out on the Saturday for a night journey. SWMBO started the car up, strange noise, some delay in the engine turning over but then all OK. As usual she forget to mention it...
Saturday I started to load the car and noticed a strange decaying smell around the car, though it was a passing tractor and dismissed it. Kept getting wafts as I put the root box on , I looked around the drive to see if I could see anything, nothing there and so eventually I popped the bonnet as this is where the smell seamed to be coming from. Yep you guessed it, one liquidized Pine Martin... Looks like he had gone to sleep on the fan and got a bit of a shock when he woke up, well for a millisecond at least
Now after getting over the smell I started to try and work out what to do as the animal itself was 100% stuck behind the radiator and fan. I checked for damage and all looked ok, in fact Kenwood should take a look at the LR Discovery blender principal, it's quite effective...
After realizing that this was a pretty big job to strip down the front end of the car and we only had 2 hrs before we set off I decided to let nature take it's coarse. We set out at around 9pm, direction Reims and everyone was happy. After around 5hrs we stopped to get Coffee etc and wondered why the lady on the garage forecourt was heaving as she walked past our car ? OK another 4hrs later we were loading on the channel tunnel.....
With the Landy and roof box we were as always in the single story train section with other happy motorists with us in the same section, boy did they regret it:shout: The smell after 9hrs of being cooked behind the radiator and 3 days of sitting on the drive was to say the least "strong" and it wasn't hard to figure out where it was coming from, I had to say that i thought we'd run over something, what could I say ?
By the time we arrived in Manchester the smell was a touch less but it took some days to reduce and even months to fully go.
Good news was that maggots were spotted in the engine bay 1wk after we got there so the fishing was on