mmorris

I read on an old post that mice can get into the car interior through the space around the hood hinges. I took the cowl off and see under the passenger side that there is a squarish white plastic thing with no top on it. I'm assuming that it is where air enters the heater core and that mice can easily get in here once they get under the cowl. Looking under the hood over the fenders towards the front there are multiple places that mice can get in the space over the fenders. I"ve never had a fender off; is there space for mice to travel from inside the front of the fender to the space under the cowl? If so, how would you keep mice from getting into the heater air intake and then into the interior? The point is, i had a mouse get in and die and am having trouble getting the stink out

extrashaky

I'm assuming you already removed the mouse. Now either rent or buy an ozone generator and ozone your Jeep for a couple of hours. This is the device hotels use to get the smoke smell out of hotel rooms when guests smoke in them, and car restorers use them to remove mold and odors from vehicles. The ozone binds the molecules that cause the smell so that they never reach your nose. It will kill a smell better than any Febreze or air freshener.

If you have a garage, you can just shut the Jeep up in the garage with the ozone generator for a couple of hours. If you don't have a garage, just put it inside the Jeep and let it do its thing. Don't leave it in there more than a few hours. Ozone eats wiring and electronics if left too long.

And to answer your question about whether a mouse can get up into the cowl, I believe it may be able to. There are cowl drains on each side that come out under the fender behind the front wheels. I suspect they're large enough for a mouse to be able to make that climb.

Tbone289

Before you do that, clean or shampoo the area the mouse was laying when you found it dead.

fb97xj1

Mice can get thru gaps as small as 1/4". Did you find its nest, or just the mouse? Pulling the blower motor might be a good idea if you havent already. Ive found them stuffed with birdseed and other crap in there that rattled when the blower was on, and some so packed with nesting material the motor wouldnt move. Some vehicles had more than one nest (rear 1/4s, for example). I would also be concerned with any wiring that may have been chewed on, so keep tabs on that. Have fun.

Tbone289

I found a dead one under the rear seat in mine a year or so ago. It wasn't hard to find following the scent trail. It still smells a bit in the heat of summer. yummy... Anyway, I recently found a nest in the RR quarter. The mouse had torn open that stupid sound insulation bag that Chrysler stuffed down in there. The insulation got wet and rotted a hole in my quarter. Pull those damn things out if you still have them.

Suprmn

So, if you look at your blower motor, there is a rubber tube that comes off of the motor and goes into a fitting at the bottom of the area where the blower motor bolts on. I believe it gets cooling air through this tube. Well, I just bought a Cherokee and the owner said the heater quit. When I pulled the blower motor, the tube from the heater motor had not been connected, which opens up a very nice sized hole into the heater box area. The heater box was jam packed with material and it looks like it was a home for lots of mice over time. Watch that lower tube and make sure it stays connected.

The fall out from the nesting mice is that I am replacing the entire hvac assembly. They used the nest as a toilet for so long that it makes the jeep stink to high heaven even though I have cleaned and bleached it. The extra moisture has made the blend door rust into pieces.

Bugout4x4

Thank you for sharing this! I had never heard of this concept before and just learned a lot, it's absolutely brilliant!

mmorris

Thanks for all the advice! No, I have NOT found the mouse yet. The smell is stronger near the front floorboard, so I'm assuming it's under the dash somewhere. Not being very mechanical, I'm not planning on tackling the job of removing the dash! I might try removing the blower motor. Will the ozone generator kill the odor even if the mouse is still around somewhere; it's been 3 months now since I noticed it?
Also, can mice get through the blower motor fan blades that you can see under the hood on the firewall?

extrashaky

You really ought to find it and remove it. The ozone generator will remove the smell itself. If the carcass is still rotting, however, the smell will come back, because the process that is creating the smell will continue. Once it's just bone, dessicated skin and hair, so that there's nothing left to rot, the ozone generator will remove the smell permanently.

What you may be tempted to do is leave it in there and keep ozoning it until it stops rotting. It would still be better to get it out of there and then ozone it, because as I said above the ozone is not great for your wiring. A couple of hours won't hurt anything. Repeating it several times may begin to reduce the life of some of your switches and wires. I don't know how much is too much, so I just figure it's better to use it as sparingly as possible to solve the issue.