A mouse ate my Tracer! (Well sort of...)

[Wharfe]

On Friday, noticing that the bike was running lumpy at low revs with a very erratic idle, and unable to establish any obvious cause I took it off to my local Yamaha dealer to do the necessary. The diagnostics computer revealed nowt wrong so, as the guy said, "it's down to spanners and spotting to find whatever's broken, fallen off or whatever".
So after considerable spanner action in their workshops the cause turned out to be vermin (mice probably) damage to two of the three vacuum ports (or more specifically the rubber bungs that sit on top of them). The scottoiler vacuum valve atop the third was not to Pixie and Dixie's* taste apparently.... 3.5 hours of labour charges those b%st%rtd mice cost me as obviously this was NOT covered under warranty! "Oooh I hate those meeces to pieces!"*

So Mt-er's, take care this time of year, the little blighters are coming into warm places (like the top of your engine in your garage) and they'll chew all sorts. You have been warned. Here at Wharfe mansions it's mousetraps all round. Now I'm a buddhist kinda guy, don't eat meat, don't like killing anything if at all possible, but my garage is now a free-fire zone for anything that moves.....



*kids, ask your parents about the old HannaBarbera cartoon "Pixie and Dixie and Mr Jinks"....

 

[bloggsy]

Some poison in a bit of drain pipe will catch them and kill em.

 

[Russ Quinlan]

Have the same problem, living in the country doesn't help but signs were when small nibbled pieces of the rubber insulation from the inside of the fairing on my Blackbird appeared in piles under the bike, its sat next to the Tracer. Tried all sorts of humane ways to get rid of them but it didn't work. so ended up laying 4 mouse traps around the main stand and also wrap (loosely) the actual stand in aluminium foil cost they hate that stuff. Seems to have kept them off the bike although they still like throwing themselves on the traps !!

 

[Wharfe]

Tinfoil eh? will give that a try. As well as the traps obvs....

 

[Russ Quinlan]

Yeah just anywhere the bike touches the ground, also a bit under the front tyre where it sits on the ground when on the main stand. I know they dont like that stuff because we put scrunched up bits in the holes in the house where they can squeeze though so just stuffed them all with that, they don't like chewing it so stopped them and seems to work on the bike. Mind you over the last 2 weeks we had about 13 of the little buggers in the traps but thats slowed down now so maybe got the hint !!

 

[kev]

I had one? in the lean-to store on the side of my garage last winter, it ate the sun flower seed heads I was drying, I put some out of date rice down for it, it nibbled a few old sack but that was all the damage it did, so my advice is keep them well fed and they won't eat your bike?.... I hope?

 

[Wharfe]

Strangely, no activated traps at all so far - all baited with peanut butter but no customers. Makes me wonder if the mice were living in the garage at work (where I occasionally store it if I'm working nights) - I'll move the traps over there and see what -if anything - they catch.