The other day, I had my Civic into the shop for an oil change. When I looked under the hood, I happened to notice that one bundle of wires looked a little frayed, so I asked the tech about it. He said, “Rats.” Finding this a strangely anachronistic form of profanity, I asked for more information.
He said, “It’s probably rats. They climb up into the engine block and chew on the wires. It happens pretty often if you park your car outside regularly. I had a lady in here last month who had $800 of repairs to the wiring, and the very next day after she took the car home it happened again.”
“Seriously?” I asked. What can you do about it?
“Well,” he said, “it’s hard to solve because the rats are after the oil in the joint. See, the companies that make the wire harnesses have gone to using peanut oil instead of a more expensive oil, and the rats are attracted to the smell.”
“So some guy in some manufacturing facility decided to save a tenth of a cent on oil that routinely leads to damage costing the end consumer hundreds of dollars to repair?”
“Pretty much.”
I’m not sure which rats are worse, the ones that eat the wires who can’t help themselves or the ones who make such decisions.
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