My frame must have been a mouse house.

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shadango

shadango

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So I got under the Cuda tonigt to sniff around and it turns out that the front frame rails are packed with mud/dirt and acorns.........the car was a barn find so it kind of makes sense....I dont mean a little mud.....PACKED. I started pocking with a screwdriver into the access holes....

Here is what has come out so far....

P3220102.jpg


Yet the rails seem to be rock solid.

I picked around with a screwdriver but its tedious and I wont get everything this way......Is there a trick you guys can share? Some sort of home-brew tool? Or do I just keep scraping/fishing around with a screwdriver and a piece of coat hanger wire?

I guess I could flush with water at some point but a) lots of mess and b) if I dont get it all the water will makes things way worse. The frame metal seems unharmed....
 
Coat hanger and a shop vac.

Insert your own sick jokes here...

I wouldn't use water, as the stuff in the rails will hold moisture and that is a definite no-no.
 
yeah i just used a screw driver, the rest came out when I would shut the doors.
 
I use a real long craftsman screw driver, coat hanger and a real good shop vac. And have also been known to shove my powerspray tip for my garden hose in there as well.
 
69charger said:
yeah i just used a screw driver, the rest came out when I would shut the doors.
Click to expand...

Now THAT made me laugh out loud!!

Thanks! I needed a laugh this morning!

The shop vac is a good idea, and "gotcha" on the water thing....I figured it would be better to leave it in there than get that wet......

So I guess its just mouse "stuff" then? At first I thought someone had run the car into the mud....and the front engine support was full of rocks and mud so that made sense.....but these rails have all these acorns.....mixed with mud....what the heck kind of mouse uses mud to build a house? :read2:
 
what the heck kind of mouse uses mud to build a house
A mouse or a squeal hid the acorns in there then mud daubers took over.:read2:
 
memike said:
what the heck kind of mouse uses mud to build a house
A mouse or a squeal hid the acorns in there then dirt dobers took over.:read2:
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I'm gonna have to look up what a dirt dober is......some kind of mouselike critter or is it a bug?
 
:cheers:It looks like a wasp but it gathers moist dirt and makes there home to store there food in it mainly spiders, and it is a hard mud bed
 
I’m a little conflicted about mud daubers. On the one hand they are solitary, non-aggressive wasps that pose no real annoyance and are kind of interesting. On the other hand their favorite comfort food for the younguns is spiders, which they paralyze and stuff into their nests, laying eggs atop the future dinner. Apparently different species of sphecids have preferences for particular species of spiders.

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If you don't have yet,go buy yourself a air compressor you can get them pretty cheap and buy yourself one of those blow guns with the long tips,works great..thats what you get for buying an e-body..lol....:-D
 
stroked 340 said:
If you don't have yet,go buy yourself a air compressor you can get them pretty cheap and buy yourself one of those blow guns with the long tips,works great..thats what you get for buying an e-body..lol....:-D
Click to expand...

Yeah, that'll teach me! LOL

Oh I got a compressor...a 60 gallon beast! LOL

This stuff is so packed in there....plus I dont want to blow it into places it isnt now...but I guess air WOULD be easier....
 
Yeah, I have the same issue with the hood on my 66 cuda. mouse turd, dirt, whatever......I'm thinking about removing a section under the hood to gain access then weld it back up when I'm finished cleaning it out?
Joe
 
That looks like it might have been underwater...muddy water...my dart was the same way, I know it was in a flood or two. I reached into every opening I could find with a wire to scrape it out, then rigged a long 3/8 copper tube onto my shop vac and just kept working at it. I too am hesitant to go after it with water.


Good luck.....it is a good looking car though...

Dave
 
Id get as much of it out with screwdrivers coat hanger air blower etc.(wear safety goggles) then pressure wash the stuff till the water comes out clean then do it agin a few day's later after some gentle tapping on the frame with a small hammer,it won't take long for it to drain and dry then spray some ospho chemical inside the frame rails any where you can to help protect it from rust,don't do that part on concrete though (it'll stain the concrete)Nice car glad you finally found one you like!!!
 
I found the same thing when I was blasting the underside. I scraped as much as I could and then used a pressure washer with warm water to finish it off. Blew out as much of the excess water as I could with my compressor and then just put a couple space heaters facing the areas to finish the dry up. I know a lot of folks are against using water but I figured Id bite the bulet and get it ALL out because if it got wet again when driving that mud would hold water longer and do more damage in the long run.
 
Congratulations on finding a nice MoPar, Shadango, I know you have been looking hard for one for a long time.

I would bang on the rails with a rubber mallet to loosen up the stuff a bit. You might then be able to blow a lot of it out with a tube attached to your compressor (as mentioned above). If that stuff was once mud, either from driving through mud puddles or from rodents or insects, you might need to hose or pressure wash the remainder out of the rails. This is not a bad thing, in my opinion, because moisture gets into there anyway and you need to get as much of the mud out as possible. Give it a good douching.

Then, as mentioned above, dry it out real good with compressed air, wait a week, and then spray some Ospho into there.

Good luck with your project.
 
Well, I used a combination of a couple small furnace brushes, bent wire, air and my fingers.....

I have the right side as clean as I think it will get without running water through them......

tonight I will work on teh left side...my kids were on that side doing their best...LOL

I couldnt believe how much came out of the left side. :angry7: Probably TWICE what was in that picture above.

On the upside, I spent some quality time with that frame member and it looks like new.
 
Years ago, when i lived in west Texas I bought an old farm truck, a '60 chevy that had been in a barn for decades. There was this incredible pile of mouse droppings under the hood on top of the fenderwells. The more interesting thing was that the rear wheel wells were packed with west Texas clay from years of use on the farm. I literally had to remove it with a hammer and chisel. There must have been 50 or 60 pounds of it in there.
 
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