It's not really hurting performance (until they chew on wires), but it pisses me off that mice find a way to get in to spaces the size of a dime. The buggers can collapse their vertebrae and squeeze in just about anywhere they please. Here they have used the intake valley as their own personal Holiday Inn Express.

Cracked Knock Sensor now replaced. Thermal intake spacers, ported upper and lower intake manifolds and ported throttle body on the way in...
Will document the whole thing once it's all installed. Just thought these pictures were priceless. Had to share.

What's hiding inside your lower intake manifold...?

 

all I see are helicopters in there.

 

Plus 1

 

HAHA i had the same problem when i rebuilt my VE in 2004

 

Just assumed based on my description you'd know it wasn't me who built the helicopter nest in there. They were carried in there by mice.

What you can't see is the 200 butt droppings...

Added to complete the story for you...

 

Dude - that's nasty.

 

just be glad a couple didn't die in your AC vents...

 

dude i was just going to eat, now i dont feel like it...

and i am totally agreed with above post...

 

So that's what that smell was...

 

Yeah, my sisters Sentra had a field mouse die in the AC Blower.... OMG... that was one of the nastiest smells I have ever had to endure, till I could remove it an clean out the blower.... the poor thing had been beaten to death by the blower.... :| but the smell took a month or so to go away...

 

Seems like that motel room would get a little hot after awhile...I wonder where they would go when you would start the car and drive it?

 

I wonder the same. Motel 6 maybe?

 

Skip being powered by hamsters. You were powered by mice.

 

That reminds me of when I got my first Max - it has some kinda rodent (I'm guessing squirrel, but it could've easily been a chipmunk or large field mouse) that made a nest just behind the front seat. The smell was out of this world, and the mess... All I have to say, was that it took two thorough cleanings by me, two trips to a detail shop, and lots of 'air time' to make the car bearable.