http://norman.walsh.name/2004/01/31/baffle 7 19 2004-01-31T12:10:00-05:00 $Date: 2005-09-11 10:27:02 -0400 (Sun, 11 Sep 2005) $ Norman Walsh 2004 Norman Walsh Driving home a few days ago, I had an odd experience: when I took my foot off the accelerator, my truck continued along at 40mph. I have a manual transmission, that’s not supposed to happen! James Carswell Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse. Driving home a few days ago, I had an odd experience: when I took my foot off the accelerator, my truck continued along at 40mph. I have a manual transmission, that’s not supposed to happen! Pushing in the clutch red-lined the tachometer. That’s really not supposed to happen. Long story short, AAA towed my truck off to Pelham Auto, my local repair shop (highly recommended). There was nothing obviously wrong with the truck and they couldn’t reproduce the problem (ah, the joys of debugging). Deb Walsh ’s car has had trouble with mice getting into the air filter, so they decided to explore that angle. The result: they found a large mouse living in my engine’s air system! He’d chewed all the way through the air filter and built a nest and a pantry in there. The best guess is that I sucked a hunk of acorn shell into the engine and temporarily jammed the throttle open. Let’s see if we can prevent that from happening again, shall we? That little baffle ought to prevent the mice from getting to the filter and consequently should allow the filter to prevent debris of all sorts, not limited to acorn shells, mouse bedding, and scat, from getting further into my truck’s engine. With luck, nature won’t demonstrate that these mice are able and willing to chew through galvanized metal.