Strangest thing you've found in an engine bay?

[Toaster Pilot]

What's the strangest thing you've found in an engine bay? Found these today whilst looking for a spanner I dropped!



No idea how long they've been in there! Nothing to do with me but I needed a pair so handy!

[steve_bmw]

I found a genuine BMW glovebox torch on the under tray of my e39 a few years ago, a claw hammer hung on the brake pipes under the bonnet.

[tailspin]

found a cat in a ford transit engine bay! Turned out to be the drivers next door neighbours,it had been there for 200 miles and at least 5 hours.

[gog440]

I found the lid from a bottle of Optrex.
It was wedged behind the passenger headlight to keep it in the right place and pointing in the right direction! It went through 2 MOT's like that (before I got it, I only used it for auto-testing)

[rottie102]

Pair of 80's style sunglasses INSIDE of the cabin fan box thing in my C3 Vette. No idea how they managed to get there! It looked impossible.

[Negative Creep]

A friend once found a mummified bird inside his Scirocco

[Acepaint]

Not quite in the engine bay............but a pair of small visegrips holding the wing onto the sill flange on a mk1 escort....even been painted....not a weld in sight...must have been twelve months .....mot time!

[C. Grimsley]

Had a customers peugeot 206 dropped off to the garage, owner had just bought it from Coventry (30 miles) she was complaining of the car smelling, opened the bonnet add looked round couldn't find much then a cat bolted out and ran off, that would have been the smell then, she wouldn't take me serious when I told her.

Carl

[disco!!!!]

I found what was left of a small bird in the air box of my CBR600F

[HaloGen8]

I found a bloody great pri bar in the windscreen scuttle panel of my grandma-in-laws 1.2Nova she only went to the hairdressers and back and it saw a service and MOT once a year. God knows how it got there unless she had it ready for extreme road rage moments

[1]

A bat under the bonnet of a 911. He had manged to squeeze himself between the Germanic sized panel gaps and that is where he died.

[boz1]

I found a dead mouse, complete with the nest it had made, inside my airbox...
The resultant reduction in airflow and crap all over the filter turned out to have been costing me several mpg...

[essayer]

A 4 D-cell Maglite.


It had been put there 2 weeks earlier when I was diagnosing a flat battery

[MGZTV8]

boz1 said:

I found a dead mouse, complete with the nest it had made, inside my airbox...
The resultant reduction in airflow and crap all over the filter turned out to have been costing me several mpg...

Found exactly the same in the wife's mini air box.

Not a pleasant sight

[S0 What]

Once found an inside out cat wrapped around the timing gear on a pinto engined cortina, the car stoped and i opened the bonnet to find 3/4 of a dead cat all over the place, then there was a customers mondeo TD that was running a bit flat (down on power), i spent a few days trying to sort it out, the remains of a mouse nest in the airbox sort of pointed to the problem, the turbo was full of dead burnt mouse bits as was the head, inlet ect(unburnt), it's had been standing for a few months and the problem started when he went to MOT it to get it back on the road.

[Lotusevoraboy]

A snake. It was an adder or some sort of grass snake, about three feet long. It was originally basking in th sun on the drive, then slithered under the car, up the inside of the wheel, somehow into the engine bay of the car. It was a Toyota Carina E and the only way of getting at it was via the engine bay. That car was cursed. At various times there must have been a total of 3/4 dead cats under there when reversing off in the morning too...dead as door nails, stiff as boards.

[Northernchimp]

Thoroughly cooked sparrow.

[N7GTX]

For the last 3 years been servicing a Toyota Avensis which travels some 20 miles for this work. Every year without fail in the same place is a stash of peanuts. Don't know if it is a squirrel or rodent as there's no other damage or trace.

[HaloGen8]

MGZTV8 said:

Found exactly the same in the wife's mini air box.

Not a pleasant sight

There's an inappropriate joke there somewhere but I will refrain

[GC8]

I found an elasticated cat collar hanging from an unused bracket on my 944 hillclimb car in 1994. Curiosity nearly killed Bob, my daughters cat. Fortunately he lived to explore again (for a further 16yrs), but I remember that he looked in a very sorry state when he came back without his collar. More than one life went there.

I only found the collar hung up a fortnight later, so that wouldnt been a pleasant family surprise.

Edited by GC8 on Monday 7th October 00:16