Groundhog wiring damage - I can't even believe I'm posting this
 

2004 F150 Supercab FX4

You read that right...a groundhog hitched a ride home Sunday night and I unknowingly locked him in the garage. I went out to the garage on Monday night to find groundhog **** and wiring remnants all over the floor under the rear bumper. Turns out the little knucklehead got hungry and ate all of the wiring out of the back of the truck.

The taillights, brake lights, turn signals, reverse lights, and license plate lights are all out, and he ate the tow harness and the harness for the reverse sensors.

Tonight I'm going to crawl under the truck and start figuring out where these plug in so I know exactly what I need.

My immediate question: the ABS light in the dash is also on. Could that be related to any of these harnesses or did he possibly eat another harness somewhere else? He was under the hood, too..but it starts up ok and everything up front seems to work.

I wish I was making all this up :surrender:

Probably ate the wheel speed harness that goes in the top of the differential on the rear axle

wade, I've had rodent damage in three vehicles. They love to chew on wires for some reason. Here in the mountains of Arizona, I've got both rats and mice in my detached garage. I leave the hoods up and have flashing LEDs in the engine compartments.

I know your pain.

- Jack

Ugh. I don't envy you JackandJanet.


Thanks for the reply Patman, I finally got some time to inspect and remove the damaged harnesses and the one across the rear axle was intact. After some searching it turns out he chewed one of the front ABS sensors off, and ate the wire off an o2 sensor as well.

On top of all that it's dripping something...maybe power steering fluid? I'll try to figure out that out today.

It looks like Tasca Ford has the harnesses fairly cheap on eBay, thankfully.

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damn that was a hungry little dude! i guess it could have been worse.

Yeah, it sure could've been.

I ordered the tow harness and parking sensor harness from Tasca - they'll be here today.

The tail light harness is no longer available but luckily that one had the least amount of damage so I'm going to be able to repair it with a little solder and heat shrink. The ABS sensor and o2 will need to be replaced as well.

I turned this in as a comprehensive claim and Geico is actually paying me the labor to repair this myself. I was pretty surprised at that.

Cool deal

I *think* it's all fixed. I repaired the tail light harness and installed the other two new harnesses. I installed a new ABS sensor (the ABS light went right off) and repaired the o2 sensor. CEL is still on...not sure if I should clear it or put some miles on it and see if it goes off. Thoughts?

Read the codes, clear them, and see which ones come back.

They were the codes for the upper o2 sensor because of the wire being chewed. I cleared them. If they don't come back then all the damage is fixed!

Thanks for the help everyone!