Mice in the air box - part 2

[costaexpress]

Apologies, its a long read. A few weeks ago I reported that they discovered mice had been nesting in the air box of my Ducato, they also said it looked like it had been there a long time. Now I bought the van new in June 2019 knowing it had been knocking around the dealers for 18 months prior. I had driven 10k miles in the 9 months leading up to lockdown in April so I'm pretty sure it must have been there prior. A feature of the new van was how poor the euro6 performed against my previous euro5 engine to the point I was looking to get it remapped. Last week I had the first run out in the van since the service and lockdown and popped over to Bremen and back. Thats the background. Now, the van had mysteriously been transformed and fair bombed along the autobahn (you know what I mean for a 130 bhp carrying 3 tonne). The service was merely oil and filter changes so my question (eventually) is could all the nesting material in the air box, assume they meant the air filter unit, have been choking the performance back in some way or should I be looking elsewhere for the apparent transformation?

[witzend]

Sounds like you've found the cause a restriction on air intake does seriously restrict a diesel engine performance. What you need to do now is assure it doesn't happen again as it is often talked about on MH forums. On mine I screwed up a ball of wire netting and pushed it into the entrance of the air intake in centre of van nr the bonnet catch accessed by removing 2 screws

[colin]

As I posted on another thread, I ended up fitting wire mesh between cross member and intake pipe.

[Deneb]

colin - 2020-07-13 1:05 PM

 

As I posted on another thread, I ended up fitting wire mesh between cross member and intake pipe.

 

Me too, stainless steel rodent mesh. And MANN air filters have a rodent proof inner metal shield inside the filter element too.