Squirrels chewed up wiring

[bsaggie]

While we were away at Christmas a squirrel made a nest in my wife's 2001 Xterra's engine compartment and really did number on the wiring. It chewed through all 6 sparkplug wires, the wiring harness and connector to the cruise control motor, an injector's wiring and several other wires that I haven't tracked down yet.

Any ideas on how to procede with this? I've spliced wires before, but I'm a little overwhelmed at the amount of splicing that I'll have to do as well as how to deal with connectors that don't have any wire left to splice onto. Any ballpark estimates on how much this would cost to have fixed? Is this type of damage covered by insurance?

Thanks for any input.



This is the damage to the 3 of spark plug wires, the injector wires and another connector/harness in the upper left of the picture.



A closer shot of the damage to the connector/harness shown in the upper left of the previous image



damage to the cruise control motor wiring connector and nearby wiring harness



Severed wiring harness near the cruise control motor



Damage to wiring harness near cruise control motor where it goes through firewall



A single severed wire right at connector.

[NoWhining]

Check with your insurance company, might be covered if you have a comprehensive section of your policy. You'd of course have to pay whatever deductible.

On another note, I recommend 22LR for squirrel containment.

Good luck.

[Coproscefalo]

Damn, that's a lot of wire damage, might as well consider replacing the harness, check your local junkyard for xterras or fleabay, heres a link i've found.

Good luck

[intender]

That is going to be a pain to replace all those harnesses. That one going through the firewall being the worst I would imagine. If your insurance will cover it I would have someone do the work. I dont mind doing electrical work (did it for years as a living) but I would still probably avoid it unless the deductible was high or it was going to raise your premiums a tremendous amount. It is going to be really time consuming cutting all those bundles apart and pulling out just the stuff that got chewed up and then putting it all back together and wrapping it back up. I had to replace a couple of harnesses on my jetta due to dry rotting and shorting out the wires for the coil packs and that took me about 2 days to cut everything loose just to get to the 2 harnesses I needed to replace. Nissan stuff should be a lot cheaper than the vw stuff, but I would imagine all that is going to add up.

[ShiftingSkys]

Wow. I would b amazingly pissed if that had happened to my X. GL with it. I 3 the insurance. Just the headache avoidance is worth it.

[bsaggie]

Update: Well I filed a claim with my insurance, fortunately we had keep our comprehensive coverage so it was covered under the "other than collision" part of the policy. They towed it to the local Nissan dealership for an estimate. The dealership said the Main engine harness, EFI harness and Injector harness need to be replaced to the tune of $3800 ($2100 parts/$1700 labor). Waiting to hear back from insurance if that will total the car. Hope not, but it's going to be close.