Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Trailers are the bane of the universe.

Every time I go to hook one up to my car, I wind up needing to re-run all of the wiring. And not just in the trailer.

This time, mice chewed through the wiring which runs along the inside of the bar which connects to the hitch. I couldn't see the damage until it was too late. Went to test the lights, and blew not only the fuse, but some sort of active box on my Subaru which allows multiple connector types. Of course this thing costs a pretty penny, and has a harness which runs from the trunk, up all sorts of inconvenient places, and finally up to near the fuse box under the dash.

Previously I loaned it out, and the person pulled forward with the trailer tipped up (it is a small dumper) so the wiring got caught on the ground and ripped out. Nobody noticed until I went to use it.

Yay.

Another beautiful weekend day wasted. This is a result of loaning my lawn mower to the church for a few weeks while we figure out what to do with the mower that died. I want my mower back, and cannot get it. No good deed...

It has been 4 weeks almost, and my lawn is not looking so tidy anymore.

Sorry to hear of your bad luck. Hey did you know ministers are the worst credit risks?

I stopped loaning out books. Never get them back and the loanee has no recollection of borrowing them.

Bought a new trailer a while back. Turn signal bulbs didn't work from the get go. They also use the cheapest wiring they can get away with.

I thought trailers were meant to live in. Don't need lights if ya ai'nt draggin em around.

You are right. Talk to any farmer/Rancher I have found after a while just put on a new wireing harness. Something chews mine up too. Then there is trailer tires.

I store my tractor, riding mowers, ATV and New Holland skid-steer loader in a barn on my farm and every year I have to repair damaged wires from mice. I even have a large resident rat snake and still the mice prevail. I have been told that some wire insulation is soy based. Don't know if that's true, but I hear some automobiles are more susceptible than others to rodent damage to their wiring.

Just a thought...not going to make yer lawn look better but, you can at least check with one of the local rental shops on the cost of renting a mower like yours, get the church to give you a receipt for that amount as a donation and deduct it from your taxes.

That always baffled me. Why is it so critical that the church lawn gets mowed before every Sunday morning service?

You wouldn't believe the number of locked up chainsaws I see on an annual basis, with the excuse "I loaned to a friend/neighbor/BIL", etc.

Never loan a chainsaw.

Sad but true. When we were leaving last time for a multi-year job assignment overseas, one of my "friends" asked could he borrow my 1/2 inch Dewalt drill and another asked could he borrow a heavy canvas tarp. When I got back 4 years later, both claim I never loaned them to them.

As for me, I was taught if you borrow it and it breaks, you fix it before you return it. I try to return anything I borrow in as good or better shape than when I borrowed it. If I needed to borrow a chain saw, I would sharpen the chain before I returned it and make sure it was full of gas and chain oil (even if when I borrowed it the chain was dull, no gas and no oil). Way too many folks would return it locked up, with a chain they had hit a nail or run into the dirt and out of gas and oil.

I am an optimist (or a fool). I still will loan a guy what he needs...till he teaches me that is a mistake.

A positive part of this is before I loaned my mower, it took 10 hours to mow the property with a basic riding lawn mower. My mower takes 3 hours. That made for some pretty happy volunteers for that past few weeks.

I got it there originally by having it serviced, so it was picked up from home, and dropped off there. It was also my turn to mow, and I didn't have 10 hours to spend on a little mower, so it was mostly to help myself.

Church is our home away from home, but I agree, members are finatics about mowing every square inch. Especially those who don't sign up for mowing. There is a 2.5 acre field that would be fine to let go to flowers, but no. Somehow a field full of flowers would indicate to people passing by who are never intending to stop in that we don't care or are not thriving like we are a store or something.

I'm not a church goer, but have always found this to be true also.

I feel your pain . I have ten trailers and only five are on road. My wife says I have a thing for trailers but I look at it like one truck can do a lot of things with trailers and no extra insurance and taxes.
You can solve the expensive car electronics failures by putting a in line fuse on the hot wires at trailer plug - takes three.

Sparkplug -
Have a Stihl 031 1978 vintage been using for 37 years - never done anything but one electronic module and spark plugs. loan it out one day and they broke the throttle hold button and something in carb - $180 later running again and will never loan it again-
any time I get askedI just say broke and they will need to take to shop to fix before using-that stops it quick. I really like that saw and bet they don't build em that good anymore.

Yep - There is soy based insulation on electrical wires, but that's pretty much limited to low voltage DC systems.

Cub Cadet LT1050 and the Kubota L3540 were both parked in the same place last year. Wiring on the CC was all chewed up this spring, and never got around to fixing it. Hydraulic hose on the Kubota was chewed up and I replaced that, but no wiring issues. Some rubber hose products are also soy based.

Some spray types of insulation are soy based and rodent's could mess that up as well.

Rat's and mice can sense AC current in wiring so they typically don't mess with that, but chipmunks and squirrels are the dumb bricks of the rodent family and they may be more inclined to chew on plastics.

I personally think it was a chipmunk or red squirrel that chewed a bunch of stuff up here.

As far as tools. If it's a wrench you want to borrow, and you are in my sight, then I would let you borrow it. Other than that, buy your own tools and equipment.

I'm sure that a number of you here could understand the concept that tools have a personality of their own. Not many have that 6th sense to recognize or understand this tho.

To put it as simply as I can. The tool becomes an extension of you to perform work that otherwise you could not do without great difficulty, or basically impossible, to say the least. You understand that tool and the work is done with ease.

If you have a lot of tools like I do (which a lot of you do as well), you may understand what I am saying here.

Bottom line is to never loan out your own tools. Meatballs are the only ones that ever borrow tools anyway

I will be doing this. Though honestly I was considering converting all the lights to wireless. Let the mice chew air.

FWIW Conduit or close, more flexible, facsimile also works. That is what we did when I was growing up on the farm 40+ years ago. The mice or rats chewed a wire only once at our place. The replacement was protected.

IIRC our big problem with trailer lights was loss of ground do to cheap materials and corrosion.

I may finally get my mower today! I still need to re-run the ground, and am loath to drill a hole in the frame.

I would have loved to re-wire the trailer with teflon-coated wire we use for avionics, but my god that costs a lot! Vinyl wire it is...

You could always attach the grey conduit to the trailer frame, and run the wire inside that.

Meticulously maintain your stuff, never loan out your stuff, and have cat(s) on site to control the Rodentia.

If you don't do all of the above then expect stuff to be wrong with your stuff when you need it most.

I think that cat thing is pushing it over the edge for me. I'll gladly pay for a new wire harness before I allow a cat to cause me constant misery.

About the only allergy I have. Trust me, it was misery when the neighbors downstairs had their cat's and they didn't clean up after them.

I heard a crash one early morning, and a couple hours later they were knocking on my door for help to set their bed back up after the guy lost it due to a diabetic attack.

Said no problem, I'll give you a hand, but when I first walked in the door, I had to hold my breath until I left a minute or so later. Bed was set up for them, but I was gagging and puking in the parking lot. No fun!!!

Something tells me you're not a cat person!

My personal thoughts are that Cat's should be Owl nummies

Tan won't be happy when Dwight reads that to him!

Tan reads and writes himself. Didn't you notice?

I've been fortunate....no wires chewed on, and lots of rodents around.

Mice nests in heater/ac ducts, are a whole other story! Nothing sucks worse than to turn on the A/C and get a face full of mouse pee soaked nesting material...and the stench never really ever goes away...

A mouse got into the heater blower in my camper, then it turned on. Made an awful sound and the blower has a timed shut off when you turn it off. Surprisingly, it only beat the crap out of the mouse, but no blood and guts. That happened twice.

Taking it apart at 3:00am while its freezing cold out was no fun.

Been there, done that!!! In my case, it was the furnace at 3am on a cold night in a 37" travel trailer on our recreational land. I had to remove the furnace, and cleaned mouse nesting out of air ducts for a week. A whole lot of poison got put out that week also!