My 8's still very new (less than 1200 miles), and I've never had any food inside or out. It's always parked in the garage with a car cover as well. That said, this morning I discovered ants all over the hood and around the wheels & front fenders. Not knowing what to make of this, I gave it a good wash, sprayed RAID in a rectangular perimeter around the parking space , and then park it back into the garage.

A few min later, ants all over the freaking car again. So, I'm like what the... ? I pop open the hood and see a small ant line and am like... WTF?!! Carefully, I spray some more RAID along the outside edges of the engine compartment, as well as some on the inside of the wheel wells.

I know it's been raining a lot in So. Cal last week or so, and the ants have been coming out of the wood work. But, I'm at a loss as to for what reason they would like invading my engine. There is absolutely, positively no food or anything like that in there.

Has this ever happened to any of you guys and how did you get rid of the pesky pests?

D :mad:

maybe the ants have never seen a rotary engine before
the line that you saw was probably of ants waiting to see the engine, much like a great attraction
the rotary is an engineering marvel, you know
the ants just cant help themselves but wonder what it is
maybe they think theres a hemi or a v8 in there

but anyway, i have no idea :cwm27:

I had ants around my family room a while back. I put down some of the Raid ant traps in the path of the ants and in a while they were gone. The ant traps have poisoned food that ends up killing the queen in the nest. Don't get stingy and put down only one; you need a bunch of the traps to do the job, about every two feet along the wall. As long as the nest is active the ants will be around.

You need to know a little bit about ants. There are types that eat different things. You have to find out what they're finding to eat in your car. Maybe a rodent brought a cache of things in there. Maybe something crwaled in and died. Ants won't go there without a reason.

Don't just put the bait traps outside the car. Find where the ants are traveling in the car and put some baits there too.

Hey they just in line to test drive thats all :hahano:... Cant help you sounds like you need TerminiX!

Do you guys think steam cleaning the engine is necessary and how much does that cost? I've never had to do a steam clean on any of my cars b 4...

Ants in cali are well known to eat the rubber in your gaskets. Suprized you didn't know that. REally the only thing you can do with the gasket eating ants is to smear your entire car with butter. That will repell them.

You can always try putting lemon juice all around the garage where you keep your car. It works pretty good, but when we do that at my house my bunny won't stop licking the walls!!!

park ur car outside and see if ants still "want" your car... u able to find any cracks on the ground in or around ur garage and locate the ants colony?
i used to have ants when i moved into my new place... found the colony and sprayed with a bunch of different things.. one of them worked and no ants.. VOILA :D

Hmm... Maybe after tomorrow's Malibu Cruise, the heat from driving the Renesis will torch those suckers. :icon_no2: Wonder what effect ant skeletons/ protein will have if they get sucked into the chamber. <sigh>

Do you guys think steam cleaning the engine is necessary and how much does that cost? I've never had to do a steam clean on any of my cars (#) b 4...
My friend went to Wallmart an got a steam cleaner for like $80 i think its the red one on tv. I cant member what the hell its called but he said it works great an gets real hot too. You need to use gloves:ylsuper:

Don't do any of this stuff. Go open the trunk, hood and doors and put two foggers in the garage and they will be gone/

when i was installing my intake i found rat crap under the factory airbox....
never found a rat either.im hoping its not like the episode of pimp my ride when they find a live rat in the amc pacer.... :Eyecrazy:

Don't do any of this stuff. Go open the trunk, hood and doors and put two foggers in the garage and they will be gone/
Yea then you can get high in your 8:rock:

I had ants in my sportbike for a while. Those suckers can find little nooks and crannys, and hang on at 140!!! Bike was parked outside my a bunch of flowering shrubs, and I guess that kept them around. Maybe they liked the smell of fuel? A few found their way into my helmet as I was riding. WHAT FUN!!! Good thing they were non-biters!

They gave up on their own.

put ant traps on youre air box lol and tape one over the mazda symbol on youre hood!

Could be that there's a collant leak, and they like the sugarlike taste of it. I'd try and find green puddles somewhere in your engine.

Thanks for the tips... I checked and no leaks... the RAID seems to be repelling them for the moment. (At least I don't see any visible ant lines anymore.) But, I got some gnarly back-firing in reverse gear. Dunno if it was the ants or the RAID? :(

http://www.rx8club.com/showthread.php?t=80278

My 8's still very new (less than 1200 miles), and I've never had any food inside or out. It's always parked in the garage with a car cover as well. That said, this morning I discovered ants all over the hood and around the wheels & front fenders. Not knowing what to make of this, I gave it a good wash, sprayed RAID in a rectangular perimeter around the parking space , and then park it back into the garage.

A few min later, ants all over the freaking car again. So, I'm like what the... ? I pop open the hood and see a small ant line and am like... WTF?!! Carefully, I spray some more RAID along the outside edges of the engine compartment, as well as some on the inside of the wheel wells.

I know it's been raining a lot in So. Cal last week or so, and the ants have been coming out of the wood work. But, I'm at a loss as to for what reason they would like invading my engine. There is absolutely, positively no food or anything like that in there.

Has this ever happened to any of you guys and how did you get rid of the pesky pests?

D :mad:

Just be happy it's not a giant field rat making a nest in your air filter box and then crawling up into you heating system only to die and be slow cooked...

ants are also attracted to electric current, although that's probably not the issue here.

holy crap Detrich!!

I wonder what the heck those little bastards are after. Any updates?

The raid bug spray seems to be working for now... I also sprayed some around the perimeter of where I park in the garage. Just really weird. I never have ants when I park my bimmer there. So, it was rather unsettling... :( Thanks for asking... And, I guess none of us made it to Malibu this weekend eh?

holy crap Detrich!!

I wonder what the heck those little bastards are after. Any updates?
:Freak_ani

I was really looking forward to going out to Malibu: perfect weather! Oh well, I'm shooting for all-time record attendance next month...

Hey, a while back I had ants in my garage and I bought this chalk stuff @ Home Depot. Don't remember the name as it was all in Chinese but basically you just lay out a line of it and the ants won't cross it! It's really weird but worked GREAT!
I drew circles around my trash cans and I never had any ants get near them.

They must've heard you have the "m" flash. You need to get a box of spiders. They will eat the ants for you. Seems to me there's a song about it somewhere...

I had a friend with the same problem. Found out he had a rat in the car and the ants were eating what it left behind. My friend found it when the rat bit the wrong cable and got cooked. He took it to the dealer and I'm pretty sure insurance covered it.

ouch. i hope i don't have a dead rat in my engine... guess another reason to buy german cars: no way for rats to get inside under the hood. mazda has some learning to do still i guess...

^Oh yea you know its like they say:"You learn somthing new everyday"

ouch. i hope i don't have a dead rat in my engine... guess another reason to buy german cars (#): no way for rats to get inside under the hood. mazda (#) has some learning to do still i guess...
Yeah, I was going to suggest doing a rat check as well. Take out your airbox and see if one crawled up inside there. Rats will stash food in their nests and the food could be what's attracting the ants.

A rat set up housekeeping in both my 8 and my Miata while they were (I thought) safe and covered in my garage... the @#$%^ rodent gnawed holes in several coolant hoses and disabled both cars for weeks until the parts came in.

While at my dealer recently for something unrelated I happened to peek under the hood of another 8 that was there, and saw immediately that a rat had been at work in that one too. The insulation padding in the engine compartment was all gnawed and shredded.

Aratinga: Now your'e starting to scare me. That really sucks that it happened to you, especially having it happen to BOTH your cars.

If you don't mind me asking...did you have to claim it with your insurance? Out of pocket expense?

Detrich: Bring your car to the Speedway this weekend and we can take it apart and take a look. You'd be surprised how easy it is to take an RX-8 apart...all you need is a 10mm socket. LOL

I'm surprised no one has gone all Discovery Channel about this so far - haven't you ever seen that annual 'day of the ants' thing at your place? I might not get this exactly right, but I'll try - there is one day every year where several (hundreds?) new queens and new males mature and fly away to start colonies of their own. When this happens most of the ants in the colony pour outside and mill around. You can recognize the queens and males because they have wings.

I saw that on some National Geographic show or something like that about 15 years ago, but what really makes me remember it is there was a 'day of the ants' for a colony that lived behind/under out air conditioner (which was on a concrete slab behind the house). It was interesting to see. They were *swarming* over a 10 foot radius. Then I got a can of Raid and exterminated them. My mother-in-law found the same thing a week later and she called an exterminator and signed up for a $250 treatment thinking it was the start of a massive invasion. Turned out to be money wasted - neither of us had further ant trouble, but my treatment cost $3. According to the show the new queens and males will fly quite a ways away and the rest of the colony just returns to business as usual underground. It just kills me how panicky folks can be when they've lived in the suburbs too long. I don't even get excited about the bear that wanders across our farm from time to time (okay, I guess I'd be pissed if he messed with my Rx-8, but otherwise: no big).

Anyway, Nature lessons aside - I'm a big fan of the foggers and ant-traps. If you can safely use foggers (some garages have a heater with a natural gas pilot light - not good) I'd say set off a few of those and go crazy with the ant traps (every ~5 feet along the walls and every corner of the garage).

This stuff is useful for mopping up ant attacks. It smells nice and is non-toxic. And just kills them instantly on contact, which is pretty satisfying. :muwahaha:

http://www.orangeguard.com/webart/spraybottle.jpg

But like everyone is saying, you don't find large numbers of ants unless they're being attracted to a food source. I left a small bag of lemon drops in my Miata once -- oh mama!

The only other thing I could think of is a colony decided to relocate in your engine compartment (have a lot of rains lately?). In which case they will give up when the queen dies. But seems like an odd place for them to choose.

Like I said, fog the suckers and no mess. Foggers won't harm your paint. Just put in a fogger in the garage and open up doors and hood.