Rat 1, AC 0
 

Well, I work in an industrial complex next to a field. Sometime last night a RAT (no, not a small mouse, a friggin RAT) climbed up into the engine compartment. Tonight on my way to work, it was 86 degrees, so I turned on the A/C. It started blowing hot air, and I was like "WTF????".

I got to work and pulled the cover off the engine and saw the body of about an 8" RAT mangled laying on the bottom plastic access panel.

Luckily, a friend has a shop, I'm going to run down there tomorrow morn when I get off and clean it up and put the belt back on.

Matt

Well, went home and let the engine cool off. Soaked the passenger side area that was effected with Simple Green. Used a toilet bowl brush to clean off what I could get to, then hooked up the garden hose to the hot water heater and washed it all off.

It did a pretty darn good job. I then took the car to the shop and put it up on a lift. After removing the plastic housings, I found that the AC compressor is located adjacent to the oil pan. It seems kinda wierd to have the compressor that low to the ground, but I guess Mazda has done its homework. There is no tensioner to the AC belt, it just goes around the crank pulley and the AC. I removed the compressor to put the belt back on, and used a tranny jack to hold it in place while I started the 4 bolts. It only took about 20 minutes.

AC is back to working great, at 2k rpm the outlet temp got down to 39.8 degrees.

Matt