Ants wont go away... ON MY CAR!!!

I

imported_CkretAjint

New member
I have this rather annoying problem. Ants seem to be flocking towards my car, and I CAN'T get rid of them!! I try and wash my car once a week and this seems to help after I am done washing it for a day or two. But a few day's later they come back. On top of my car, and even INSIDE my car! I kill them as I see them inside my car, and swat them away on the exterior as needed. but this is getting to me and pissing me off when I take someone out and my car has ants all over / inside of it. There is NO food in my car, and I have cleaned it inside and out (trunk, engine bay, behind door panels) on numerous occasions hoping to solve this. I just don't know what to do.



Is there a non-harmful (to me) chemical I can spray / sprinkle inside or around my car to make them not want to come in??



ANY help would be great, cause I am literally going insane, and even thought about selling my car cause of this.





HELP!?! :sadwavey:





*EDIT* No borax suggestions please. I researched this. And as I tend to drive around with my windows down (lots of wind). I also found this out about it.... "Borax may also be used to kill roaches, ants, and fleas. In fact, it is also toxic to people. More commonly, borax is associated with skin, eye, or respiratory irritation. It is also important to point out that exposure to borax may impair fertility"
 
I would spray Raid on the ground around your car, the edge of the driveway, interior and exterior edges of the garage.



If you use Nattys blue paste wax they may be attracted to that. LOL

It attracted bees last time I used it :bat
 
JiggleRacing said:
If you use Nattys blue paste wax they may be attracted to that. LOL
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No, I do not use Natty's blue... I just use Meguiars products on my car (wash, tire shine, polish and wax.) I thought that this might have something to do with it, but I doubt it cause I've been using those for years....



I would LOVe to try the raid idea, but I live in an aprtment complex, so there is no way to guarantee which spot I will get every night. and I am sure a can / bottle of RAID a day could get quite expensive.



Any powders I can sprinkle inside of my car, so they eat it and take it back where ever and kill the source? I don;t mind driving around for a week or 2 with a mound of something on my passengers floor. lol. Just gotta restrict passengers.



It has gotten so bad that I went and visited a friend this weekend. Stopped off and got some Wendy's to eat. 10 minutes later when I got to his house my soda had like 30-50 ants on it. I had to throw my soda out, and brush off the ants on the bag!!! This is dribing me NUTS!



Borax? Salt? Vinegar around the doors? ANYTHING?!?
 
Obvioiusly, you have an ant nest inside your car. A similar problem was discussed before in another thread (I think). What kind of ants are they? The little pavement ants that are about 1/8" long and dark brown? Or are they larger, maybe 1/4" long? There are some baits which are in a little plastic station, which are quite effective on certain ants, and pretty safe for you (as long as you don't try to eat the bait out of the station), but part of the solution is figuring out what kind of ant you have.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
What kind of ants are they? The little pavement ants that are about 1/8" long and dark brown? Or are they larger, maybe 1/4" long?
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They are about 1/8" long, if that. They are SUPER small, and dark brown. I haven't seen any that are over 1/8" long within my car....



*grumbles* stupid little buggers building a nest in my clean car...:hairpull



I will research the ant's a bit more next time I see them crawling around before I squish them! *researches ants*
 
CkretAjint said:
They are about 1/8" long, if that. They are SUPER small, and dark brown. I haven't seen any that are over 1/8" long within my car....



*grumbles* stupid little buggers building a nest in my clean car...:hairpull



I will research the ant's a bit more next time I see them crawling around before I squish them! *researches ants*
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Well, FL has a lot of different tropical bugs than we do up here, but if you were here, I'd just consider them to be pavement ants. The ones in my driveway are pretty finicky, but the ones at work have responded well to certain baits. Basically the technology is a slow-acting poison, which the workers carry back to the nest, and before any of them die, they spread it around so that they all (or most) get some. You should be able to find some Combat gel or stations possibly in a supermarket, but certainly in Home Depot or Lowe's. There are some other baits, but you need to be a pro exterminator (or have a computer so you can buy on the internet :rolleyes: ).
 
Spray your tires with the ant killer of your choice. I had the same problem one time when a bottle of apple juice broke in the rear floorboards. Ant traps under the mats and spray the tires every night - gets them coming and going.
 
kompressornsc said:
Spray your tires with the ant killer of your choice. I had the same problem one time when a bottle of apple juice broke in the rear floorboards. Ant traps under the mats and spray the tires every night - gets them coming and going.
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I killed about 20 on my way to work this morning. They appear to be a DARK brown color, almost black.



I am liking the ant traps under the floor mats (trunk mat too) idea. Gonna hit up the grocery store tonight and buy a crap load of killing stuff for these lil buggers.... I SHALL WIN!!!!!:nana:
 
I bought stuff last night and loaded my car up. This morning when I went out there I had poka-dotted carpet!! They fuggers were dead EVERYWHERE!!!!! So it appears to be working. Although I did wipe the dash down with a light coat of the spray on my way to work since they were still around crawling on that.... Probably worse then Armor All, but desperate times call for desperate measures!



No lines to follow yet though





:getdown :bat
 
Setec Astronomy said:
What did you use?
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Raid ant bait traps, and Raid ant killing spray stuff (light blue can).....



Raid has never let me down before. Plus that's all the grocery store had. I didn't feel like shopping around last night (been sick).
 
Ok, I hope it's working. The beauty of the slow-acting baits is that it (theoretically) kills the whole nest including the queen, although in your situation, the fast acting may work just as well, since they can't get too far away from the nest :nixweiss
 
If the you park at different spots etc and still have the ants then the nest is in your car. Use something to kill the ants in the car.
 
You don't need to spray raid all around the car/parking spot.



Just spray a little circle around all 4 tires, or even maybe a little in the wheel well or something if it doesn't make any marks or effects anything.



I'm pretty sure ants can't jump, so they have to be crawling up from the tires.
 
IME, and from the description, he's got a nest inside the car, so the ants aren't crawling up the tires. New queens don't go very far and aren't very smart, so they will make a nest in the first anywhere-near-suitable location. I had a beater that I kept outside, which had a leak in a C-Pillar window from a bad accident. I drove the car infrequently, and everytime there would be some carpenter ants outside/inside. I thought to myself how disoriented those ants must be to get on one end of the car in my driveway and get off the other end miles away at my work. I later found out that since they like damp areas, and nest in narrow galleries (in wood), that some door jamb and panel areas adjacent to damp carpeting seemed like a suitable spot for a nest (which I happened to find while I was waiting in line for hours at vehicle inspection, and decided there were too many ants in the car to have just been passing by at the time I left. Imagine my surprise to open the back door and have a hundred ants fall on the ground from the sill area, only to see dozens more streaming out of a drain hole in the frame carrying eggs away from the invaded nest! I think the only more surprised were the other people on line who saw me doing what must have appeared an insane dance as I tried to step on the ants).



As I said, after the queens mate, their first priority is to find a place to start laying eggs, and they don't know a car from a house from a crack in a tree from a crack in the sidewalk, so it happens frequently that they nest in some odd places. Both carpenter ants and the pavement ants that CkretAjint seems to have are scavengers, so they can find something to eat just about anywhere.
 
also make sure that where u park your car everyday that there is no plants touching your car. i had a problem with ants crawling all over the outside of my car over the summer and realized it was bacause i often parked up against some flowers in my driveway in order to make room to move other cars in and out
 
Mcthings said:
You don't need to spray raid all around the car/parking spot.



Just spray a little circle around all 4 tires, or even maybe a little in the wheel well or something if it doesn't make any marks or effects anything.



I'm pretty sure ants can't jump, so they have to be crawling up from the tires.
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I have been doing this since earlier in the week. After the first day I only saw some one the dash, so I wiped down the dash with some raid. No Ants inmy car since Tuesday AM!!! W00 H00!!!!! I spray around the tires everyday (ground only) and I think I am going to sto for a few days and see what happens....



THANKS EVERYONE!!!!
 
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