Why Are There So Many Pine Needles?

Well, the explanation for that is actually pretty simple. The guy who owned it before me had a driveway sheltered by a pine tree. Still, it’s something that would go through my mind repeatedly as I pulled enormous tufts of pine needles out of my front rain tray…

It started innocently enough: I saw some trapped pine needles in the raintray, and figured it might be a good idea to clean it out.

There were two types of screws holding the grill on, a torx screw and a hex bolt. At first, I tried to just undo the hex bolts and see if I might be able to slip my hand through the gap and grab the needles. Well, my hands were small but not quite small enough. I was able to poke the needles with my fingertips, which told me that the depth of the pine needles was far greater than I had imagined, but I didn’t have enough clearance to grab anything (only poke). So, I ended up having to take off the front grill entirely.

I started removing the needles.

SO MANY NEEDLES…

I broke out the ruler for a prize shot. The bottom most layer was honestly more like dirt than anything else. Maybe I should have planted a garden down in there instead…

These got sprayed with lubricant for obvious reasons.

I also discovered that the bottom of the tray had gotten nicked when we drilled through the firewall to run a charging cable from the alternator to the back of the van. Oops.

I also unearthed a rust avalanche…

The needles had trapped moisture against the firewall. On one side, it had rusted through so badly that you could literally poke your finger through to the engine compartment from the front passenger seat.

Garrett (who had been working on his car a few feet away before coming over to look at my compost pile) saw the gap and said he had just the thing. Flashing tape! To prepare, I rinsed out the raintray and we hit it with some wishful thinking Rustoleum Stop-Rust spray paint.

Then we stuck the tape in place and used a heat gun to help mold and adhere it. We did this to the nick in the firewall from the alternator run, too.

It stayed in place really well.

Results

No more pine needles! Hurray. However, the pine needle menace would later surface again in an even more unexpected place…(to be continued)