What is causing this?

[thelimpingwhippet]

Both my wife's car and my NSX-T are under attack from an unknown beastie. Has anyone seem similar damage? Potential suspects are cats, squirrels, owls, rats or next door neighbour.12919

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Sorry to see this terrible scar….
Can't tell from the photo on where about (height, XYZ plane, etc) the damages were done but the depth and pattern are way too perfect for any human or animal activities.
Seems as if caused by some sort of oscillating machinery, blade, etc.
Hedge trimmer, grass trimmer, polisher, etc.
Any building, garden, detailing work done recently around both cars?

Hope the damage is not too deep....


Kaz

[goldnsx]

A human or an animal won't be able to scratch such a 'perfect sinus-wave'.

[thelimpingwhippet]

12920This 6cm scratch is above the door of MrsD's Renault Captur which lives outside. No power tools used on the car and no building work nearby. I have had some scratches on the NSX polished out by a local detailer and then put it away in the garage for the winter. It is now worse than ever. I am contemplating a front end respray with a self-healing wrap. Alternatively I could move. I have added a photo of the NSX bonnet

[marknsx]

I think that would be sitting in your wife car with a gun waiting for the "squirrel" to reappear

[Hagasan]

The tight squiggles look strange but the other mark.. Do you have any large birds in your area. Maybe seagulls landing/slipping? Or cats jumping onto or off the car?

[thelimpingwhippet]

We have brown bats, magpies, crows, buzzard, pheasant, coot, cormorant and occasional red kite, but no gulls. One feral cat (called Fang - after Fangio) but no observed paw prints seen on any of the cars. The NSX damage was done in the garage which has an "arrow slit" opening to allow the bats in and out so other flying creatures and cats could gain access. I will look into installing a night vision motion sensor camera

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

While CCTV is nice, it could be not easy changing the position of the camera or initial investment could be high depending on what you are after.

While it is designed for in-car usage, you can install drive recorder with AC power supply or even use those mobile battery from Anker, etc inside the house or somewhere aiming at where the car is parked.
No need for the high-end model and you can probably live with the previous models.
Some of the old models may only accept MicroSD card upto 32GB but if you format it in a specific way, very likely to be able to use 64GB or even 128GB depending on the model.
With loop recording, you can record the area for many days before overwriting the old files.

At the same time, you can install motion activated battery powered LED light such as the ones from Mr Beams, etc.
If you prefer, you can network all the light units as well.
This will be useful in the night as it could scare off the animals, etc if the damages were caused by them.

It's nowhere near the home security system but if you are parking the car outside but not far away from the house, having cheap alarm/door bell system may be useful.
I have the system from 1ByOne with the remote fob.
Only about GBP16 per set from amazon and can be operated with the battery or AC power.
If you get 2 set, you can place one receiver inside the house and another one near the garage and you can program them to share the same sensor(s).
If something triggers the sensor, both receivers will generate alarm or chime depending on the setup.
While alarm will continue for 1min (loud but not like your home security siren), the chime will only sound 3 times so may be better for the receiver placed outside if neighborhood lives nearby.


By the way, majority of the scratches in the 2nd photo don't look the same as the 1st one.....


Kaz

[thelimpingwhippet]

Thanks Kaz. I will take your advice and hopefully post some photos of the culprit. Some of the scratches on the NSX are similar to those on the Captur but the sinusoidal scratch has not been repeated. I have plenty of depressing photos of the NSX paint blemishes but it would bore everyone if I posted them. Do you have any experience with self healing vinyl wrap?

[NZNick]

Snails sometimes make marks like the ones in your first picture, but they don't typically scratch paint when doing so (unless they have a bit of grit stuck in their foot)..........

[thelimpingwhippet]

An interesting suggestion. Perhaps a motion sensor camera is not such a good idea. However we do have a plethora of snails. I will check for tracks.

[L696ULO]

When the NSX was stored for the winter did it have a car cover? Logic suggests that if covered then bats could be getting under looking for a warm dark place and over the months caused the scratches however that doesn't explain Mrs D's scratch.
Assuming the bats and cat have been at your house for some time and this is the first time the scratches have appeared on both cars, have you changed brand of car polish/shampoo which might attract whatever is doing the damage?
i ruled out the nasty neighbour theory due to the arrow slits!

Answers please to the forum thread or by post to 221b Baker St. London ��

Rich alias Sherlock

[NSXGB]

Photo 1 is definitely mechanically inflicted damaged. Does Fang have access to power tools??

Photo 2 looks to have been caused on multiple occasions with different 'implements'. Is the damage on the corner or side of the car which may be brushed against when walking around it in the garage? Odd that there are multiple different types and directions of scratch in that small location.

[ianhb]

Kaz,
Apologies for being off topic, yes those scatches are a mystery, but ?
Do you mean that you need to format larger cards with Fat32 (using a free windows tool) to overcome windows not giving the option to format over 32Gb with fat32. I havn't tried it yet. Would you know if it would be likely to work for my Nextbase 412GW?
Regards
Ian

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Apology for going off-topic, thelimpingwhippet.....


Hi, Ian.
Yes, normally, with SDXC above 32GB, it will be in exFAT but if you use these software, you can format it in FAT32.
Most of the drive recorder kind of devices still uses old format.
I'll leave another factor - the allocation unit - for now.

I never used Nextbase products but quick search on the web shows many examples of using 64GB+ memory card usage on model 412GW.

Successfully formatting the card and being recognised by your device don't mean that you can use full capacity of the card as there are other factors involved so you really need to try recording over the 32GB.
I used several different cards and formatting software and some of them didn't work.

So far, 100% success rate using my mobile phone SDXC slot for formatting purpose when I want using the memory card that is exceeding the capacity spec of the devices.


Kaz

[Nick Graves]

I managed to polish some similar sinusoidal squiggles into my S2000 when first using a random orbital polisher - bit of grit, I think.

And I've heard of a few cars vandalised by **** pheasants attacking their own reflection.

But that is baffling; I cannot imagine a bat being heavy enough to inflict such damage, let alone wield a Porter Cable...

[Nick Graves]

That is PRECISELY why I detest nanny filters!

Ought I euphemise it to Penis Pheasant, Bell End pheasant, or the rather irritatingly-childish boy pheasant? Noun utilisation too correct for the politically-correct.