The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Dirt Dobber Hotel

I been watching ev1 in here talking about redoing their heaters,sooooooooooo today I removed mine to get the 6v motor out to replace it with a 12v.There were more dirt dobber nests in that heater housing then in the entire state of Ga. Every blade in the squirrel cage had a home built in it. Sorry enviornmentalists they had to go!!!
laughing

I think that's why they call it a squirrel cage...
What's a dirt dauber? Mouse kinda thing?

no 4 it is a flying insect like a yellow jacket that makes their nests out of dirt and these homes are where they lay their eggs and store spiders in them.

Alan

Alan,
We'll have to be patient with those people from the NW, I think dirt daubers are a Southern thing . I have seen them build their nests in the barrel of a carb on a truck that had only been sitting outside for a few days. And the air cleaner was in place. How'd they do that :confused:

I know this is going to sound like a lie, but i cleaned one nest out of a Chlorine feed line at our water plant about 5 years ago. It took us an hour to find what was pluged and where, we still do not want to meet that family of bees. There was enought residue coating the walls of the feed line to make you dizzy and sick.

Them little s***s are tough.

they are all over the place down here they are fun watching build their places but I scrap them off as soon as they finish lol
Alan

Alan et al,

Well, MY mud-daubers like to build on the passenger-side of the three-speed tranny in my '54.



And also any fuel lines that might have been sitting disconnected for more than a week during the warm months; and radiator petcocks and over flows, etc.

They're neat critters, but they can leave you buffaloed till you find out what they pluged-up this time!

They aren't real common, but we have mud daubers up here. They look kinda like long skinny hornets with big stingers. My 49 had mud tubes plastered all over the front of the radiator when I got it. Wierd buggers. I love honey bees and have a couple hives I am ready to get going . . . but yellow jackets, mud daubers, hornets give me the willies!

We get those mud daubers here all the time. They like to get up under the dash, so when you crawl under, start working (it's always a little dark in there) and look up, you get remnants of the nests falling into your eyes! :mad: The wasps are not very aggressive, so that is a consolation. Here it's the yellow jackets and paper wasps you have to watch out for. Very tenacious about defending their nests . Engine degreaser and carburetor cleaner work well on them................ :p . Don't tell anyone I told you that, though .

Nothing like dobbers around here. we have the usual yellow jackets or ground bees, wasps ,bald faced hornets, lots of honey bees.We used to have a hornets nest the size of a basket ball up in a tree near our house. Never buzzed us, but they would swarm down and take back Japanese beetles to feed to their young.Every year we battle the wasps and common honey bees that try to nest in the cracks of our old house.Joy has absolutely no fear of bees or wasps.She just pulls down the nests at night when the insects are stupid.But she does have a fear of ladders so its a good show watching me squirm as I deal with them while up on the ladder. But the honey bees get into the cavities of the house to nest.I had to remove a board on the second floor to get at their nest one night.Joy reached her arm in the hole, scooped out the bees and the honey.

I dont know why, but I am deathly afraid of wasps and mud daubers. only been stung a couple of times, but I get the heck outta there if I see any. They like to buil nests in my 12 x 14 parts shed, it got better after I painted the entire inside of the shed white (it's wood) It took a lot of paint, but it was so much brighter, and it reduced the wasps. I also had an oil bath air cleaner sittin on roof of my 54 **** car for a couple years, took it off the other day, nests built all over inside where the carb throat would have been !!

Just a note here, dirt daubers are very non-agressive. They will not sting unless you catch then in your hand and even then they probably won't sting. The mud tubes they build are actually for the development of their larva. They catch spiders, sting them to paralyze them, and then put the spiders in the tube with an egg. When the larval wasp hatches, it proceeds to feed on the living, but paralyzed, spider. Unless the dirt daubers are building where I don't want them, I leave em be.

I'M SERIOUSLY ALLERGIC TO HONEYBEES, HAVE TO TAKE TEENSY LITTLE PILLS IF STUNG. A BUMBLEBEE WOULD LIKELY KILL ME SAYS DOC. HOWEVER, NO ALLERGY TO MOST OTHER BEES. IT'S TRUE THAT MUD DAUBERS ARE NONAGGRESSIVE, BUT THEY HURT ABOUT THE SAME AS PAPER WASPS.
THIS '56 GMC I'VE BEEN POSTING ABOUT HAD NO DAUBER NESTS, BUT DID HAVE A VERY STRANGE POWDER IN THE CARB... KINDA LOOKED LIKE TERMITE CASTINGS!
P.S. -- WHY WOULD THE CARB HAVE 2 SETS OF FLAPS?

STEBRT3, I am in the same boat your in. Except I'm allergic to wasps and hornets. I can sustain maybe two, to three stings tops, and then I am in trouble. It's not as bad as it used to be. When I was a kid we lived in this mobile trailer. Had lots of holes for flying critters to nest in. I was playing around, tapping the side of the trailer with a stick, and a bumble bee came out, and stung me on the forehead. My mom said it looke like someone had beaten me with a basball bat. I still have the scar on my forehead. I guess I almost died, my throat swelled almost completely shut. I still try to avoid getting stung whenever I can.

We have mud daubers here too, they are just starting to come out. I found one on the inside of my fender today, but nobody was home.

STEBRT3 - 2 sets of flaps like top and bottom? like maybe a governor [big truck?] there was a 2barrel on a 58 283 I got that had a wierd governor on it - don't remember what the set up was except there was a "pot" off the lower side that I think was part of a seperate piece on a regular carb

Bill

SQUEEZE...yes, it's a big truck (21k gvw). Has 302 6cyl. Never thought of a governor, not sure how that would operate... would love more info.
It's as if the carburetor sits on top of another piece with second set of flaps.
Thanks.

STEBRT3, the govenor used engine vacuum in conjunction w/ the distributor to limit the RPM to 4000 by closing the lower butterfly - this is the "vacuum spinner type" that was on my 58 283 w/ 2 barrel - there is also a "velocity type" and both types for 4 barrel too - not same parts as yer GMC 2barrel, but principles would be the same, if ya wanna make yers work - I yanked mine off, tho I've still got the carb base part in a box, and maybe the distributor too, tho not sure right now . . . ya could also yank yers and just watch ya don't over rev under load, as they really didn't do much other than slow ya down and to keep this thread on topic, they also provide more "dauber hotel space"

Bill

Hey guys...sorry I got off track. But I wanted to tell SQUEEZE thanks a mill for the governor info. the diagram was helpful.

I was born and grew up in Maryland and rmember dealing with with mud daubers all the time. They are pesky and can foul up an electric motor or anthing with a means of access pretty fast.

I have noticed them only south of Connecticut for the most part but I have seen another type of mud dauber up here (Mass) that make mud nests but not in the same way the "Gentile Southern Mud Daubers" do. These bees just build up mud mounds on a wall but don't make the distinctive half round mud tunnel like those "regular" wing flicking purple/black mud daubers that I saw everywhere as kid do.

Modelman: An interesting phenominom that I have noticed is on our Sodium Hypochlorite tanker; the yellow jackets and bees LOVE the chlorine and it actually will attract them. There is something about bleach that makes those yellow jackets hone in on it. Anyone with a pool may also notice increased bee activity around the chlorinator or chlorine feeders. Freak of nature I guess. Bees are certainly different everywhere you go and I hope to not see an Africanized bees for a long time.

I have enough of these pests in east texas, it is amazing how fast they work and how hard the mud is in the nest. last year I had a window air conditioner not working, yes, they had mud around the fan and it was stuck like glue, my other place is 60 miles west of the country place and I have never in 40 plus years seen one here....Fred

Those things get everywhere - several years back my dad had a nest in one of his '88 3/4-ton Chevy's dash vents. Not at all fun to get that thing out.

This time of year the wasps and yellow jackets like to get in the cowl vent and build nests. I have to watch it pretty close, otherwise, as I start to drive off, a wasp or yellow jacket will come buzzing around from under the dash.

They are pesky, but I haven't been stung, yet.