For the second time on my truck the squirrels completely destroyed the battery insulation and nibbled on the tape of the wiring harness. Is there a scent spray that will keep them from messing with it again?

Gunpowder usually works......410 Shot gun shells work great. Sorry I could not help myself. They might take some Decon as they are rodents after all.
Todd

Spicy red pepper powder. Probably irritating to their eyes, noses and mouth. Gunpowder near exhaust manifolds and electrical stuff?

.

Home Depot & such have a few repellants; I've bought one that seems to repel pretty much any animal.
Has a very bitter & peppery aroma - heck, it'd repel humans - called "Repel All".

thanks, i will check it out. i hope if I spray the repellent on the insulation it will soak in the insulation and the odor will hang around for a while.

Pretty sure he meant to use the gunpowder in the way it was intended, to eliminate your squirrel problem with extreme prejudice.
22 shorts will work with a minimum of noise. A good pellet rifle will also do the job even quieter.

But you can try this first if you don't like the other way.
Game warden told us to use a mixture of mayonnaise and cayenne pepper to get rid of a ground hog under a porch. Apparently they love the mayo and when the cayenne kicks in they run away and never come back. Worked for us in one day. I bet it probably works just as well on squirrels.

I live in a rural area and the combination of lead and gunpowder is excellent. Also lead and compressed air works well, it's a little quieter too.

Hmm,. There are times that could come in handy.

I hate squirrels too because they not only gnawed a leak into my 1995 fuel line at the elbow at the top of the submerged pump assembly,
but have gnawed through wood at the corners of the house just below the roof.

I was told that squirrels dislike human hair and have put hair at those roof corners.
Coyote hair is disliked too.

I have been told to wrap automobile lines and wires with bronze wool.

My relative had his under hood wiring harness on his new truck eaten up pretty well. I am thankful they didn`t chew on mine and it only removed some tape in a spot of two. It must of not liked the taste of the tape.

The auto manufacturers have been using soy based insulation for some time. The critters love to eat it.

https://us.autologic.com/news/automotive-wiring-harness-deterioration

When I was still working at an assembly plant one year they stock piled a few hundred cars behind the plant back by the woods. When they went to ship them a bunch had ate up wiring harnesses.

I use a Gamo Whisper pellet gun in .177 caliber. Very quiet when you use standard lead pellets. I managed to slay 400+ ground squirrels with it while not alerting my neighbors. Also since its quiet, I could knock off the rodents friend with a follow up shot as he was watching his now deceased friend and trying to figure out what just happened. In my experience, repellants are a waste of money. You need to get rid of any food, water or shelter source that brings them in. Traps and poisons can be had but the poisons will affect other critters, like your pets, as the target rodent doesn't always croak in its nest/hole. Regardless of what the bait manufactures say about the bait blocks being pet friendly, the pet can die too or at a minimum get seriously jacked up. Any varmint that I could hit that fell into the effective range on the .177 got hit. Keep them slain for a good distance around your house and you won't have very many issues.

Thanks for that tip. I've been looking for a way to Defund the Groundhogs in my yard without killing them. It's supposedly illegal to relocate them.

I've never heard of bronze wool?

I just relocate them with a 20 gauge, then the dog collects them.

That's the squirrelliest looking groundhog I've ever seen!

Lol, yeah you're right, but it did start out talking about squirrels. I haven't had any ground hogs eating my porch, but if I did they would be relocated the same way.

Hot lead and spent gun powder.

Geez, never even thought about squirrels and wires, only rats. But I guess it makes sense.

I used to have a bar of soap just inside my garage near garage door so that I could wash hands with garden hose. I kept finding it in different spots in garage, and thought I was losing my mind. Then one day, I found it inside my Aspen, on floorboard, which was parked in garage. [censored]?! So I googled and found that rodents like the scent and nibble on it. They were actually moving it around! Went to liquid soap real quick! And no more windows down even when in garage. My neighbor's yard is always long and a mess, and I think he's got a couple of rat's nests there.