[KTL]

I think they had a bag of peanuts in the garage for some reason, along with some bird seed. They live in a common residential suburban neighborhood and the car was always kept in a new (less than 15 yrs old) slab & wood/siding detached garage with overhead doors.

He didn't drive it that much. Bought it in '99 with 60K miles on it and it currently has 76,600. So it sat parked in the garage quite a bit and always sat all throughout the winter. He was afflicted with MS awhile back and that diminished his ability to drive it. Then he got brain cancer and that was that. So i'm guessing its not seen much use in at least the last 3 years, and that's a perfect scenario for a mouse to move in & take over. Last month I drained the gas tank (was full to the brim and checked out clean, thankfully), flushed the brakes, put a mL of Marvel Mystery oil in each cylinder & turned it over by hand, new spark plugs, fresh oil & filter and fired it up. Only recently did I drive it and figured i'd take a look in the tunnel on account of the slightly stiff throttle and not-so-good shifting.

So after I put all this tunnel & shifter stuff back together, i'll change the trans oil too. Hopefully that'll improve things as well, since the trans has actually been serviced (by Mark & I) since he's owned it. He did a pretty good job replacing dog teeth, synchro bits and so forth. But maybe he reused the slider rings and that's why it shifts a bit poorly.