What have you lost under the hood?
 

I changed out my thermostat (2nd replacement, 161k miles) today. In the process of removing the hidden bolt in the back, I dropped a deep 10mm socket and can't for the life of me find it. I probed around with a magnetic retriever, checked on the ground, and took off the lower engine sound encapsulation panel, but never found the darn thing.

Rest of the job went OK. I stuffed some paper towels in the nooks and crannies so that if I dropped a bolt, it wouldn't wind up lost, too.

Right now, I've got my fingers crossed that the socket is safely tucked somewhere under the water pump and won't come out and into the pulleys!

Just wondering -- is it just me, or have others dropped things into the black hole, never to be seen again?

That's darn funny. When I saw the title of the thread, I thought, "well, the only thing I ever 'lost under the hood' was a 10mm socket". Then I read your post and that is what you lost also. Very wierd. About 15 years ago I was working on my Fiat Brava and I dropped a short 10mm socket. I spent over an hour that day looking for it and probed with a magnetic grabber and got real greasy reaching everywhere I could think of. Never found it. I even would look for it occasionally years later!! Never found it.

Mike

shhhhhhh
 

we dont talk about that.

nor having extra parts when done.

you are breaking the unwritten code of doi t yourselfers. especially not to be revealed to wifes and or significant others.

tom w

I too have lost one while changing the thermostat, never found it either 3 years ago. I know the feeling, its either down there or gone. I also found one that someone had lost!

when I had my MGB, I found a few tools inside the front fenders...

Pair of vise grips, some screw drivers, and a socket wrench.

I myself havent lost any tools in the engine compartment, but I have come close to it.

Alon

My sanity on some of the things I have worked on.

And skin.... lots of skin.

I lost my radiator cap, and had to buy a new one. Sure enough, next time I had the car on the lift, I removed the underpannels and of course, the original radiator cap was there. Stuck there for hundreds of miles.

I also found a few 10MM sockets:D

I've lost a lot of small screws and nuts, but
 

these were more than compensated by the quantity of automotive fasteners and tools I used to find in the gutter while walking to work and home again every day. Some real quality stuff, and a lot of scary stuff -- fragments of broken brake parts, etc.

My W123 sunroof will blow the fuse usually when I operate it, and so when I tried to replace the fuse I kept dropping them down, about 3 or 4 of them till I finally got one in, just a really awkward working space for that particular fuse. They eventually ended up dropping down onto the driver side footwell by the gas and brake pedals :)

I once found a snap-on door panel remover inside a door. The rattling drove me nuts for a couple of weeks before I found it.

On any newer car, when you drop a screw or any small object,,, the chance of it hitting the floor is about 1 in 10. Can't tell you how many times this has happened to me or the other guys in the shop.:eek:

DOH! You're right, of course, Tom -- how could I have forgotten?

Still, good to have everyone's support, now that I realize I'm not the only one!

I once read that small hand tools mutate into coat hangers... which, of course, explains why small tools constantly disappear (sometimes as quickly as "where the heck is that screwdriver? I remember just putting it down on that air filter box"). And, further explains why coat hangers seem to multiply in the hall closet without explanation.

:)

Personally, I believe that there are gremlins that live under the hood of most cars. Their most clever trick is to suddenly release an extraordinarily tight bolt just as your pressure on the wrench is beyond the point of any possible restraint, and your knuckles are less than an inch from a hard object. These gremlins live on small hand tools... especially 10 mm deep sockets.:D

I lost a bolt down my exhaust once while working on it. Other than that, I really havent lost any big tools except for the one in my friends explorer, so I feel I am pretty lucky.

I was working on a friends explorer when we lost the only 1/2 socket we had. We were trying to replace some pulley that had been chewed up from the previous owner. We think that he had left a tool on top of the motor. We think it slid down the front of it because that fan was all chewed up, pulleys were all messed up, and the belt was really worn. Well, after further investigation, we had found another 1/2 inch socket stuck on a bolt. Apparently someone had tried to tighten down a nut over a bolt and had threaded it through the hole in the center of the socket. We finished it, and still to this day we havent found that socket we had lost.