"The valley of death" that's funny.

I remember dropping a rubber seal under the HPOP when doing the STC fitting, after it dropped and fell, I prayed an "Oh Lord help" prayer, thinking how am I able to retrieve it without the thing falling down the real valley of death.
I saw it down there wedged in, ended up fishing for it. Very technical position to be in for sure. Anything you drop down there really makes you groan.

 

While replacing my injectors, I dropped a "special tool" down the rear oil return on the passenger side cylinder head. It was a common screwdriver with no handle and the tip curved around to pop out the glowplug connectors from the inside (it worked great....until I dropped it) After buttoning up the top end, I got to go below and undo motor mounts, radiator hoses etc. and jack the engine up to get the oil pan off and retrieve the tool. On my 4x4. Not fun at all. No lift, just a nice big floor jack, jack stands, and a lot of pieces of 2x4 and 4x4 wood. I did find it laying in the bottom of the pan. I'm thinking of putting it on a chain and wearing it around my neck lol.

 

If you’re sure it ended in the pan you could have left it - bits of chain tensioner were in my mini pan for a long time without any harm. Mind you if you’re not 100% sure...

 

Not to drag this thread anymore OT but I found this on my 2006 a few weeks ago tucked up by the driver's side battery. It's not mine. I bet to this day someone is wondering where their 1/4 drive and 8mm socket are.

 

By all means, drag it on. I feel a little better knowing it's not just me. Some good ones for sure. Can't wait till I find where my bolt ended up.

 

Ok so I was doing some work on a Piper PA-28 "Arrow" or Yard Dart if you feel that way about that plane.
I was replacing the instrument panel after doing some rewiring and lighting
socket replacement. There age was catching up to them. I had most of it in and was installing a screw and
washer and dropped it. It went bouncing around. I was almost ready to pull the inside of that plane apart for
one stupid screw and washer. I did not want it to jam something of cross some wiring. I got lucky and had
asked for some help looking and it was found sitting on some molding nowhere near where it fell.

 

That looks like the one I lost .... it is a SnapOn isn't it?

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I can PM my address

 

Are you sure that is not one of the Lowes or HomeDepot knock-offs?

 

Lol. My wife walks a lot and finds a ton of tools that fall off of contractors trucks. Pretty much all the cheap stuff. I keep hoping for a SnapOn ratchet, but at least I keep getting new Crapsman ones when mine break.

 

I got a free 1/4” Snap-On u-joint that I found by my passenger wiper pivot shaft 3 years after my motor was replaced at the dealer. You need that Mark?

 

I got 2 circular saw blades and wrench in the "new" truck.
I was hearing a a metal clank in the back seat and could never find
it. When I stopped in at Costco to pick up some stuff and had to drop
both sides of the under seat platform and that is when I happened
to see the stuff in it hiding spot.

 

LOL! Yeah it's a "Stanley" branded one. Thought I might have really scored when I first saw it.

 

Husky did the same design.

 

Here you go for another story.

When I did my oil cooler/egr cooler/stand pipes/dummy plugs/STC fitting change, I was in a hurry to get started and without thinking I grabbed a 12 point socket to take the turbo out. That only lead to me stripping the head off the back turbo bolt on my 2006. I lost about 5 hours trying different things like going to town and buying some of those Irwin sockets to take off stripped bolt heads, and then returning to town the next day to buy a dremel with the flex wand and cutting wheels and just cut the head off. My dad was amazed at how easy the rest of the bolt came out of the pedestal.

The next mess up was when I was ready to put the HPOP back in after changing the STC fitting. I had placed the o-ring on the tube but at the last second I decided to use compressed air to blow out the bolt holes to make sure there wasn't any oil in them. That lead to the o-ring flying away. It took me about 30 minutes to find it back on the transmission.

After putting the drivers side valve cover back on, I found I had one bolt missing. After a quick search around the area, I decided to take the cover back off to make sure that it hadn't fallen inside the engine. Then after not finding it inside, I crawled under the truck again and started feeling around and finally found it up on top of the frame. That one cost me about an hour.

When I was doing the passenger side stand pipe, I had to take it out in 2 pieces. To pull it out, I had put a drift punch in the holes and was yanking on it. It finally flew out and went somewhere and I was assuming that my 75 year old father that was helping me had picked it up (on a side note, funny how I remember helping him work on things and I was the go-for and now he is helping me and being my go-for). Now after I was done and having the truck back together and putting all the tools away, I recalled that I did not see the punch. Not thinking too much about it I had just assumed my dad had misplaced it or claimed it as one of his tools since we were using out of both our tool boxes. Well, a few months later after reading more on FTE and getting something else to be paranoid about, I was crawling under the truck looking at my cab mounts and what do you think I found. Yep, the top half of the stand pipe with the punch still wedged in it laying on top of the frame by the coil spring. It had been happily riding there for at least 1,500 miles.

And lastly, when I was putting the glow plug relay back on, I dropped one of the nuts. I looked for a few minutes, but since I was anxious to get the truck running and figured that it hadn't dropped into a critical area, I just skipped it and bought one later.

So I hope this gives you something to chuckle about.

Kevin

 

I just found two rusty nuts in the valley from when the Ford dealer installed this motor. So yeah, now I’m paranoid ......