My Dad cut an air wrench out of a new Cadillac rocker panel for the same reason about a decade or so before that. I think it's one of the two I still have. This was at Thomas Cadillac when they were still in San Pedro.
Had a friend who worked at a Plymouth dealer in the 70's. He was working on a new Duster that developed a bearing noise under warranty. Dropped the pan and sure enough, found a wiped main bearing. Pulled the motor, everything else looked good, so they swapped out the crank and the bad bearing and sent it down the road. Everything was fine for a while but a couple weeks later it shows up again with the same problem. Out comes the motor again, in goes another crank, a new bearing in the same position and a new oil pump for insurance. Out the door it goes again but of course it shows up again in a few weeks with the same problem. The engine goes back on the stand and they pull the crank and bearings out again and decide to strip it down to the block this time. He clamped an oil drip tray to his engine stand, turned the motor upright and locked it into position. He turned to get more tools out of his box and as he did he heard something solid "clunk" into the drip tray. He turned back to see what it was there in a little pool of oil was a broken off piece of the businees end of a drill bit. And it just happened to be the same size as the oil hole bored in the main bearing saddle. Another crank, another bearing and this time it stayed out the door.
Years ago a buddy of mine went to a votech and took a transmission course. When he opened the pan on his transmission he found all the "extra" parts the previous student had left over.
My friend told me a story about a ballpean hammer that he still uses today. 1957 Hi school autoshop took the intake off a flathead ford there it was laying in the SLUGE.
Back in 66 I lost my favorite body hammer. I finally gave up looking for it and bought a new one from Snap-on. A year later I was putting a new quarter panel on a 66 Ford convertible, again for the second time. Inside the 1/4 window area was my hammer I left in there a year earlier. What are the odds of that ever happening. I've had 2 favorite hammers ever since.
I find more tools that way! But seriously, Working on cars over the years I have tools lost in the body but never an engine. I like the theory about it being lost in the factory. In the aircraft industry mechanics use rubber hammers to pound under the wing skin to look for tools left in the wings by workers. If there, they bounce when hit. This is done so that tools can't get lodged in the controls and crash. Bill
S****ped out a 67 firebird years ago and when I pulled the radiator out it had a rattle inside it. Wound up pulling the one tank off and there was a Craftsman phillips screwdriver in there. Had to have been left in when new or when the rad was recored as the screwdriver handle was too big around to fit through the fill neck.
Years ago a friend of mine wanted to change the cam in his '57 chevy. In the process of dropping the pan to get the front cover off, we noticed the pan was a little heavy. Inside was a full set of lifters with no wear on the faces. I guess some one was too lazy (or embarested) to admit they didn't the ***yembly order.
Update: The code is FS-16A which according to the collectingsnapon.com site puts it being produced between 1953 and 1978. So...I guess its anybody's guess. Photo attached for those wanting to look at my newly acquired tool...
did anyone ever do a intake manifold gasket or pull the distrubetor or tining chain on it that is one way of seeing it got in.. being a mechnic for a living ive found many of tools ...jeffrey
I have owned the car for five and a half years. When I purchased the car it had 1969 tags on it so it was parked for a very long time. Before that, its anyones guess. I am sure some one, some where, some time could have worked on it and left it in there. The dates would be correct since the tool is no newer than 78 and it was parked before 69. The odometer reads 80K miles and I am pretty confident those are accurate based on how many years it was driven, which would have only have been about 15.
That's awesome. I recently pulled the valley cover on a Ford Y-block ... inside the galley, dead center in the motor, was the seal ring from the cap to a quart bottle of oil. Not very old, but still, the whole thing went down the front fill tube somehow and didn't go straight down into the timing chain. Not as impressive as finding a useable and useful tool, but I found it amusing.
I was stripping a block to use as a race engine. I noticed two small groves in the center of one of the mains that just shouldn't be there. I looked at the main bearing and there was a wire, like out of a wire wheel, curled up in the bearings oil hole. This motor had well over 100k on it and was still going. It almost had to have been placed there by a disgruntled Ford employee due to its perfect fit inside the bearing. I bet he didn't think that one would have lived so long!
Back in the early 70's I was a mechanic at a small VW shop. One evening as I was putting my tools away, I noticed my 17/19 mm ratcheting box wrench was missing. I figured a customer or one of the 2 dirtbag mechamics we had, swiped it. So I bought another one. About 4 years later I was putting a clutch in a bug. I reached behind the fan shroud to loosten the nut on one of the top bellhousing bolts. Guess what I found. A 17/19 Snap-On ratcheting box wrench with TCM etched on it. I went back through the service records and I had put a clutch in that very same bug the day my wrench went away.
Some one has a perfect condition Army issue G-shock watch in there drivers side door. I was finishing a car at the panel shop I used to work in, had my arm jambed in the door and the watch caught. I reached in, un-snapped it and got my arm out. Must have had something else on my mind and realised that night after the car had gone my watch was in it. Felt too much like a ****head to tell anyone.
I've had a lot of engines apart, but the only things I've found that shouldn't be there were a lot of water, and a mouse nest in the rocker arms, on a 235 Chevy. Everything else if anything had broken parts in it. At least a tool in your Hemi is better than a tool asking "that thing got a Hemi in it?" ...
Not an engine, but I repaired an old MATAMP valve amp years back from a seedy reggae club. The reason it had failed was because a large rat had decided to try and make it home. found it half cooked on the mains transformer, stank the shop out!
This era of socket was terrible about date coding most tools other than drive tools, but there still may be a date code, did you not see one that matches the chart? Does it have a hole in the drive side to retain a friction ball, or 4 recesses milled inside of the female square drive?
Lots of stories and I have two more. Recently tore down a 255 ford,they were a debored 302 one year 1980 only, to find the lifter valley stuffed with a shop apron and a couble of rags! I bought an high end antique gas tank cheep because it had a loose baffel. When I cut it open I found a curved file complete with a wooden handle!
we opened one up and found a full caulking tube of silicone in the lifter valley ? I bet they looked all over for it
Back in the early eighties, a friend bought a bank repo'd 78 4WD SWB w/400M....they let it goe because the M engine was knocking. When he pulled the motor to sort it all out, there was an 1156 bulb in the pan!! The bulb is too big to go in through drain plug, and even though it would fit through the filler hole in valve covers, there are no drain-back holes big enough for it to get into bottom end.....so we figure it had been there since it left the factory AND.....when we put it in the tail light soket, IT STILL WORKED!! James
I found a 3/8 wrachet in front of my house the other day, man, was it a mess. Im sure it came out of somebodys exhaust. Probably Dan's Model A.
Twice I have found a tee-shirt in the lifter valley. One sbc one sbf. There weren't even event shirts worth keeping...
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