Help please... dropped a socket while working on motor...sigh

a magnet on the end of a telescoping handle - find one with a flexible end - any hardware store has them

 

Bo,
Don't start the car......!

Move everything, sweep garage.
(Those things like to roll.)

Good luck,
F-Car brother,
Edwardo

 

Tricky but best to keep looking, may have to get a mirror or scope to look around some corners. Here again the dilemma shows the interesting point that probably all the shops who post on here will retrieve that socket, at NO cost to the customer, even if it takes a day. Again justifying that 'profit' (sic) margin we are ripping everyone off with......

May be somewhere quite safe, BUT, if not, plenty around the front of engine to throw itself into, sorry dude......

 

Turn the car upside down... I bet it falls right out.

Gene

 

I would dig around in there with a magnet and also check the area with a mirror.

 

I did this when replacing the fuel lines on my 328. I lifted one side of the car while listening for the socket. Bingo the socket fell out from its hiding place onto the floor on the first attempt. Game over. Worth a shot.

 

If it doesn't , you may have to shake it a bit.

 

Everyone here has done this at least once. I actually did it today on a machine we were repairing at work. We kept looking, moved the machine, swept the floor, looked for a couple hours all in, because you just don't want to mash a tool with a moving part of the machine, in this case the motor, right?

You know the socket is there somewhere, you are just gonna have to look until you find it. Roll the car out of the way. Lift one side with the jack, like another post says, than lift the other side, have someone there when you do it looking under the car as you lift, that way if it falls out you'll be able to track it, or at least know that it fell out of harm's way.

Rock the cor as best you can where it sits maybe? But certainly roll it out and sweep carefully until it turns up. Hardened socket can wreak havoc with moving parts.

good luck, I think we all feel your pain.

Dave M.

 

I feel your pain, brother! I dropped a the bottom right (passenger-side) nyloc nut when replacing my pneumatic hood struts on my F355. I had to remove some of the bottom aerodynamic panels and look for over a day in order to finally find it. After you really check, clean, and sweep the garage floor (like recommended) I like the leaf blower idea! I just might dislodge to socket from its hiding place. I don't think it could do may harm. Ferrari mechanics??? I'd keep looking until you find it. Better to be safe than sorry - a 12 cylinder engine rebuild must be $$$$! Best of luck!!

 

I'd try everything mentioned so far, but add compressed air blast from below if you have a compressor. I'd also use the brightest spot torch you have when looking around the engine for it.
You'll be surprised by how much a bright spot torch helps when examining.
Its F-car practice too. Noticed Kimi's engineer using a lumigon light at Spa to check out his gearbox to rear wing mount after he knocked the wing off.

 

Could be worse.

Replacing water pump on friend's outboard, boat still in water. Me, planned ahead and wore chest waders. Deep water. Had butterfingers assistant hand me the socket wrench. PLOOP was sound it made as it hit the water. Next, me very wet and very angry, only wrench around for miles.

 

Dear Ferraristi,

Oh....been there !


Jack up the car, put a trouble light on the top of the Alt. AC area. Go from underneath with another trouble light and a mirror(Automotive mirror, mirror on an extender with swivel joint -Craftsman ) . Usually, the chrome reflection from the socket should be seen with the automotive mirror.

My guess, in between the accessory belts near the vacuum lines for the aux. air pump.


May the force be with you!


Shamile

Freeze...Miami Vice !

 

Edwardo, Did you find it yet?

Tony

 

I've occasionally had sucess with the trick of dropping it's sister to check the trajectory.

Except for those times when I then had TWO missing items.

 

I've done this more times than I can count. Nothing goes anywhere until you locate the missing item. I have about a dozen different magnets, mirrors, wires with a hook on the end, etc. I even bought a self illuminated mirror with a remote angle control (doesn't work very well). I find it's easier to work in a darkened room with a small bright flashlight. Outside in the bright sun is the worst.

 

Cardinal rule is you dont turn the key until all parts and tools are accounted for, period. While you certainly dont need to worry for your life if it does something nasty as you would in an airplane, you do have the potential to do tens of thousands dollars of damage if you bet wrong. If it gets into the timing belts or if the alternator or water pump throw it, it could do considerable damage. Find the tool, its part of the price you pay for wrenching on machines. If it takes two days, find that tool.

 

+10000000000000000000 to Artvonne above.

I spent over a month looking for a screw behind the dash. You CANNOT AFFORD A LAZY mistake.

As much as it hurts, FIND IT BEFORE you do ANYTHING.

Take the pain Baby ............. Sorry.

 

Besides looking for it, if you have a mobile magnet thingy swab it around. If that doesn't work pull out the vacuem, maybe rocking-pushing the car back and forth will make it drop.

 

I like the trajectory theory except tie a string to the second socket you drop to see where it ended up. Once a basis is established for location, then go to the magnet first and then the air pressure.

 

I found a pair of pliers one day while I was doing an annual inspection on a Cessna 172. There are all these little covers you drop so you can inspect the insides of the wing from underneath; loose rivets, bird nests, corrosion, stuff like that. You use a mirror and a flashlight and you try to visually inspect every square inch. I spotted something and felt around inside and found this pair of pliers. They very clearly have the mechanics name ground into them. Records shown he last inspected that plane 6 years and 6 inspections before. Half a dozen other mirrors and flashlights and eyeballs had peered up in there and never seen them. When you imagine the things they could have done, like jam the flight controls, its pretty scary.

When I told Bob about it and showed him the pliers, he recognised the name, laughed, looked at me and said: "dont put your name on your tools".

The point is, sooner or later we all screw up. We lose something, drop something, forget something. Its human nature. But if your methodical and take your time, if you can remember what your doing, you can usually have good luck putting things back right.

Pretend that tool was your great great Grandfathers and its worth more than the car. Its somewhere, you just havnt searched hard enough, or intelligently enough. Solve the puzzle.

 

before I started working on my car I had a mechanic change my WP and when I got the car back there was a standard! saltus wrench on my smog pump! I agree keep looking. I have found everything I have ever lost but I still think a small socket will fall out on the first turn. I am over paranoid so I would look forever but on the gt4 there is a metal tranny cover that everything seems to fall into. I once had a june bug fly right down into an oil galley, not sure what happened to it maybe I fished it out...... also dont forget the floor I lost washers then looked for hours only to find they rolled under the washer. I have all locking extentions now!!!
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Maybe. But what if instead it gets thrown by the alternator or waterpump belt, or gets nailed by the alternator fan. What if it somehow got into the timing belt cover?

In most cases your correct, a part or a tool will fall away or go somewhere where it wont harm anything. But there are those one in a million chances that occur in the real world, that with Ferrari's seem to be one in ten for some odd reason. I have been reading of aircraft accidents for over 40 years now, since I was like 8 or 9 years old. While it may seem macabre, I find it facinating, and interesting. It peers so deeply into human behavior, mechanical issues and physics. And if you study it long enough you learn to leave no stone unturned or to make to many assumptions. Because the one that will get you is the one you didnt look under, or consider.

When I was 17, I dropped a washer into a Pontiac GTO intake port while trying to swap on a three duce setup. I searched for hours, mostly fishing with a magnet on a string. The engine is made of iron, good luck finding anything the magnet wont stick too. The stupid part was I decided to do the job in a friends backyard on a dirt driveway. If the washer had fell in the dirt I couldnt have found it very easy. It was getting late, sun was setting, mosquitors were eating me, and I was tired and hungry. Anger and frustration led to ignorance. Assuming that the washer wasnt in the engine because I hadnt found it, I decided to put the motor together so I could go home. The motor I spent all summer building. I messed it up real good. I knew in my mind I should have pulled the head, but frustration and assumptions did me in.

Later in life I lost a ball from a tripple tree bearing off a motorcycle. No way I would buy one anywhere for days, so I had plenty of time to look. When it fell I hadnt seen where it went, just that sound you hear that says "oh oh". I looked for hours. I swept the floor, crawled around on my knees with a magnet, couldnt find it. So what the heck, im going to have to go buy one or a whole set anyway if I cant find it, so I sacrificed another one. I took another ball, and judging from about where the first one was when it fell, I dropped it, only this time I watched where it went. Off it went across the floor, and rolled to a stop about 4 inches from the other one. Gravity and physics are fixed laws, they never change. If you drop the same object the same way each time, It should go off in about the same direction each and every time, and end up in more or less the same place, more or less. Just like hitting balls on a pool table. I have found more things I dropped by dropping another one and watching where it went, its saved a lot of time not searching where it didnt go.