Disaster Strikes, aka The Bumbling Mechanic


Where did it go?
I Can't Believe I Did That!

Without getting philisophical, in everyones life there comes a time when we all wish we could turn the clock back just a few minutes and try again... to avoid the catastophe that just occurred. Such was the case for me while in the midst of installing a pair of 1300cc secondary injectors. This fairly straight forward 4 hour job turned into a 15 hour nightmare. Not to be too repetatitive, after installing one injector and not getting it seated properly due to a pinched O-ring, I opened up the car again to see what was amiss. In the process of removing the ACV, and being somewhat annoyed that I'd screwed up the job somehow, in my haste I neglected to cover the lower intake runner ports, and as if God had willed it himself, I dropped one of the 8mm ACV nuts straight down the intake runner! The unthinkable had just happened. Your worst nightmare manifested. I was speechless and stood in awe at my own stupidity. I simply could not believe what had just happened. After working on my car for over two weeks on other projects and was so close to getting it back on the road and this happened. If I was younger I would have grabbed the nearest crowbar and beat on the car mercilessly for about 30 minutes in anger. But I'm older now and realize how much financial "damage" that would have inflicted later. So I stepped back from the car after about 5 minutes and collapsed to the floor. I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS (did I say that enough) cover those holes - stuff a rag in them or something. This time I didn't. Sure enough while bolting up the ACV a small 8mm nut slid off the stud, arced through the air, and tinked its way down the intake runner. Gone. Vamoose, Cionara Adios sucka!. This was at about 9pm Friday. I hear "tsk tsk's" everytime I tell the tale. A valuable lesson learned here though to always take your time, remain calm, and do things right when working on your car. And always cover those intake runners no matter how briefly they will be exposed.

Now What?

After standing in disbelief, slackjawed, for five minutes at what just happened, picking yourself up off the floor after passing out, or wiping the last of the tears away (pick one, two, or all three of these) it was time to figure out what the heck you can do to retrieve that 8mm nut. Looksee with a flashlight..nothing. It's gone....WAY...WAAAAYYYY gone. Dredging up posts of long gone that I remembered reading of folks who have suffered the same disaster I tried a magnetic retrival tool. No dice. The center housing is ferrous so the tool wouldn't go any farther than the lower intake manifold (LIM). Add to that the many sharp bends in the LIM and intake path and it would have been impossible to make this successful anyhow. So how about a magnet on a string? Ever try pushing a string? Didn't work either. Next up a wad of tape on the end of a string. LOL! I was getting desparate. Forget it. Didn't work either. Next up a mini vacuum cleaner attachment. A good idea but again the effort was thwarted by the many bends in the LIM and intake ports. In the end I concluded the 8mm nut was deeply seated inside the rotor chamber. The only alternative was to suck it up and tear the car down, right down to the intake and exhaust ports. Yippee! Please note the sarcasm. It's now 10:30pm friday night.

The Tear Down

The last thing I wanted to be doing, at least not for this reason, was ripping the car apart and removing the turbo's. What a job. It was going to be a long night. So where to begin? How about entire intake, intake piping, "Y" pipe assembly, engine torque brace, EGR valve, airpump and belt, (breathe) down pipe, turbo oil lines, turbo coolant lines, too many vacuum lines to count, turbo heat shields, and then the turbo's...(breathe) exhaust manifold and last but not least the LIM. WHEW. The time is now 1:30am saturday morning.


Parts....Lots of Parts.

To this day I can't believe I had the wherewithall to do a little bit of investigation and examination of the turbo's and manifolds while it was apart. Keeping in mind it is now about 2am. So I checked for shaft play on the turbos. Looked over the manifolds for BIG cracks. Some cracking but not too bad. I checked for turbo actuator operation - no binding and for wastegate movement. It too checked out fine. I performed a bit of preventive maintenance by replacing the two turbo coolant lines and two vacuum lines that were previously inaccessible - the rear oil metering injector vacuum line and I believe it is the fuel pressure regulator vacuum line.


Exhaust manifold and turbo manifold looked passable. Some cracking visible.

Every cloud has it's silver lining and in my case it was that I did not snap or break a single bolt or nut during the removal of all these parts. Mind you I used almost an entire can of PB Blaster but everything came apart without any problems. My only wish would have been to have had new gaskets available to replace the existing ones...namely the paper LIM gasket during the reinstallation. I ended up replacing only one stud. I had a spare DP stud that I used instead. But on to the task at hand. There is still an 8mm nut somewhere in the engine! First thought was to rotate the engine by hand and the nut would fall down to the exhaust port where it could be retrieved easily. Nope. While gently turning the engine by hand (breaker bar on e-shaft front pulley nut) the engine would bind up and not turn. Ok turn the engine back. The biggest fear perhaps was that I would turn the engine back TOO far and the nut would fall down the ignition side of the motor meaning a full motor teardown. ULP! Ok so the nut isn't coming out the exhaust port. So I unbolt the LIM and jam my fingers into the larger intake port, the port the nut went down was too small for fingers to reach, as far as they would go. Ahhh wazzzis? Is that an 8mm nut I feel? The nut is sitting on top of the rotor face but out of reach. Turn the engine a few degrees by hand and the nut falls down between the rotor and the housing....closer to my finger tips. Where's that magnet on a string? With the magnet between my finger tips...at full reach...after a few attempts I manage to snag the 8mm nut and retrieve it from the bowels of the engine. In retrospect there is absolutely no way I would have been able to retrieve the nut without any disassembly so the teardown was the right decision rather than wasting hours trying to do it any other way. The time is now about 2:30am.


At last I retrieve the 8mm nut.

With the nut retrieved I spent the next 4 hours putting everything back together. Some lessons learned: I now know how to pull turbos. I know, when the time comes, what I have to do to replace the LIM gasket, and I know to always plug the intake runners when working on the engine! At 6:45am I sat on my deck watching the rabbits nibble grass waiting for the family to wake up and called it a "night." And currently my car is running with no ill effects resulting from this exercise, read: I didn't have any parts left over after the reassembly.


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This page last updated August 20, 2003

Disclaimer: All images contained on this page are the sole property of C. Regan