AZC4Guy

this is easy. Take your shop vac or even a smaller vac. Duct tape a small tube onto/into the vaccuum cleaner tube so that the small tube is getting good suction. Insert small tube into cylinder and extract accordingly.


You're welcome.


edit: no power? Extension cords can be purchased in 100 ft lengths at home depot. Just how many would you need?

AZC4Guy

Solution 2: Get a spray cleaner that evaporates. No amount of sticky grease is going to adhere to oily glass. Spray cleaner in generously then blow in cylinder to aid evaporation. Now, use whatever sort of spray adhesive you like on a Q tip, dowel, rod, screw driver....

Don't want to spray the cylinder? Use a swab (looks like a long Q tip, you see them at doctors offices) soaked in cleaner and clean the glass, proceed as instructed

Get really fancy, purchase some 2 part epoxy.

After cleaning above as indicated, locate the glass visually. Dip one (whatever you can poke into the cylinder) into one part of the epoxy and touch one end of glass tube w/ it. Dip other (whatever you can poke into cylinder) into the other part of the epoxy and touch it in the same place on the glass as you did the first part. Allow to sit for a couple of minutes, then extract.

Poor man's version: If you can easily locate the tube in the cylinder, use super glue instead of epoxy

Edit: if ya don't like those ideas, I guess I could really think about it and come up w/ more.

RAGOVET

I was thinking about this. glass is sand based. I would be afraid that running with this would severely scar the cylinder walls. I would definitely get this out even if you have to remove the head to get at it.

OriginalOwner1985z51

*** THE EYEDROPPER HAS BEEN SAFELY EXTRACTED!!! ***

I got my non-magnetic, oil-soaked, glass eyedropper out of my #2 cylinder without pulling the head, moving the piston, breaking the eyedropper, or even chipping it in the slightest. How?

Slalom4me gets the grand prize for this one, for providing the crucial info on the ProVision PV-636 Fiberscope. I purchased one (with right angle mirror attachment) from The Tool Warehouse. Tool Warehouse provided excellent pricing, communications and shipping. Based on my initial experience with them, I would highly recommend The Tool Warehouse.

Once I could see inside the cylinder, it was a simple matter to fashion a makeshift grappler from soft plastic parts. I pushed a 6-foot run of 14-pound monofilament fishing line through 2-feet of tiny 1/16-inch diameter Teflon tubing, until one foot of fishing line remained at the starting end and three feet had emerged at the opposite end. I then turned the three feet of excess fishing line around (without cutting) and fed it back through the tubing in the opposite direction. This formed a loop of line at one end of the Teflon tube, with two loose ends at the other end. The loop could be adjusted and pulled tight by pushing and pulling on the lines at the opposite end.

The Teflon tubing and 14-pound fishing line were just the right consistency. They were pliable enough to curve into the cylinder to reach the eyedropper, but stiff enough to be controllable once there. While monitoring results with the Fiberscope, I used the loop of my plastic makeshift “grappler” to flip the eyedropper into the loop. I then pulled the loop around the eyedropper and carefully pulled the eyedropper right out.

It worked on the first attempt! The eyedropper came right out with no cracks or chips whatsoever. I had to be careful to lasso the eyedropper very close to one end, so that it would not form a “T” on the end of the Teflon tube, which would have made the eyedropper unable to turn parallel to come through the spark plug port. Because the eyedropper had a lip on the end (where the rubber blub had been) opposite its pointy end, I grappled near the lip end. The lip made it even easier for the lasso to maintain its grip on the eyedropper.

The car now lives to drive another day!

Sincerest thanks to everyone who provided suggestions and encouragement with mega special thanks to Slalom4me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known about the ProVision Fiberscope, which did the trick and saved my car!



My best to all. You've saved another Corvette.

86PACER

Congrats! Glad to hear.

And to think that you where considering junking the Vette just because of this...

STL94LT1

Great news!!!

tobijohn

That was an ingenious solution. You (or somebody) should write this up as a Tech Tip. This wasn't the first time something fell somewhere normally inaccessible. Congratulations!

KAZ2

Unless you have used up all your luck, I suggest a trip to Vegas while you are this hot

Redeasysport

Great Job necessity IS the mother of invention.Gonna have to keep that scope ready for rental.I am sure someone will need one around here.How much was it?

cv67

buy a few lottos while you are at it! Good to hear you didn't have to junk it!

redvette6spd

All's well that ends well Good job

Slalom4me

Well done!

I'd like to complement you on your level-headed approach, perseverence
and ingenuity. Don't know what you do when you aren't fishing stuff out
of cylinders, but I bet you are good at it.

Thanks for writing up the details about the snare you made. While I've
seen these used by animal control officers, it hadn't occured to me to
apply the same concept to fabricate a tool for personal use.

Thanks also for mentioning that the 90º mirror is now available for the
PV-636. They only had one for the larger dia 'obedient' unit when I
bought mine.

.

Pete K

Glad you removed it. I just now read this post. As I was scrolling thru it, my thoughts were to take a compression tester hose, and hook a mighty vac to it. I bet that would have sucked that thing out. Mighty vac, a dremel and duct tape are a mans best friend.

OriginalOwner1985z51

Thanks, everybody.

I had tried the Shop Vac approach really hard and very patiently for several hours, using a wide variety of hose sizes and types. I also tried cutting the end of the hoses in all sorts of funny shapes and angles. However, due to the coating of oil and the odd orientation of the eyedropper inside the cylinder, I apparently couldn't get enough vacuum to pick up the eyedropper near an end and hold onto it. (Remember that an eyedropper has a hole through the middle of it, so it won't hold vacuum as well as a solid object when trying to pull on one end.) I think I occasionally got it in the middle, but it formed a "T" and just fell off when it reached the plug port.

Still another complication is that since most of the plug port is blocked by the hose, the airflow is limited to what can be sucked through the valves. If the valves are open, great, but if not, not so good. Yet another problem is that when extracting nears the plug port, the hose will try to suck air through the gap between the hose and the surrounding plug port, which causes an inrush of air into the cylinder in the direction opposite from how the eyedropper is being pulled. Another problem is that in order to get good airflow, the hose had to be large enough that I couldn't get the hose and the fiberscope into the plug port at the same time, even using thin wall hose.

I include all these observations definitely not to shoot down the terrific idea of using vacuum, but only to explain why it didn't work in my case. Perhaps this might save time for others in the future, if they find themselves in a similar position. Hopefully, no one will.

The best lesson I've learned is to always check the integrity of any tool or part/tool combination used near an open engine. Push and pull hard on all sections to make absolutely sure that nothing can pop off when you least expect it, because Murphy's Law says that if it can come off, it will. (!!!!!)

Pete K

I had a similar silly problem once. While installing my heads, somehow the little ball that retains the socket to the ratchet fell out. It rolled(unknown to me) into the intake runner that has a paper towel loosely stuffed into it. When rolling the motor over, it locked up #6 piston. When the piston pushed the ball up into the head, it dented and stuck into the piston. I had to pull the head.

SJW

My hat is off to you for engineering a truly brilliant solution to this problem. A hearty "Contrats!"

Be well,

SJW

lawcorvette

I am not the most knowledgable corvette man... I mostly cruise here to ask questions to get out of my own dilemma's. But I do have a materials science degree and I did work in glass research.

Don't think because it breaks easy that it will crumble up and sift out of the engine without leaving damage. Glass is a hard material meaning it will scratch the cylander walls.. especially as a grit and being compressed between the wall and the piston.

Get it out of there.

DougSilver

Sounds like after the description of the careful and painstaking methods you used, and fabricating your special extraction device, you can offer to perform angioplasties in your spare time.