OriginalOwner1985z51

*** EYEDROPPER SAFELY EXTRACTED!!! *** (See last post for details.)

HELP! My class-A goof may have resulted in the death of my car. Does anyone know if some sort of tiny borescope with integrated grappler might be available in the Los Angeles area? My car has been in storage for a couple of years, so earlier today I pulled each plug to squirt a little oil into each cylinder prior to starting. Good idea, right? Well, almost.

Sadly, when doing the front right cylinder, the glass body of the eyedropper slipped from its rubber bulb and dropped completely into the cylinder! I can’t even see the thing. It must be covered with oil by now, so I don’t think I would ever be able to fish it out blind, especially without breaking the glass!

It seems I need to find a borescope with grappler that will fit through the tiny spark plug opening. Or, perhaps someone who owns one who would be willing to do the work for very good money. Otherwise, I fear the car will have to go to the charity junkyard. It’s not worth doing a top overhaul on a 20 year old car, even if I am its original owner.

(Sobbing, now.)

Does anyone know a way to save my baby from almost certain demise?

TheCorvetteKid

Maybe if you turn the engine over SLOWLY by hand (using a socket and 1/2" drive ratchet wrench on the crank pulley) the piston might be able to push the glass cylinder high enough where you get at it.

Remove the rest of the plugs before you try this - it will make turning the engine over alot easier and more controlled. And DEFINITELY don't do this alone - you'll need to have someone turn the engine over while you check to see if this thing makes it's way to the top of the cylinder without cracking or breaking.

That's about all I can think of in this situation (appart from pulling the head off).

Good luck with it. Maybe someone will chime in with a better idea.

UVETTYA

Oh man, I feel for you.

Try a vacuum and see if you can suck it out. Maybe duct tape a 1/2" hose to the end of the vacuum hose and see if you can snake it down through the spark plug hole.

bogus

The Corvette Kid took my idea.

Get that cylinder top and see if you can get it that way.

The vacuum is another good idea.

There is one final reality... it is glass... so it would break if compressed. I don't see it hurting the metal, to be honest. If you can't fish it out, you might be able to bust it and let combustion do the rest.

One other idea, flood the cylinder with gas - yes, gas. That will break any oil down and float the piece out. Then crank the motor (no plugs) and then reoil and start.

PMARTINEZ92126

i dropped a small allen wrench in mine. Turn by crank till piston is on top. I used a magnet but since yours is glass a small vac would do it if its easy to get to.

Corvette Kid

This is so not a big problem.....
Plenty of good advice here, it'll live.

DRAKEFAMILY2

You might try putting some wheel bearing grease, or any heavy grease, on the end of a rubber hose and see if that will snag it.

jackdaroofer

If worse came to worse, I think you could pull the head and take out the glass. Even at west coast prices, that shouldn't cost over $ 500 I would think!

Your car is worth a lot more than that, I would guess

seeya

65Z01

Disconnect the battery, remove the serpentine & all the spark plugs, insert a screwdriver into the spark plug hole and slowly turn the crank till the piston is at TDC.

Then you can try the greasy rubber tube, vacuum, etc.

Redeasysport

[QUOTE=bogus]The Corvette Kid took my idea.



There is one final reality... it is glass... so it would break if compressed. I don't see it hurting the metal, to be honest. If you can't fish it out, you might be able to bust it and let combustion do the rest.

[QUOTE]

That was my thought when I first read this just did not wanna be the one to suggest it.It should blow right out and any grains should get filtered by the oil filter.It is only a dropper.I can't think of any reason not to go ahead and start it up to break it mabey someone else can come up with one.

AGENT 86

Paper beats rock
Scissors beats paper
Rock beats scissors
Piston beats glass eye dropper

I don't see the need for so much concern, fire it up and it will be gone before you can spell beer

dndrsn

Sandpaper is essentially coated with glass (silicon), would you want sand in your cylinders scoring up the walls, getting hammered between the valves and seats. Even after honing the bores they have to be washed with detergent to get rid of the grit. I would try to get it out in one piece if it was me.

UVETTYA

And please let us know what happens...

BTW, if the dropper is glass, as others have suggested you might be ok to start it. I would think after a few combustion cycles everything would be out the exhaust. Then again, not to worry you but I wonder if ground up glass might score a cylinder wall.

Are you sure the dropper is glass? I don't think I would do that if it's plastic.

Morley

The borescope you are looking for only costs about $90,000 (no lie) and are mainly made by Olympus.
As suggested roll the engine over until that piston is at TDC. home Depot sells a very small and thin Shopvac wand and adaptor to hook it to a full size Shopvac, use it to probe in the hole and try to get it to suck the dropper up to it and carefully remove it.

bogus

It's the same basic tech that is used by Drs to perform colonoscopies.

These are not cheap pieces of equipment. Awesome video quality, tho...

I would love to find a used unit from about 10 years ago!!!

cv67

Don't even think of starting it with glass in there. It will f up that motor. Get something sticky in there and find a way to get it out. Don't give up on the car because of that! If you do, I may have to adopt it

86PACER

Don't be too hard on yourself. I too dropped something into the cylinder before. I felt like the biggest dumb azz in the world. I tried a magnet on a string, a flexible "grabber" tool, wire hooks, you name it, to no avail. The problem was that the object was about 1 inch long, and the angle of the plug hole in relation to the cylider made it impossible to pull it out. I ended up having to pull the damn head off to retreive it.

Good thing that came from this was that I took care of my intake leaks while I was at it, and really gave the engine bay a good cleaning, and had aluminum parts sand blasted clean. It looked 10 times better when it was all put back together, and I learned a lot in the process.

If it's too big to retreive with the above methods, what about breaking it by rotating the motor and sucking out all the smaller glass peices with a small flexible rubber hose attached to a powerful shop vac.

Slalom4me

Pro Vision by SLI Lighting - borescopes for the common man.

These came in two styles and two lengths when I
purchased my PV-636. It looks as though they've
added some longer lengths.

A key difference between the styles is that the 0.40"
dia cable is 'obedient' - you can sort of lock it into
shape. The 0.23" is a flexible whip that you must
guide by hand.

These products are available from many mail order
firms. However, shop around - prices vary by hundreds
of dollars for the same item. Some sources with
good prices are: The Toolwarehouse. SJDiscount Tools

I can not vouch for either as they do/did not sell
to destinations outside the US. I purchased from
a west coast source but had trouble and will not
promote them.

If you want the 36" unit, be sure to specify model
PV-636. For some reason, these are described as
(SLIPV636) Pro Vision 618 but if you order PV-618,
you'll get the 18" unit.

Having said all this, it's better than nothing for
looking in cylinders, but it ain't cinema-scope.
Nor does it have any provision (no pun intended)
for grappling objects.

As for the advice to just rotate and crush the
eye-dropper tip. Well, remember the party trick
where if you position an egg properly, you can
amaze your friends by loading it up. If it comes
to that, I'd say break it manually before trying to
compress it. Use non-flammable solvent instead
of gasoline to cut the oil to keep hazards down.
Duct tape some clear 'vinyl' tubing (Home Depot)
to the vacuum to get what you can of the dropper
bits. Lube the cyl afterwards and turn it over to
coat the walls. Change the oil.

.

Atok

Check with a local race track. Some tracks have scopes for checking bottom ends of engines. I know a couple of tracks around here have them. We have to have a 1" plug in the oil pan for them to insert the scope.

This won't help in getting it out, just to see it. Not sure what the best way is to get it out. I think I would crush it up by turning the engine slowly by hand, then maybe try high volume compressed air to blow it out. A vacuum might also do the trick once it's crushed.

0ski_dwn_it

I would not highly recommend smashing it up.

Here is what I would do. I was in a similiar situation when I bought what turned out to be a faulty piston stop, that broke off and found myself in a similiar situation. Fortunately mine was metal and a magnet was able to snag it.

If you smash it up several things are going to happen. 1. The debris will be all over, and can get caught in the ring lands and score up the bores. Glass is pretty tough stuff. 2. If you use a vacuum, which I would highly recommend - but its going to be near impossible to get the thing to align right to the hole. This was the problem I had with the magnet - finally all the stars aligned and it came out. But with the vacuum your not going to be able to manipulate it around much. Perhaps you can use a small poker to push it when your pulling on it with a vacuum. Anyways if you smash it up, your not going to know for sure if you got all the pieces out. One larger piece that gets stuck in the valve seat could perminately damage the valve seat area. If your heads were iron, I would say smash it up, vacuum out the most you can get, and then start it up. But then you still risk the bore damage.

I would try fishing for it - give it your all. Then if that fails, I would pull the head off and nab it. Probably time for a manifold gasket change by now and new head gaskets can't hurt.

Good luck.