Well..I just finished pullin down my intake and dropped in the dizzy hooked up cooling hose to radiator,everything is going great,i came in the house to take a break and realized i left a rag sitting in the lifter valley....DAMN!!!...What a dumb ass..Now i gotta tear it back apart..
I wonder Why someone would Admit to this & post it all over the HAMB ? Really, Think about it ::: " Ohh Shit, I forgot to Pull that rag from the Valley before i put the Manifold on " " I better run in the House & Post this on the HAMB so everyone Knows I pulled a Dummy Move and left it in there, Get some Verification that its O.K. 'cus someone else may have done this "
there is a thread here somewhere about oops look what i did, one guy said they left a paper towel in the intake, started the motor and bam it shot out the pipe. i thought that was funny, at least you remembered!
had a freind do this...he managed to pull it out, i think thru the front oil neck hole...or that's what he said...knowing Dennis, he may have just said that to cover his ooopppppsssssss
I usually remember that kind of thing after I start it up and hear "THWUMP!!!!....CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!"
Its ok 33 Chev, Desoto just made his own Karma Iam sure it will bite him in the ass. Yes I have had similar luck we are all human! Rob
I built a 509 BBC for a guy. When he got it all together he started it up with a rag inside the intake & bent a few intake valves. oops.
If you haven't pulled something back off to "make sure that you didn't forget something" you haven't built many engines.
That must mean that I am not the only one on here who had got up in the dark middle of the night and got dressed and gone out to the garage to "check and make sure".
had a merc 3spd stick (49/50) behind a 371 in a 31 tudor. Locked up during a shift from 2 to 3. had to coast to side...buddy towed me to shop - pulled it out, too the shifter cover off...there was a small phillips plastic-handled screwdriver jammed in between two gears...back-rotated and it came right out. Can't imagine what sort of application there would be to have some tiny little phillips near a big old tranny. Easy fix, though... dj
Many years back while working in a machine shop in San Antonio I was tearing down a 350 chevy and found the remains of a roll of paper towels in the lifter valley.
When I was a teenager my family had a 1/4 mile dirt track. One night the winner of the feature was protested. When he pulled of his intake on his "stock" 350 there was his chrome push in style breather for one of his valve covers. Just by judging the road maps in the whites of his eyes I'm pretty certain his car wasn't the only thing running on "racing fuel"...
I just spend a several months collecting parts to build a wicked Chevy 302 to put in my Midengine corvair. Got the motor together and set it on the test stand. Filled it with oil and filled the cooling system with water. It was late so I decided to call it a night and crank it up in the am when the neighbors were already awake. Went out yesterday am and looked in the radiator to make sure it was full of water and saw none. pulled the dipstick and it was way over full. Well to make a long story a little shorter, I tore it down to find this, pourous casting in the #6 cylinder wall. Man that sux. I'm sure the guy I bought the block from at the swap meet knew about it. It was a steal. Cant believe I missed it while boring and honing.
I left a beer on my back bumper and drove around town when I pulled over to get fuel I saw it was still standing vertical and cold so I drank it, does that count?
Thanks for posting this, 33_chevy...it helps some of the rest of us (the imperfect people) to know what to watch out for. I'm gonna remember to double and triple-check next time I replace a manifold, valve-cover, carb, etc...I hope. LOL.
I had a merc flattie in a 49 f1. I bought the truck and drove it for a bit traded it for my wagon. The guy I traded it to drove it as a daily for about a month till the engine died. We pulled the engine and found a shop rag that wiped the lobes on the camshaft. Who knows how long it was there but it f'd up a great running merc flattie.
Dont know if this is better or worse, but i had to tear down my mill because i THOUGHT I might have left a tool in the valley. I found the tool on the bench, but only after i'd pulled it apart. Two brothers i know argue about which one left the rag in the driver side turbo on their race car. We enjoy bringing up the ten year old subject just to watch them go at it...."all i know is i took the rag out of turbo on MY side" "no, i got mine, you forgot yours..." haha, it's fun to start that one up. I'm not overly proud of my mistakes, but i will own up to them, maybe that's not the DeSoto way, but if it will help illustrate to others the value of double checking, then so be it..
No! Ha Ha! Although I have droped things down the intake just as I thought "it would realy suck if I droped something down the intake" only to have it go down the one cylinder with an open valve. Fished it out through the spark plug hole though, thank God for 18mm plugs.