Technical Ever lose a tool while working on your car?

I was working on a 34 Chevy Pickup for a friend with wrench in hand. The shop phone rang and I went to answer. When I went back to work, the wrench was no where in site. After walking around the shop for about 20 minutes looking for the @**% wrench, I pulled another out of the tool box and went back to work. I painfully found my wrench when I sat down. Maybe it found me !!!....... Jeff

 

All the time, and sometimes found; sometimes not. Just recently I was assembling the SBC in my Austin and dropped a 6" 3/8 drive extension. That sucker bounced and dropped right down the open distributor hole!!! I had just finished tightening all the intake bolts, and was really devastated at the thought of taking it off! Looked down with a flashlight and surprisingly saw it! Tried those 4 finger grabber things, but it kept slipping off. Finally got my super duty magnetic grabber, and it pulled out! Whew!
I also lost a short 3/8 extension while working on the Falcon a month ago. Looked everywhere, and nothing found. Then the neighbor came over to haul off all the debris from my kitchen remodel, and when he walked up he was holding a 3/8 extension, and says, "Look what I found down the street while heading to your house!"
I asked if it had a knurled shaft, and my brand on it, and he confirmed it. Lost for a few weeks, and it sat on the street all that time with nobody else picking it up!

 

If by "lost" you mean whipped out the garage door in a fit of rage and by "found" you mean wandering around out in the alley looking in the grass and cursing...then yes, I have.

 

Who hasn't lost a tool while working on a car? Most times they'll turn up, but sometimes not. I've lost several sockets when they went into body cavities that could only be accessed by cutting it open. I've found more that other people lost...

The one I never figured out? I dropped a personalized Zippo lighter (a gift from my wife) while driving my '67 Fairlane and that thing just flat disappeared. I spent 2 hours looking for it when I got home, could not find it. Checked under the carpet, used a mechanics mirror to check the seat frame. Every time I cleaned the car for probably the next year, I looked; no dice. Three years later, I open the door to get in and there it lays, in plain view on the drivers floor.... To this day I still can't figure out where it hid...

 

Going to replace intake manifold ,, on a customer car ... removed manifold ,, only to find a snap- on torque wrench ... 25 years now ,, still works good ....

 

Most of the time, my tools become lost in a drawer above or below where they belong.

Although I have been guilty of leaving tools in customer's cars, mostly in those hazy decades: the 70's n' 80's.

I once left a 30" Snap-On pry bar/screw driver on the core support of a Doctor's SAAB 900- He gave it back to me after he told me that he'd get sued if he did the same thing....I just shrugged my shoulders n' told him that's why I wasn't a doctor...

Or the time I left my fuel pressure gauge attached to the fuel distributor of a Porsche 911 (after adjusting the cold control pressure) and didn't need it, see it or even miss it till three months later when the car came back in for service......

 

Heck, I lose'em just by standing and staring at the tool bench

 

Really. This should be "who HASN'T lost a tool working on their car, and found it in a strange place. My personal favorite seems to be sockets getting stuck down where the header primaries converge into the collector.

 

Well the flip side of this is so they sparkle when you shine a penlight down where you think they might have fallen. Can you imagine trying to find them if they were flat black??

 

One of the first things I did on the 56 was to remove all the easily removable exterior parts to clean up and lub what is hidden normally, like parking lights for instance. Under one of them, I found a knife and a small wrench almost completely eaten by rust and stuck on a concrete like portion of dirt.
Somebody left'em there or somehow they got there.

 

I was working in an alignment shop years ago and I somehow lost my 3/4" swivel socket-open end combo wrench. It was a Snap-On after an alignment. And I knew what car it was, an early 1970 Mopar with the eccentrics on the upper arm. Figured someone in the shop borrowed it or a customer walked off with it, which happened once in a while.

About 2 years later, the same shop, the car comes back for tires and another alignment... I said.. naw, couldn't be... I pop the hood and there the swivel socket end was still on the upper a-arm eccentric. Amazing it never fell off. The open-end end had sort of wedged itself against the firewall.

 

how about ever NOT lose a tool while working on a car?

 

This is true. Somehow though, I've managed not to lose any of my old rusty plain steel Craftsman wrenches. Go figure.

 

What? Loose a tool? Never........Although i had a adjustable wrench dissasemble itself as I thumbed the adjusting wheel..at the scrap yard on top of a pile of engines, I watched as the thumb wheel and adjusting jaw plinked their way down through the maze of engines...I threw the rest of the wrench in and walked off..

 

Years ago when the '62 belonged to my brother, he pulled off the intake to replace the gaskets I think. He popped off the intake with a big flat head screwdriver... when he finished the job, he was putting my dad's tools away...everything but that screwdriver. Pops was pissed... you could use his tools but don't lose them! A few months went by and my bro saved up for a high-rise aluminum intake. Went out the to the yard and pulled off the old intake,and... you know what was under there. My dad still has that screwdriver... and it has a perfect groove carved into it from dancing with a push rod.

 

I try to be as organized as possible. I only take out what I need. After I am done I clean everything and put it back in my box. When I don't do it that way I spend more time looking than working.

I agree with having the "loaner" set. I keep an HF tool kit for borrowers.

...Sometimes tools show up when I do work on something and tell me how to do what I am doing better.

 

My wife will borrow my tools for her "important" projects around the house, usually those tools are never seen again. I finally bought her a "ladies" set, with all pink handles

 

About a year ago, I opened an access door on a plane. I was almost hit on the head when a S-O ratcheting screw departed the plane. That was about an $80 mistake by somebody.

 

Check your back pocket......I have a tendency to put them there,then wander around the shop looking for that f#@king wrench.

 

I had 2 customized flex-shaft screwdrivers wedged in my Cadillac engine plumbing, so I could tweak the idle mix screws on the quadrajet. It didn't like low altitude running unless I fattened the mix a little.

Like a moron I left them on the engine when I sold the car,

 

I work in the marine industry, so when I was on the wrench turning side of the biz I didn't have to spend time looking for dropped tools . . . When they slipped from my hand it was followed by a splash - gone for good. When you do on the water service calls you learn early in your career to have two tool trays - one Snap-on you use in the shop, and one Chinese junk you use when working afloat. It hurts too bad to see a Snap-on ratchet / socket / extension disappear into 30ft of water. (trust me, I know first hand!)

A few years back I sent the company Sprinter Van to the dealer for an exhaust repair, and some warranty work. One item was to R&R the battery tray that had rotted out from a defective leaking battery. I came back and went into service without issue. A couple of months the kid who usually used it for pick-up and delivery said it had a strange rattle. I walked out and popped the hood . . . . there laying on the valve cover being held up by some injection plumbing was a Snap-on air chisel!! Seems the tech used it to remove the battery tray, and left it sitting on the motor. I was amazed that it hadn't fallen off, and even more amazed that when I stopped by the dealer and gave it to them, they check the records and found the tech who worked on the van . . . and he had never noticed it was gone!

 

This past x mas got a set of those new black box wrenches craftsman put out, the ones that fit six, twelve, square, bolts you know what I am talkin about I am sure, had a cam cover leak on me evo and had to put new gasket along with proper length allen head screws (aftermarket chrome ones are to short and loosen up, the cause of leak), so after a job well done start to hang wrenches acording to size as they would be my over the work bench easy to get to set and if anyone of you ever find the 7/16 please return it because I am very tired of looking for it and unfortunatly my bike aint got no cowl to look onto nor radiator support.....one day maybee

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Is it hanging from the magnetic oil drain plug?

 

or have no spare bolts left over after assembling it . yes and that worries me at times .on what I might done wrong .

 

thats why my uniform supplier ( local place ) had a mechanics line of pants that had no back pockets. they said to keep our damage claims down (screwdrivers or wrenchs ripping seats ).. , most of the mechanics now days empty there pockets before working on anything . I know I do as my wallet would be a pain if I laid on it .

 

After working 40+ yrs as a mechanic I've lost & found plenty of tools. Lost more than I've found though. Was changing the valve spring retainers on my 57 and dropped one. Looked everywhere for it. Figured I would just pick up one later I put an old old back on and drove home. Drove it another week. Looked down one day and saw it laying on the lower control arm.

 

On the "lost things" theme. I pulled the intake on a SBC years ago to swap on a new intake. When it came off I found a towel spread neatly out in the lifter valley! No idea how long it had been there, but other than slowing up oil return, it didn't appear to have harmed anything.

 

I lost the points screw to the distributor on my mom's Scout. I looked all over & couldn't find it, so I just got another one & put it in.

While Mom was driving it, the screw (which had fallen in the distributor and rolled under the breaker plate) shorted out the ignition and burned the primary wire all the way back to the switch. I got to re-wire her whole dash.

Now I check under the breaker plate whenever I open a distributor.

 

I, too, spin spanners for a living, and have lost plenty, nothing worse than an incomplete set, especially when you cannot buy just one of something. A little off topic but recently swapped my points ignition distributor to a HEI one in my Windsor, had trouble removing the old distributor, seemed to be stuck in the hole. Two small prybars gently got it free and it came rocketing out of the hole at a hundred miles an hour toward the underside of my freshly painted bonnet. Dropped the tools, caught the distributor, and then the hex drive that runs the oil pump(the reason it had given me trouble to get out) came with the distributor, which then decided to drop out of the bottom of the distributor shaft. You guessed it, it fell straight back down the hole in the block, and thanks to Ford, fitted perfectly through the oil drain hole in the block and disappeared to the sump. Engine out to remove the sump to retrieve it. Not happy, but relieved it wasn't a customers car.