For now...
Wanted to add a new license plate mount to the bosses Jeep. 2 bolts for the plate
4 for the mount. Easy- Peasy- Lemon Sqweezie~~!!
Take plate off (🗸)
Take mount off (🗸)
Clean surface (🗸)
Attach new mount (🗸)
Attach plate one bolt to hold in place (🗸) Around the 4 minute or so mark.
Start other bolt by hand to align, grab screw driver and *tink* the sound of a bolt bouncing
off metal...
Look on floor, NOPE.
Run fingers along grooves and any accessible area, NOPE.
Lay on floor reach up and around bumper, NOPE. WTF??
Check floor and under around each tire, nuts and bolts can gain energy from the cosmos
somehow and end up across the floor. Thought about calling Phil to have him check his floor.
They can go that far on a rare occasion.
Sigh...
Grab moar toolz...
Undo the bumper end...
Check inside bumper better... NOPE
Fish around and.... nothing.... then I notice the space between the gas tank and skid plate.
Nooooooo... Reach fingers up and it's wide enough.. FUCK.. no way.
Get off garage floor.. go get Home Depot lighted mirror.
Return with cardboard and lay back on floor... May just sleep here at this point.
Turn on light, extend mirror.... and...
Between the tank ( right arrow) and skid plate ( left arrow) down at the bottom
Get out cutting torch to see if I can make a small hole....
just kidding.....
I tried a magnet on the end of a wire tie. With the mirror I could see it touch the screw
but not enough to lift it. I then got the little flexible finger extender do-hickey but
the area was too narrow. Finally I tried a piece of welding wire bent to fit with a little
U shape on the end. I was able to start to drag it up the wall when... the wire sprung and
flicked the bolt down the wall. It must have rolled under the tank because I can't find it.
There are stiffening ribs stamped in the tank so I hope it makes it's way into one of those.
My only concern may be when the tank is totally full and the bolt is possibly wedged
between the tank and skid plate it will cause a very small stress area and with vibration
may wear through the tank.
I hope I'm dead and buried before there is the smell of gas dripping in the garage....
I have been taking the accumulated "junk" from my "junk pile" to remove it from the ranch (AKA rural property) having transferred said ranch to kinfolk no longer appreciative...you know). Three gens of "possibles" going in for scrap $. What-EVER!
ReplyDeleteI hate it when shit like this happens. and it does all too often. one of the best things I have found to be is the pop rivet nut things. not sure what they call them, but one I saw one, I bought the damn kit for stupid shit like this. find one that fits the hole, insert and install. and then you have a nut that not going any damn where. still have it after 20 years. and plate holes/nuts is the only thing I used it for. well once to install a better side mirror.
ReplyDeleteI've seen them listed under "Pop Threads" in the past. Made specifically for sheet metal applications where a pannel needs to be removed for service. Yup love the things.
DeleteHere is one example on the zon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TODXQW/?coliid=I5G5I1WJRUCVV&colid=A5GCDZDB9MFV&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
recommend the larger handled if using threads 1/4-20 and larger.
Leave it in place and in less than a year you'll be buying a new tank.
ReplyDeleteBe smart, remove the shield/skid plate and retrieve the bolt.
You're gonna guilt me into B, ain't ya??
DeleteB's right. Get that little sumbitch out, soon. It will wear a hole in the tank at just the worst time. Don't bother asking how I know.
DeleteYup. Doing a "five minute job" at the ass-end of my car. Dropped the shank of a jeweler's screwdriver into ... WTH ... another dimension of space and time, evidently. Eventually found and retrieved it. I believe our experiences like this are proof that, despite Benjamin Franklin's comment about beer, god does indeed hate us.
ReplyDeleteI have seen bolts disappear on a clean floor never to be found. It never ceases to amaze me the distance they can travel and the places they end up. Same with wrenches when dropped in an engine compartment. Once bought a POS car used...had a rattle I could never figure out...drove ut a crap ton of miles. Gave it to my brother who put a crap ton more. He went to change rear shock figuring it was causing the rattle. Was a 10 mm wrench laying inside the bumper...probably the 10 mm wrench no one can ever find shen they need it....Putz
ReplyDeleteI never ever could properly recover a dropped fastener. They always seem to find the most perfect hiding spots.
ReplyDeleteOhio Guy
You should have picked up an extra screw while you were at Home Depot buying that mirror.
ReplyDeleteAct like it never happened. I like your thinking!! Thanks for the morning LOLZ
DeleteSometimes a small gauge, stiff wire wrapped with gobs of two sided sticky tape can find lost fasteners. Did you try some 1/4" copper tubing attached to the nozzle of your air gun? Of course that ***assumes*** there is enough room to go fishing with the wire or the air gun extension.
ReplyDeleteOr you could just go drive it off a cliff and let gravity get the damn thing to come out on its own.
Smith & Wesson revos have two springs which can disappear between the installed spot when you remove them and your workshop floor. There's a hand spring in my basement you can have if you can find it.
ReplyDeleteI did something similar with a trigger return (?) spring in a Ruger snubby I was reassembling. Fortunately, it flew toward the wall 3' away. Brown and green carpet, copper colored spring, and I'm colorblind, but after about 20 minutes I found it.
DeleteReason 32,864 I don't work on vehicles. Mine or anyone elses!
ReplyDeleteDo not tell "the boss". She will worry and nag you until you take it all apart.
ReplyDeleteAs a retired mechanic I've found the most beautiful noise in the shop is the sound of a nut/bolt or tool hitting the shop floor. If you don't hear it, all you can say is F--K! I'm gonna spend an hour looking for that.
ReplyDeleteThis story reminds me of why I stopped fixing my own machines, and started paying someone else to fix them for me....
ReplyDeleteYou poor bastard. You might try blowing compressed air in there using a length of 1/4 inch copper tubing on the end of a blow gun. You can easily bend the tubing around.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, drop the plate.
I did take a quick look around my driveway and found a couple of screws.
Somebody else must have dropped some somewhere, they were too big for your application.
Phil, bolt or screw? While not a 10mm socket I lost a bolt with a 10mm head from my daughters 2003 Kia Optima. It goes to the timing belt back cover plate. Dropped it, heard the tink as it hit the frame, it must have vanished into another dimension and been transported to your garage because I did the light, the mirrors, the magnets, second and third set of eyes younger than mine, swept the the area around the vehicle with a bar magnet. Finally broke the motor mounts loose, pullet the exhaust manifold, jacked the engine, pulled the timing belt off, pulled the crank position sensor plate off, pulled the counter balance timing belt off. Pulled the radiator, ran a flex magnet inside the frame all to no success. I did however skip the cutting torch. You can keep the bolt, the next time that POS car needs any work done I'm dragging it to a hole in the ground and burying it. If I never work on a KIA again it will be too soon.
Deletewes
wtdb
Some years ago, some chick comes to my garage with a bad fuel pump in her Sportage. Rusty tank straps, rail and wiring holders woulda made it knucklebusting hell for hours. I told her that if I could cut an access door in the chassis just above the pump hole in the tank, it'd be much cheaper and quicker. And ya know, cheap and quick is what perks evvabody's ears. I don't think too highly of Kia engineers.
DeleteOhio Guy
One of the best ideas I've ever had is having a very strong magnet on an extendable rod when removing fasteners from a tight spot. (Recently used it when removing nuts to replace a mirror; there's no place for them to go but inside the door if you drop them). If you still drop it, the magnet's about the only thing that will get it out.
ReplyDeleteOr if the fasteners plastic, then you're fucked.
CC
I have at least three -no shit- nuts and washers that have done that to me the last month.
ReplyDeleteThe worst is the pressure washer that holds the blade on my circular saw. I was changing the blade while the saw rested on the top drawer of my rollaround. Heard it hit the floor. Gone. I looked in every drawer, and all over the floor.
This weekend I'll be cleaning around the area. Hopefully these things will turn up and I'll learn the lesson to keep my work area clean.
"This story reminds me of why I stopped fixing my own machines, and started paying someone else to fix them for me...."
Yeah...so you won't know if that screw fell and they left it. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. I've had cars where they didn't tighten lug nuts, lost lug nuts, didn't tighten the caliper (or just left the screw out of it that they lost).
Just cause they are paid for doing it doesn't mean they are any better at it.
Ha ha haha haha haha haha ha ha haha haha haha haha ha ha haha haha haha haha ha ha haha haha haha haha ha ha haha haha haha haha ha ha haha haha haha haha ha .
ReplyDeleteSorry but it made me laugh at my own history with scars to prove it. BCE having issues as well never ever ever give up.
gwalchmai munn ruger px4 has a spring that lets the slide go back to battery that can fly a thousand yards if not captured in disassembly
No, those springs are "air soluble."
DeleteI've had very good luck with small magnets. Another trick is to lay down a flashlight beam across the floor. Even works on carpet. Best method is to buy a new one. Old one automatically appears. Mechanical fingers work too.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like every project I ever do, It starts with "this should be straight forward" and ends with me talking with God saying ..."Why is everything so hard?"
ReplyDeleteEvery time I walk away after finishing a gnarly project gone awry, (yesterday was getting that stupid frimping c-clip out of the differential so I could could change the axle seal) I proclaim aloud "Now that wasn't so hard was it?"
DeleteIt seems to help.
LOL!!
DeleteHave you all forgotten the adage "Every twenty minute job is only one broken bolt away from a three-day ordeal"?
ReplyDeleteOnly thing worse than losing hardware is to find you have hardware left over. Years ago, had an extremely obnoxious coworker, always right, even when he wasn't. After some time, folks were ready to get some payback for the way he treated them. So one day, coworker had a tape recorder torn down for repair. Parts everywhere. One of the guys dropped an extra 8-32x 1/2" screw on the table where he had everything torn down. Hilarity ensued while the guy spent hours trying to figure where the extra screw went.
ReplyDeleteThat is the least amount of rust I have ever seen on the underside of a Jeep except the 05 I bought in 06
ReplyDeleteIt came out of Florida. No Rust other than surface. 2004 Wrangler X. Every Bolt comes out once loose.
DeleteMine is also an X, I put front fenders on it a year ago, every bolt was a can of WD and several hours of cursing. It's rusted pretty bad, but the 4.0 will never die
DeletePlace vehicule over a tarp lift it on a Highlift (handyman Jack) kick jack out from under rig so it Bounces,rinse repeat till part falls on tarp.
ReplyDeleteI almost wet myself reading this... Um, cause it has never happened to me... um...
ReplyDelete