Items that fell inside spark plug holes

[Nissan101]

There must be someone else that got something down there when changing spark-plugs...in my case it was a 1cm piece of metal from the spark plug gasket :_(...the shocking and disturbing part is that i never got it out and driving the car for the pass 5000km

 

[callbay]

Wow! Not quite the same but a friend of a friend had a Corvette with aluminum heads back in the 60's and cross treaded a spark plug and hurt the treads. He just pounded in and it lasted till he needed new plugs again so he took it to the dealer to handle the problem.

 

[NibbanaBanana]

All that stuff just gets blown right out the exhaust valve. Usually without a problem.

 

[buck91]

A lot of people stuff cordage into the cylinder during valve stem seal replacement on OHC engine. I just couldn't do it and bought an adapter for my air compressor.

 

[SHOZ]

I dropped an 6mm stainless steel washer in the spark plug hole once. Did not come out well. It ruined the valve seat and I lost compression.

 

[barryh]

The broken end of an terminal screwdriver.

I was poking it down the plug hole to try and gauge TDC when the piston came up a bit quick and snapped the end off. It was a stupid impossible way of accurately gauging TDC but I plead extreme youth as this was in 1972

Plus point was I learnt how to take the cylinder head off a single cylinder Ducati with beautifully engineered bevel gear driven OHC.

 

[redbone3]

A piece of 1/4" wooden dowel I was using to find TDC. Wood is softer than aluminum and steel so i left it in. That was 10 years ago and the motor is still fine.

 

[DBMaster]

When working on the carburetor on my 1972 Catalina I dropped a small lock washer into one of the openings. I opted not to remove the carb and try to get the thing out of the intake. When I started the car I could hear the thing pinging around in a cylinder and then I heard it hitting the inside of one of the exhaust pipes on its way to the muffler. Not one of the best moments from my youth, but if it damaged the engine I was never able to tell.

 

[Sluggo0018]

I had a golf tee fall into the cylinder while changing the plugs on my son's F-250. I was using the tees to prevent debris from entering the fuel injector tops while I used compressed air to blow out any junk from around the plugs. I had the fuel rail off to give better access to the rear plugs. I accidentally hit a tee with my elbow and it dropped straight into the cylinder. I used one of those retractable grabbers to fish it out, but it took several hours.

Live and learn.

 

[ecotourist]

40 years ago or so one of my friends was driving his early 60s Comet 6 cylinder when it suddenly went clack - clack - clack for several seconds followed by normal engine sounds. We checked around and noticed a missing sheet metal tab on the air filter assembly and assumed it had "gone through the engine".

It ran fine for the few additional years he drove it. I don't believe he ever had the head off so we don't know if it did any damage.

 

[Kruse]

A dozen or so years ago, I was working on a diesel-powered forklift. The exhaust on this forklift went vertically straight up into the air. I don't exactly remember what the repair was, but I know the air cleaner was unhooked and it involved a helper. His job was to stuff a red shop rag into the intake manifold while did some underneath work and then to pull the rag out as I started the engine up and revved it to max. There was one time when he forgot to pull the rag out of the intake manifold. I started up the engine, revved it up, and suddenly the engine hiccupped, dropped RPMs, revved up again and suddenly the area was covered with red confetti. The rag was sucked through the engine and the engine chopped it up into very fine pieces and spit it all out the exhaust.
Luckily, nothing was hurt and we swept up all the small pieces of shop rag before anybody else saw it.