I am not a smrt man

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Jun 16, 2016
Messages
50
Location
Planet Earth
A bit of Sunday storytime for the board...

About a month ago, randomly, I started the car and got this horrible knock with a rough idle. So I turned the engine off immediately, and grabbed my diagnostic tools - timing light, code reader, etc.

Started it back up, and the sound randomly disappeared, as did the misfires. It did not return. In the ensuing month I developed some valvetrain noise which I didn't connect to the same event. I figured I had loose valves, as there was a clickety-clack coming from the valve cover.

Fast forward to today, I finally had time to take the valve cover off to check the clearances and what do I see? Inside one of the passages inside the valve cover had migrated a random bolt.

Yes, a bolt, which obviously must have been floating freely amongst my valvetrain and migrated, somehow, into this passage.

I checked all the bolts I could see with the valve cover off, on the cam journals, etc. No missing bolts. The only explanation I can (embarassingly) come up with is that it got knocked in there one day when changing the oil. Surely I would (should) have noticed? Oh well.

No visual damage that I can see, and valves are within specs. Started the car back up and the valvetrain makes much less clickety-clack noise now
crazy2.gif
I am not a smrt man.
eek.gif
 
No idea!!! It is definitely one of those [censored]????? moments. Seriously though, I'm just very thankful I caught it before it could do some real damage.
 
It's definitely a car bolt from somewhere, [censored] if I know where though. I checked the service manual diagram for the cylinder head and it doesn't match any of the bolts in there, so at least it hasn't come loose off somewhere in there. I like the assembly line theory, it saves my ego.
smile.gif
whistle.gif
 
Many years ago, as a young engineering student, I was helping overhaul a very large stationary industrial engine. I had removed a bolt (from the valvetrain probably) and was moving it across the engine when one of my co-workers (accidently allegedly) bumped my hand quite hard and I lost my grip on the bolt. The bolt skittered across the engine and down one of the oil or coolant passages. We tried everything we could think of to recover that bolt but it remained in hiding. I suppose nowadays we would have used a fiberoptic scope but I doubt they'd been invented back then. When the overhaul was completed and the engine started it worked perfectly well and made no funny noises.

So the odd loose bolt is not unknown in the best of engines. I wonder if it caused any problems?
 
There was a pool bet on when a tractor would come back into International for repair as they would drop something extra into the works. Heads rolled as the tractors are often ten times or a lot more than a car.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top