One of the most frustrating experiences as a car enthusiast is when you’re wrenching in your car’s engine bay, accidentally drop a small tool or part, and just cannot find it. This situation, despite the frustration it causes, is also sort of funny. It doesn’t seem to matter how small or large the engine bay is; if you drop a socket, it just seems to disappear into a portal, possibly never to be seen again.
But where did it go? Sockets don’t just disappear!
So yeah, the subject of lost tools is on my mind this week. On Sunday, the Scion iQ in my shared fleet got new plugs, coil packs, and a gas pedal replacement. The surgery was successful, despite the absurd design of the Scion iQ’s engine bay. However, there were two casualties: one 14mm socket and one 10mm bolt. Where did they go?
Honestly, I spent way too much time looking for both. A lot of it was because I was stubborn. “A Scion iQ is barely larger than a Smart,” I thought, “how could a big 14 mil socket just disappear into a tiny engine bay?”
I got serious in my search. I busted out my ramps, pulled out my best flashlight, and even deployed some magnets. I feel like I searched every inch of the engine bay, and yet, I found nothing. Well, that’s not true. I did find some crusty subframe rust. This is a big oof, and a candidate for fluid film:
My search for the lost 14mm got so desperate that I started checking the cracks of the parking lot and under parked cars for my missing socket. Apparently, I must have looked quite suspicious when doing this, because one of my neighbors gave me a dirty look after I checked under someone else’s car for my socket.
My desperation grew to a level where I got into the Scion, hit the gas, and then slammed on the brakes. When that didn’t produce the socket, I started bumping the car into a low curb, hoping I’d maybe jostle the socket free or something. That failed, too.
Sadly, all efforts failed, and once I ran out of daylight, I gave up. I hope my 14mm is enjoying its new life. It served me well and went out like a boss after successfully freeing some nuts. The bolt was also a lost cause. Who even knows where that went?
But I can’t stop thinking about this. It’s not like I was working in a place with a lot of nooks and crannies. While the Scion iQ’s engine bay is tight, you can still see through it to the ground. The car doesn’t even have a belly pan that could catch a wayward socket. I spotted a flat area on the engine and transaxle that could hug a socket, and even that area was empty.
In hindsight, maybe I could have used my borescope camera to get an extra eye in the engine bay, but who knows if I would have been successful there. Sheryl has even driven the car at least a few hundred miles since we completed the work, so who knows where the socket could be.
Here’s where I turn things to you. What tools have you lost in your car? Did you find them? If so, how did you do it? What other sorts of mayhem have dropped tools caused in your garage? I’m looking at you, guy I saw on Insta who set his garage on fire when a dropped wrench fell across the battery terminals and arced. Yikes!
Top graphic images: Mercedes Streeter; Craftsman
My battery charger apparently went to Narnia, because I have torn my garage apart and cannot find it.
Guess I should put a new one on my Christmas lisr…
So far so good, I’ve been surprisingly lucky with not losing any tools, knock on wood. Quite possible that the rotten luck I’ve had such as having *two* beloved cars totalled by damn jerks (a rear-ender and a red-light-runner) and elsewhere in life compensates for my tool collection remaining intact, lol.
A classmate in trade school did borrow a chisel from my set of chisels only to promptly lose it.
One time I purchased a new metric set of 3/8″-drive sockets (Craftsman, made in the U.S.A., that’s how long ago it was) and used it a few times where I used most of the sockets and put them all back in their proper places in the blow-molded plastic case. Then one day I was getting ready to start working on my old diesel Golf that I had owned since new outside in my driveway; I noticed a 11mm socket sitting in the middle of the blow-molded case when I opened it up so I went to put it back in its spot only to find the spot occupied by another 11mm socket. Both sockets were U.S.A.-made Craftsman. To this day I still do not know where the hell that 11mm socket came from. The blow-molded case didn’t have any holes in which an errant socket could have been lurking from the factory and I had not yet started on the repairs when I opened the case so it was not like a mechanic from the dealership or the diesel specialist shop had left it somewhere in the car and it fell out into the case especially since I didn’t even have the case under the car. And my other sets elsewhere all had their sockets. Perplexing to say the least.
Maybe the 11mm socket reproduced by mitosis or fission? Or maybe the second 11mm socket was a relic of the Heart of Gold’s Infinite Improbability Drive?
I think a Craftsman deep 8mm socket is still hiding out in the front bumper of my F150. On the bright a bit of magnet fishing retrieved my 10mm from the Buick’s door on the third attempt at the window regulator. A key learning is that the $30 Chinese part from Amazon is a false economy so it now has a $60 Chinese part from Rock Auto
I’ve lost 2 utility knives into the abyss of different vehicles. Knocked the oil fill cap down into the engine bay of my Ridgeline and spent 30 minutes looking for it before finding it wedged into a space that required conditions to retrieve it from.
I’ve found 2 hex wrenches with my tires but that’s a whole other story…
Nearly all of the wrenches I’ve lost over 2 decades are rattling somewhere between the intake and the block of an inline 6 commercial diesel engine.
I’ll be fucked if I’m removing the intake to find a wrench.
This is also why all of my wrenches are Mastercraft. Canadian Tire can sell me an individual replacement for $10, instead of selling my dog to the Snap On dealer.
On my own vehicles I have only ever lost a 12mm socket in 40+years. Spent hours over and under the engine, the stupid thing had a straight drop to the floor, and I went through all the unlikely places with mirror and snake camera. A lost tool can do a lot of damage both getting caught in mechanical stuff, but also by vibrating around and damaging surface protection and causing galvanic corrosion.
And that subframe has about a year left in the wet. Do you not have places that will steam clean, blow dry and cover the underside with wax, like https://tectyleurope.com/ ? Lighter products used for hollow body parts.
Strangest for we was losing a socket into the engine bay and not being able to find it. I had no idea where it went. This was before cars had the aero trays below the engine (1977 Toyota Celica), so it seemed like it should have fallen all the way to the ground, but it didn’t.
A couple of weeks and a more than a thousand miles later, I came home and saw it sitting in the driveway. The chrome was pretty scuffed up, so it had definitely been riding around in the car for a while, but where it was and what caused it to fall out, I have no idea.
Never lost anything but a 10mm socket but I have found so many tools on cars I have bought.
At tech for RallyCross last season, the inspector found a rusty set of vise grips jammed in the engine bay of my old Subie. They had been there from at least the previous owner, and had already been through 4-5 RallyCross weekends under my watch.
A long time ago, before I lost all respect for WhistlinDiesel, I did enjoy his 10mm video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jlxO6s5N6Q
Recently, I dropped a socket down the hollow upper frame of a 81 Honda CB400E. There is not a lot of room there, but down it went. Getting the thing out required a scope and a magnet.
Over the years, I’ve found tools in my vehicles, including a 10mm Snapon wrench! A better person would have tried harder to return them…
Mine ended up back in my toolbox. I have a magnet grabber.
I got one of those right after a 10mm (of course) went missing in my Mustang’s subframe. Also a flexible grabber where the little metal fingers come out – it’s sometimes easier to maneuver with surrounding metal.
10mm and 13mm sockets obviously go through the same portal in time and space that random socks do. At this point, I just buy them two at a time.
I dropped a black Husky 10mm socket and thought it went between the fender, wheel liner, and body of the car so I loosened the fender to get to it and found a silver Craftsman10mm socket in there. Never found my Husky socket and instead moved on with my life.
Here’s a little tip somebody gave me a long time ago. You can see the socket, but you can’t reach it a little grabber. Things won’t quite get it. Take a short piece of PVC get a small magnet you can tie to a string to it slide the PVC down next to the soccer or bowl whatever then drop the string down and let the magnet grab it. This works in a lot of different situations the other things won’t.
Kinda related, when working in really tight engine compartments, I’ll tie the tool to my wrist with a length of string long enough to freely use the tool but short enough to keep it from falling all the way down (or back) when I invaribly drop it.
I had a piece of paper in the dashboard, it was some type of form I was going to mail. I braked hard and the thing went into the dashboard, there was a gap between the dash and the windshield that I never noticed. The document still there lol
90s Rangers are notorious for eating stuff at the front edge of the dash.
Friend lost his keys down the gap, and there’s no shortcut to access the Tardis inside the dash, or he would have found it.
Not me but as a kid I was riding in my dad’s 1984 f150 when a small tool like a 3/8 end wrench fell from the dash into the defrost vent. About six months later we were driving on a bumpy gravel road and it fell out the lower heater vents on the floor board
“Where Did The Socket You Dropped End Up”
My Christmas stocking. Along with my back-to-school socks.