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
Ugh. Ok. I’d had the heads off my 351W for too long and wanted to prime the oil before cranking it over. Didn’t have a spare distributor shaft. Did have a socket and a looong extension. Duct taped it to make sure it didn’t pop off. And it worked. Too well. The oil melted the adhesive, lubed the socket, and when I had it far enough up to see it happen the damn thing popped off, slowly stretching a strand of adhesive, and fell back down. Never really “lost” the socket as I heard every clink and eventual sploosh as it found its way to the pan.
Because it was in a 240Z the pan was double sumped around the cross member. Had to drop the tranny and hoist the engine to get a big enough gap to magnet grab it back.
I was just listening to a story on Alex Tilley, the creator of the Tilley hat. He passed away recently. They ran an interview from a few years back where he describes their most successful marketing campaign. It was based on a story about a Toronto zoo keeper who kept having his hat stolen by an elephant, that then proceeded to eat it. He would wait for it to pass, wash it and then use it again. Three times apparently. I’m not sure if he finally wised up after three and stayed away from the elephant or if the hat couldn’t take it anymore.
I’m sure I have tools that could probably tell stories that colourful.
Kinda reminds me of the marketing stunt Mohawk carpet did for it’s then new Triexta Smart Strand carpet. They installed a light beige wall to wall in the large animal enclosure at the Birmingham and Dallas zoos:
https://youtu.be/rWCH51yYziY
After two weeks of being pooped on, peed on, tracked mud on and having all that ground in by elephants, camels and rhinos the carpets were shoveled, cleaned with basic hot water and spot cleaners to look surprisingly good. I can’t speak to how they smelled though.
I can say though I did visit a showroom and was pleasantly surprised at how closely it felt like wool carpet, practically indistinguishable.
I somehow dropped a socket into a Chevy 307, and a couple of years later, it showed up in the drained oil. I have no idea how that was even possible.
I was replacing the radiator in my 2006 Nissan Frontier (SMOD] and I found a 10mm Snap-On impact socket. Score!
I lost a 10mm socket into the abyss of the engine bay of my GX470. I drove it around for years, including offroading in it, and one day I closed the door in my driveway and it fell out onto the ground. I have no idea where the socket was stuck at, but I appreciated getting it back after almost five years.
I dropped a 13mm socket under my Seadoo’s engine. It’s not getting fished out until spring. That project can stay under wraps for right now.
The key is to be able to “see” with your ears. Turning wrenches professionally for many years I developed the ability to “see” with my ears when that bolt or tool drops to be able to know where it hit/stopped on the way down.
I’ve only given up on one socket, a 7mm deep but it was during some dash work which I’m not remembering exactly what I was doing at the time. Several years later I did get it back when I had to pull the dash out for HVAC work.
Otherwise I’ve dropped them in all sorts of places, found and managed to fish them out or knock to the ground.
Not a first-hand experience at all and not even a tool but still kind of apropos: many years (decades!!) ago I read an account of a high school basketball game where two players collided and one player lost a contact lens; this was in the days when contact lenses were made of glass and expensive as heck and the worst sound one could hear when looking for a dropped contact lens was the crunch of someone stepping on the glass lens.
The officials paused the game while the players looked for the missing contact lens. Alas, to no avail after a few minutes so they continued the game while the unfortunate player sat out the rest of the game.
After the game the other player involved in the collision was sitting in the locker room when he took his shirt off and was scratching his stomach when he found the contact lens firmly lodged in his belly button.
Yeah, that did indeed merit a newspaper account, lol. Over the years I’ve tried the occasional online search to find the original newspaper account but so far no luck. Best bet is probably to just ask a librarian in the reference department of a large library with access to newspaper archives…
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…
You’ll find your old one on the 26th.
In that “safe” spot where “you’d never lose it”
Narnia, you say? And you tore apart the garage? Hmm. Did you look in the wardrobe? Maybe try asking the lion or the witch?
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?
11mm is an odd size, since no DIN or JIS bolt uses it. Sears seemed to just fill the sequence. FWIW 11mm is roughly 7/16″ and yeah that’s the oddest tool story
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
Never go for the cheaper of Chinese parts unless it’s verified to be the same. They always find a way to strip cost out.
In this case they stripped the gears.
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.
How many Mastercrafts are there? I knew of Mastercraft boats, Mastercraft tires, and Mastercraft doors, and now you’re telling me there are Mastercraft tools as well. And I’m pretty sure they’re all completely unrelated.
In Canada, you’ll find Mastercraft instead of Craftsmen as the common tool brand.
Craftsmen still exists here, but they’re a distant second place ever since Sears closed operations.
It’s the household brand of Canadian Tire, one of the most common stores up here. Especially in smaller cities or towns. There’s always a “crappy tire” within reasonable driving distance, cause they’ve been around for over 100 years and have expanded continuously. Here’s some reading material if you wanna get learned about em
Crappy Tire is the place Canadians love to hate almost as much as Timmies.
But unlike Timmy-ho’s, I still shop at Canadian Tire.
I haven’t drank that gut rot swill in years, dunno how I ever did.
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.
https://www.tru-tension.com/product/missing-tool-co-10mm-socket/
You may need one of these.
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.
Yeah I bought a black chrome sockets once, never again as it definitely doesn’t help when looking for them deep down in some location.
I only made that mistake that one time, but what made me realize it was such a huge mistake was picking up the ratchet after letting it sit in the sun for 45 minutes.
Ouch!
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.
Great tip!
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.