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
I was getting a non-professional home mechanic to help me install a new lightweight crank pulley on my tC, we got the car up on stands, he crawled under it and exclaimed OOO Free TOOL! as he immediately found the 10 MM socket and extension I had lost months ago, sitting on the subframe. I had driven well over 3000 miles since I lost it and was very pleased to have it back. He was disappointed I expected to keep it.
Also this 10 mm socket set has been on my Wishlist for like 5 years and no one has bought it for me!
https://a.co/d/akno2DA
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Working on a Sebring Convertible many years ago, I dropped my 1/4″ rachet with the deep socket8mm down the back of the engine. I looked and looked and never found it. I finished what I was doing and held a brief memorial service for said ratchet and moved on with my life. Several months later, I was working on the suspension for the car, and had it up on a lift. Lo and behold, the ratchet is stuck between the steering rack and I think it was the front sway bar? Maybe? No idea, but point was, there it was, just hanging down waiting for me to retrieve it. The car gods smiled on me that day.
I have lost exactly two sockets in my life. Loss isn’t really the right word, as I know exactly where they are, but they’re gone. I had a 5/16″ socket roll into a big crack in my garage floor. It’s gone, and it ain’t coming back.
I also dropped a 1/4″ drive 13mm deep well socket behind the trip around the back seat of my ’99 Corolla. I couldn’t be bothered to pull the seat and all the trim to retrieve it. I’ve since sold the car, with the socket still back there.
On the subject of lost tools, does anyone share my oddly specific OCD trait of viewing an incomplete tool set as somehow diminished in value? Even if it’s an oddball, unused size, a missing part makes it almost “broken” to me.
Needless to say, this topic hits hard…
Missing sockets or screwdriver bits really do make me itch.
I’ve overpaid for a piece just to keep the set complete. Like $5 for a socket from a 20 piece set that cost me $20. A missing piece is a constant reminder that I failed to care for my tools… something I just can’t bear.
Not my tools, but: cleaning out the cowl vent areas on my Scout (pull the sheetmetal cover on the top, stick a shop-vac hose down each fender) I found someone else’s screwdriver and cheap 1/2 socket on one side, and a spent 12 ga. buckshot cartridge in the other.
I’ve managed to retrieve every socket or tool I’ve dropped, sometimes with the assistance of a magnetic grabber or pulling aside some piece of offending plastic, so there’s that. Although I’ve lost an old Craftsman 10mm socket in battle with a Land Rover discovery when the socket itself fractured while unbolting the alternator. The bolt wasn’t even really frozen. I suspect the Prince of Darkness just really wanted that alternator to stay dead.
Anyway, the purpose of my life seems not to lose sockets and automotive tools — but rather putty knives. I manage to lose those things around the house repeatedly. It’s uncanny, but I’m pretty sure those things are in league with the socks that vanish from the dryer.
You can get a camera that attaches to your cellphone, long and thin like for checking into cylinder bores or under houses. I bought one to play around with, it works.
I don’t have a fun story like those here, but it appears the tool manufacturers (at least for us Canucks) are taking notice of the 10mm vortex:
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/maximum-10-mm-socket-rail-10-pc-0589887p.html
(Looking for a 10) 11, 11, 9, 12, 9/32, 11. Damn it!
15s are also tough because, like a 10, there is no substitute.
In college working on an abused E46 325i. I drove over to my uncle’s house to change a leaking oil pan gasket. I removed the dipstick and proceeded to wrestle the pan off around the subframe. I am thoroughly exhausted once all this laboring is done. Lying on my back, wrestling with a steel pan and hoses and other obstacles has made me question all my life decisions up until now. The 10mm socket I’m using decides to try to escape (wily bugger). I spend about 10 to 15 minutes looking for it and ultimately decide it’s hiding in a nook or cranny in the chassis of the car. I grab another socket and go on about my business.
I seal up the pan and bolt it all back together, fill the car with oil and checking the level after an ignition cycle, ignore the oil level sensor light (stupid thing), and go about my merry way.
A few years later, the E46 is doing BMW-things and mimicking Exxon Valdez. With an extra car in my stable, I decide now is the time to take it down for an overhaul. I’m talking complete reseal of all gaskets, VANOS service, cooling system overhaul… the works. I get the engine out and pull the oil and pan. Lo and behold, a Great Neck deep well 10mm socket is sitting in the windage tray.
I still have that socket as a solemn reminder.
I lost an entire ratchet (and its attached socket)- my favorite Matco disappeared for about 4 months and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I couldn’t afford to blow another $200 on a direct replacement, so I bought a Gearwrench as the best one I could afford. The week after my new ratchet came in I found the old one hanging on a bolt on the back of the engine in my stock car project. I had no recollection of leaving it there but I must have just walked away mid-bolt removal for some reason.
I’ve misplaced, dropped, or lost several tools. I’ve found wrenches or ratchets underhood months later, and most recently I dropped a screwdriver into my dryer’s lint trap. I HAD to take that apart to get it out. Nearly had the job done, too, made a completely different one for myself.
It wasn’t a tool that was lost, in fact it turned out nothing was lost, but this story fits here.
My neighbor got a deal on an 8 year old 1966 Belvedere basic 2 door post. It was owned by an old man who wanted nothing but an AM radio and would not drive automatic, he ordered a 383 2bbl with a 4 speed and no other options. Back then, car companies would built whatever you wanted if you gave a big enough deposit.
My friend took the motor out, rebuilt it for power, put it back and started winning drag races with tall rear gears (only one shift). One problem, if you took a hard corner there was a strange CLUNK that sounded like it was coming from the right side under the hood. Many frustrating hours of search ensued, many suspension components were tested, but the clunk remained a mystery for almost a year.
One day I was getting in, realized I’d forgotten something as I was closing the door, and so suddenly reversed the motion of the door. CLUNK! It was in the door! Victory!
The door panel came off, revealing an empty glass flask-shaped pint bottle of Early Times bourbon. My friend decided that made it original factory equipment.
I lost an 8mm while trying to replace a purge solenoid on my truck. I never found it, and gave up and took it to the mechanic down the street to deal with.
The only other tool I’ve lost that I can remember is somehow a *nineteen millimeter socket*. It didn’t fall anywhere, it just disappeared from the ground. I still don’t understand that one. I’m hoping it’ll reappear eventually. At least it wasn’t my only one.
The Garage Gnomes got it. They’re a distinct tribe or possible cult of the famous Underpants Gnomes who live to randomly move tools in your garage when you’re not looking. Occasionally they get greedy and just take a tool for whatever their purpose (Step 1: Take tools, Step 2: ???, Step 3: PROFIT).
I became aware of my infestation when I used to ride motocross and would routinely have T-handles disappear in the middle of a project. T-handles aren’t exactly small and they don’t even fit inside more than one or two places on a bike but they’d still disappear when I’d look away…
I thought I was the only one whose garage is infested with tool gnomes.
Those wily little bastards will take the 5th lug nut, relocate that tool ‘that was JUST there’, and push random hardware into the garage cracks so you can’t find it.
Those little shits even took my 3/8″ 14mm socket and left it attached to a 5/8″ lag bolt under my deck for several years before I found where they put it.
They’re sneaky little bastards. I’ve had an 8mm T-handle (the motocross equivalent of the 10mm socket) somehow find it’s way across the garage when I was just using it, laid it down, oriented a part, then went to grab it. I never left the spot I was sitting, yet somehow it got 15 feet away…
I’ve lost two 8mm sockets while doing a 12V battery swap on my parents’ Tesla. They kinda just vanished into the ether and didn’t reappear while removing the aero shield or accelerating and decelerating, so I assume they just live there now. One of them was even a replacement 8mm for an 8mm lost elsewhere.
The funniest one is still a coolant cap for my FWD Volvo (not a socket, I know). It blew off one day, no clue how, and I had it replaced. Two years later, an engine mount bolt snapped and the engine sagged at an angle on the freeway, and the inner CV shaft housing and subframe attempted to occupy the same space at the same time.
This still didn’t release the coolant cap, for it remained safely nestled somewhere until I replaced the CV (but not the engine mount, I didn’t find that root issue till later) and the shuddering from the axle and subframe making love was so violent that when I parked up and came back later, I found it on the driveway. The axle went on cleanly, but the motor twists downwards and the axle met the subframe again.
edit: clarity
Mercedes, your iQ does in fact have a belly pan. You looked right at it, even took a picture of it, and didn’t realize. I don’t know this because I have an iQ, or even because I spot belly pans like Torch spots taillights. No, I know this because I have a 2008 Impala that also has underbody cladding hiding in plain sight.
I only remember losing a tool while working on something twice (though I’ve misplaced them when I wasn’t doing anything in particular more times than I want to think about), and I did the same thing both times. Went to loosen a battery terminal in the Impala, didn’t remember what size of socket it was, so I just grabbed one I thought it might be and tried it on the nut. Took it back off to get the right one, and fumbled & dropped it. In my defense, there’s a structural crossbar that goes over the battery, leaving just enough room to do what you need to (though I may also just be a bit of klutz).
Crap. Even worse, I didn’t hear it hit the ground. My car also doesn’t have a belly pan (I change my own oil, so I know what the bottom of the engine looks like), and the subframe is straight aluminum box section, so there’s nowhere for it to go on there. It didn’t get caught in the accessory drive, either, and now I’m out of ideas. Out of desperation, I get out the jack and raise it up, hoping that the angle change might make it fall out, and if not, at least I can look from another angle. Well it didn’t fall out, so now I’m looking behind the wheel, and lo & behold, I found it.
Turns out that the engine may not have a belly pan, but it does have a splash guard for the serpentine belt (or in other words, the world’s tiniest belly pan), and it managed to drop into there. Because of course there’s a grimy, dark, sheet of plastic underneath the engine with just enough room to get your fingers in there, and a deepwell socket just plonked right in. Twice. Cheapest game of plinko ever, and it’s still rigged!
A spark plug socket wrench on my ’09 prius.
The engine is canted backward so the spark plugs are unde the ledge from the windshield. Even after the mandatory removal of the wiper mechanism etc.
Like always, time, daylight and energy was running out. My dedicated spark plug tube wrench was too long. Solution was to get a special spark plug socket on an extension that was just about right. I had to shove the socket in, then the extension and only then could I put on the wrench.
Unfortunately, there was friction between the socket and the engine block. So once the spark plug was loose, I would just pull the extension out of the socket.
After a break, I got the socket out by gently pulling while I kept wrenching. However, that tactic would not work after torquing the new spark plug…
I knew a guy who had a spark plug socket welded onto an extension, so he’d have more confidence replacing the deep plugs in his various OHC Ford V8s cars.
Of course it was a 10mm socket.
Here in China we need to get our older cars inspected and re-registered every year (my video on this subject: https://youtu.be/kcPfSZebu_c?si=k9ZKKyIB1x9d6uZW)
and because my car is modified, I need to return it to stock…. every year (video here https://youtu.be/2V6Zzh6XPo4?si=gdX5OfGTHVwIUnCx)
A few years ago I was taking my modified tail lights out and reinstalling the stock Chinese Market taillights on my Camaro (amber on the outside, red on the inside, like a Ferrari F40) when my 10mm fell down into the back of the bumper cover. I couldn’t reach it from the top or bottom, and I tried going over some speed bumps and slamming on the brakes in my parking lot to no avail.
Fast forward to the next year where I decided to take off the bumper cover to remove the taillights (more steps, but easier to do) and guess what I saw on the inside of the bumper- of course it was that 10mm.
However, after losing it I went to the hardware store and bought 2 more, so now I have quite a collection of 10mms in my toolbox, just in case!
On the other end, I have found a really nice ratcheting 13mm wrench from a shop that worked (poorly) under the hood on the cowl my Camaro, I didn’t feel like returning to that shop, or returning their wrench. Another time I found a nice metal fastener popper next to the seat, but I like that shop so returned it a few days later.
When I owned my garage I would make sure all tools where counted out and in so we never lost anything and for reasons of safety as you will see in my next paragraph.
A customer of mine decided to swap his own glowplugs to save some cash, Dropped a socket and simply decided to look for it after moving the car, In this case the bell housing had an inspection port with the plastic cover missing, In went the socket and when the engine was started it wrecked the clutch and flywheel and caused a lot of damage to the bell housing.
So don’t do anything until all tools are accounted for. Even if you can’t recover it right away.
I found a beautiful yet broken old 1/2″ craftsman socket wrench in the engine bay of my ’97 Eurovan camper back in 2014. Took it in to a Sears store and got it fixed right up. To this day it’s one of my favourites.
On the subject of ½dr Craftsman, my friend found a broken ½ Craftsman breaker bar chained to, of all things, a fire hydrant in the parking lot of a Lowe’s. I don’t know how the head had been sheared off, but we’ll get around to putting a new one on it at some point.
Enjoy your camper!
e: typo
Removing the stock intake for my ’92 F350 at a wrecking yard I had stopped at on a whim without proper tools, so I took out my EDC Leatherman Micra. It worked well enough to loosen things up, but it fell into the inner bowels of that truck engine bay somewhere, never to be found.
At the other end of the spectrum, I lived on a dirt road with several other homeowners for awhile. It seemed that I was the only one to ever do any maintenance on the road filling holes. However the work provided easy access to the road and the edges where neighbors lost their tools from their trucks from going too fast and things bouncing out. Got some great tools on that road.
The most amusing variant of this incident was when my dad and I were doing a service on my Ford Territory. Dad’s an old school engineer – always keeps a pen, pencil and notebook in the breast pocket of his button up shirt (which he always wears). We had the intercooler cap open and he was leaning over to check something behind it when ‘plop’! His pen fell from his pocket straight into the intercooler. There was a bit of oil at the bottom of it so the pen immediately disappeared into the muck. It took us about 15 minutes with his grabber tool to get it out – all ruined and covered with oil. He wasn’t so smug about always having a pen on hand that day.
I also had a dropped socket the other day. Was doing the Sync 2 to Sync 3 upgrade on the Territory’s infotainment system. I jumped in the car with the 7mm socket in hand, knocked the steering wheel with it by mistake and the damn thing flew out from between my fingers and fell through a tiny gap under the gear selector – which had its fascia removed at the time. The most frustrating part was I could see it, but I couldn’t get it out. After about 15 minutes of trying to lift it with my pinky I finally remembered I’d previously bought one of those magnetic grabber tools after struggling with a similar incident previously (see above). Two minutes later and it was out.
I utterly love the magnetic fishing stick, it’s the solution to all the things that are ferrous, you can see, and you can’t grab.
I briefly lost mine and had some of the worst wrenching ever.
A rarely do a repair without it these days. If it’s a tight spot, once the bolt is loose, I’m turning it with one hand and have the mag stick ready with the other hand to catch it.
Yep, I have the flexible Harbor Freight one with a weak flashlight built into it. It’s saved me a few times, but it’s also just great for picking up the fasteners and crap that falls through the engine bay onto the garage floor under the car.
Finished getting my ’21 Wrangler back together (after another dealership hackup and failed “repair”) last week after a marathon wrenching session until 2:30am so I could get to a client meeting in the morning. Noticed yesterday I’m missing my deep-socket 7mm. Only place it was used was fuse box, but not in there. I’m sure somewhere on the road or ditch, hopefully not in someones windshield.
They all go into The Void, It’s comfortable, because they get a welcoming embrace by all those nice, soft, warm socks from the dryer.
Sort of like the warm welcome when you leave the plane and step into the jetway at IAH, HOU, or MSY.