Nut in the water jacket... how bad?
06-09-2005, 01:33 PM
#16
Drifting
Jeez Jim! I would think you of all people would be leery as hell about having foreign objects moving around inside an engine, after the story you told me! You know the one-about the clamp that came apart and made it's way into a cylinder.
06-09-2005, 01:56 PM
#17
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Being in the water jacket the only moving part is the water pump and to a much lessor extent the thermostat. In this case the nut is probably just going to drop down along side one of the cylinders and hang out with the coolant flow circulating more up around the top of the cylinders and passing into the cylinder head water passages before entering the thermostat housing and then the impellor side of the pump. This is far different than having an "extra" intake boot clamp riding around INSIDE the intake manifold just waiting for the small bolt to unscrew and fall past an open valve into a cylinder.....which then wedges against the piston and breaks the cylinder ruining the block with great huge plumes of white smoke .... which is what happened to My wife's 79.....very different 
06-09-2005, 01:59 PM
#18
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Originally Posted by FlyingDog
It did fall down one of the very flat side areas. I got a small O-shaped magnet and a strong magnet on a stiff wire. The O had too large of an OD to make the turn a little below the hole. The one on the stiff wire is too thick to make it past the same point. The one on the stiff wire is quite strong for its size. If the nut was within an inch or maybe two inches, it would've grabbed it.
If that all doesn't work use the magnet to magnetise a thin 'rope' of the safety wire which again should allow you gain further reaches.
One question I would have before leaving the nut in the water jacket would be to determine the coolant pressure in the system. True a nut will drop like a rock to the bottom of the preverbial river but when the river gains more momentum it can move some really big boulders!!!
06-09-2005, 02:01 PM
#19
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Originally Posted by FlyingDog
edited to add: Andrew, the hole was plugged with a paper towel, which fell out when I pulled the wrench holding the two nuts away. The nut actually bounced off the paper towel and into the hole.
06-09-2005, 02:26 PM
#20
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Well, if all else fails - and you believe you know where the nut lies, 'think outside of the box'. Super glue a super magnet to the external surface adjacent to the offending nut. This will help retain the rock to the river bottom ... but as far as being a good idea, perhaps it's too far outside the box 
06-09-2005, 03:58 PM
#21
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Garth when I read your post I got to "glue"......and first thought put some glue in the hole to capture the nut but that fortunately was not where you were going ! The flow of the coolant is more to the top of the cylinders and to the heads which makes sense since that is where the heat is. The bottoms of the cylinders never see combustion the piston is in the way and gets an oil bath on every stroke. There are lots of little quiet eddies for the nut to spend the rest of its life lurking near the bottom of the water jacket adjacent to a cylinder.
06-09-2005, 04:15 PM
#23
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Originally Posted by Garth S
Well, if all else fails - and you believe you know where the nut lies, 'think outside of the box'. Super glue a super magnet to the external surface adjacent to the offending nut. This will help retain the rock to the river bottom ... but as far as being a good idea, perhaps it's too far outside the box
06-09-2005, 04:51 PM
#25
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I'm sure you can find a spring steel flexible line like electricians use to fish a wire through a wall or the roto-rooter coil that you can attach the magnet to, that will go around a corner. Good luck.
06-09-2005, 09:38 PM
#27
I think Jim is right. Having flushed out plenty of cast iron blocks, It is amazing the amount of rust that accumulates in the bottom of a block and does not circulate into the coolant. the chances that the nut will get picked up by the flow are fairly remote, probably a little better than you picking the block up and shaking it out, but not much. Of course you want to get it out, and I think you will. You will figure it out. Does anybody have a diagram of the cooling passages that they could post? Hang in there and try to get a better magnet. The good ones are really small. And you can quote me on that.
06-09-2005, 09:57 PM
#28
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Below is how i got a washer out of my #1 cylinder. Through the spark plug hole! It some how fell down in there when i was installing my SC. I discovered it when i decide to retenstion my belt during the install. As you can image, the ennine never hit TDC on #1 when i was pulling it through. If i had turned the key and started it, it may have...but with horrible results and a nasty sound!!
The magnet was off a pick up tool, a small one, then i used a straw and some fishing line to attatch it. The line allowed the magent to drop straight down if need be. If i pulled the string tight it allowed me to direct the magent where i wanted.
It worked! Thank god the washer wasnt aluminum or copper!
HTH
The magnet was off a pick up tool, a small one, then i used a straw and some fishing line to attatch it. The line allowed the magent to drop straight down if need be. If i pulled the string tight it allowed me to direct the magent where i wanted.
It worked! Thank god the washer wasnt aluminum or copper!
HTH
06-10-2005, 02:55 AM
#30
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What about a endoscope, one of those can get into all sorts of icky places with a camera on the end and once you know where it is it should be easy to work out how to get out.