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"Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after....

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That sound, kinda like tinkle-plunk, when something small and virtually irreplaceable at the moment, slips from your fingers whilst over the engine and for all of g_d's creation, you cannot find it. It simply vanishes into thin air.



<span style='font-size: 8pt'>Shhhhh, there are gremlins in my garage and they are watching....</span>
 
Re: "Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after

Ohgawd... my heart sank reading this header. Did this aforementioned small irreplaceable go internal?!?! Is it ferrous?

Please say you found it.

About the gremlins:
You ~must~ STOMP your way around the car three times, beating yourself with a birch branch while ina low gutteral tone keep repeating: "I will find you and smash you..."

...a side benefit is it keeps th' neighbors from 'bothering' you as you work. And pretty much any other time, too. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif
 
Bill,
I remember that noise, when I was replacing the cylinder head on my TR3. I knocked one of the manifold nuts off the bulkhead. I couldn't find it anywhere and as I was working in a dark lock-up I thought that I would find it when I drove the car out. Sure enough, I did. It was inside number four cylinder and the giveaway was the loud bang and then silence just after I started the car up!
 
and another fine day shot in the head..............
 
Bill-

I feel your pain. Two years ago I was on the side of the highway with the TR4 and a bad set of points. One minute I'm holding that little plastic piece that keeps everything from grounding out. The next minute I hear tinkle-plunk, and the part is gone. I even saw it fall and stop on the frame before it disappeared.

Funny (now, not then) but about 6 months later during my suspension rebuild I pulled off the bottom rebound assembly. A lo and behold next to the frame and the bracket I found out where those little parts go when they make that sound..

Randy
 
Yup. I've found ALL sorts down in the li'l hidey-holes of LBC's. It's like a treasure hunt. One tech I know stocked a toolbox (slowly) with what he called "cow tools" gathered this way.
 
I lost a manifold bolt when rebuilding an exhaust system with a header on my Tr6. Tinkle-plunk...where did it go? I knew it wasn't in the engine so I forgot about it and got another bolt. When I fired up the engine I found it. It was rattling around between the pipes of the header right at the collector. The motor made a horrible racket. I had to take the header off to get at one lousy bolt!
 
Two great tools:
One is a large retrieving magnet from HF, the kind that will pick up a boat motor. I use it for sweeps around the garage to find parts and also to remove those bits that fall inside something; you can collect the bit from outside the object and slide it out to the nearest opening - saved me many times.
Second is a magnetic parts tray (or several). A life saver also many times over and keeps parts in order.

Check your pockets and cuffs. I have had parts fall in the pockets and cuffs of my shop coveralls before. And use a flash light to scan the floor and recesses of the frame. My wife is better at finding parts that I've dropped than me. Sometimes they're clear across the room.
 
Have you ever noticed the more important the part, the harder it is to find? If you drop something and have a box full of more you can find it eaisly. Drop a rare, important hard to find part and it's just gone. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
 
When I pulled the front apron off the racecar, a coach key fell out. It had been wedged between the front apron and inner fenders for lo these many years!

It was a repro, though.
 
A friend was helping me with some carb and manifold work at one time. I was working on the ignition while he was installing the manifold and carbs for me. This was about ten years ago so it was still the original stock engine. Evidently he had a tinkle-punk moment and lost a lock washer. Never told me.

THREE MONTHS LATER, as I was pulling into the garage returning from a long three day weekend, there was a bang and then a clicking sound coming from the engine though it did continue to run and idle without a problem. This was a very unusual sound and circumstance so I was concerned.

After a lot of investigation it was determined that I needed to pull the head. When I pulled the number one spark plug, the electrode was smashed and ceramic broken. Hmmm, thats not good. Finished pulling the head. Found half a lock washer in the cylinder and the other half still in the intake track in the cylinder head. Found the tinkle-punk.

Resurfaced the valve, cleaned up the face of the piston, put in some new spark plugs and put about another 20,000 miles on it before I pulled the engine to replace it with my performance engine. That engine is still sitting in the corner of my garage and still runs just fine. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif Sometimes you can just get lucky. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

I still have the spark plug and two halves of the lock washer. Part of my personal 'Hall of Shame'. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif
 
Friends in PA put the finishing touches on a head R&R in an Elan coupe, lit it off, checked all as it warmed to operating temp. Rolled it out and down the street to the first stopsign when a LOUD rattling sound came from the engine. Shut-down and pushed it home. Looked about and pulled the head: A 10mm air-stack retaining nut from the Webers had found its way loose and right thru a valve to emboss itself in head chamber and piston top about a gazillion times... TEARDOWN... gah. And NYLOC 10mm nuts on every Elan in the "neighborhood" from then-on!
 
Know the feeling, at least now I have a semi clean garage floor instead of working in a gravel driveway.

I have this great little tool, it's a 24" long cable with a three prong grip at the end that you actuate from a small handle at the other end. It is spring loaded so you push the handle & let is grasp the part if it's in a tough spot.

Of course this is if you are lucky enough to see the piece, but it's easier than turning the car upside down & shaking it!
 
mailbox said:
Have you ever noticed the more important the part, the harder it is to find? If you drop something and have a box full of more you can find it eaisly. Drop a rare, important hard to find part and it's just gone. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
Click to expand...

And how it seems to always work it's way into the place where it does the most damage?

Don't get me started on foreign object damage in airplanes!
 
So Bill,

What actually went tinkle plunk and what were you doing to make it go tinkle plunk. I have found that the size of the tinkle plunk object usually determines where and how far it will go. I have been known to take similar tinkle plunk objects and drop them on purpose just to find out statistically where the original tinkle plunk object might have went off too. This never works so don't waste your time!

There is also a precise mathematical formula for this phenom and it's named after some guy who celebrates this Saturdays Holiday.

I'm also still looking for that little half moon Doo-hickey that fits in the notch of my TR3 choke lever slide. BTW - It went pitweengschoooom off under the work bench and according to the aforementioned law it should a took out my left eye as well but missed. Good Luck!
 
Twosheds said:
Have you ever noticed the more important the part, the harder it is to find? If you drop something and have a box full of more you can find it eaisly. Drop a rare, important hard to find part and it's just gone. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
Click to expand...

Just last weekend I found the box of new TR3 brakepads I lost in my garage over 2 years ago.... didn't know whether to be happy or sad; sitting behind a slightly larger box on my parts shelf all this time....
 
Re: "Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after

DrEntropy said:
About the gremlins:
You ~must~ STOMP your way around the car three times, beating yourself with a birch branch while ina low gutteral tone keep repeating: "I will find you and smash you..."
Click to expand...

Does this work if your car is possessed by evil spirits?
 
Re: "Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after

You mean like the Crypt Car is the Beast from heck?
 
Re: "Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after

Does the friend still come over to help you?
 
Re: "Tinkleplunk" and the deafening silence after

Interesting stories.

My "tinkle plunk" story goes back close to 40 years. Actually more of a "vroom wank" story.

I was replacing the timing chain tension spring on my TR4 (second or third time), working outside in the driveway (of course).

Tightened everything up, hood open so I could check result with engine running.

Turn key...engine starts...gas it..."wank clanng!". Stop engine. What the he** was that?

Turns out I had left a pair of water pump pliers laying on the radiator (I surmised years later) and they had dropped down onto the spinning fan.

At the time I did not know what had actually fallen into the fan. It was not until 10 or 15 years later that my father and I, while inspecting the garage roof happened upon a pair of rusted and pitted water pump pliers. They had been launched 25 feet up and onto the roof near the gutter and hidden from ground view.

With little WD 40 and some working back an forth they came back to life..sort of...I still have those pliers around here somewhere.

Cheers
 
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