I was doing some work over the weekend that required removing the valve covers and I tried to remove a pair of dried needles from a Spruce tree. The needles fell in to the oil passage bewteen the pushrods and I cannot get to it. They are pretty soft, but I am wondering if they will plug something important or just burn up and get caught in the filter? I don't have the time or the $$$ to rebuild the motor yet, so should I pay to have the heads removed and this piece taken out? Have not started the motor yet until I get an idea...

Personally I don't think it'll do much, but if anyone thinks otherwise I'm open to hear what they say. All it'll do is get caught and temporarily mutilated by the rotating assembly and dumped into the pan, or go straight there. It wont get into the bearings...the filter will catch it first. If it's just a pine needle don't worry so much...it's not like it was a bolt or something. When I disassembled my LB9 in my '86 after I blew it up, other than the extraordinary amounts of oily sludge built up in the block, I found a bolt just sitting in the bottom of the oil pan chilling out. From where it came, I don't know, but it wasn't from me. Some hardware store bolt. That's what you need to worry about. Pine needle? I wouldn't worry too much. Dirt is another story...