this is an 89 tpi motor, i was pulling off the head and when i was pulling the nut off the back where the wires attach and the nut fell down into the distributor hole. i tried to get it out with a magnet stick but couldnt catch anything, nor could i see anything when i looked down with a flashlight. where did it go? the crankcase? or should i start pulling the whole thing apart? a dumb move on my part.

when i put it all back together what type of gaskets should i use? it has trick flow heads but who ever put them on i dont think used a legitimate gasket because the cylinders were blown in 3 or 8 of them. do i need special gaskets due to the aftermarket heads? someone told me that running tap water in the cooling system could have done it but i dont know.

 

you gotta get it out...and tap water won't cause gaskets to blow either. overheating, incorrect torque weight or sequence on the head bolts definitely will. as far as the gasket, you should be able to use a stock type gasket but i would ask trickflow for a recommendation.

 

I'm pretty sure Trick Flow recommends a standard Fel-Pro 1003 head gasket. Make sure to use some moly lube, or at the very least a heavy weight motor oil on the threads and underside of the bolt head when torquing them. If it was my motor I would do whatever it takes to get that nut out.

 

¿Qué?

There are 2 heads on most TPI motors?

As we all know, anything that is done to ONE of them, should also be done to the other, right?

So they're both off, right?

Meaning, the intake is also off, right?

Meaning, the distributor hole is laying on the floor somewhere, right?

If you haven't finished doing the whole job, you'll find that as you move through the other parts of what needs to be done, you won't have any trouble getting the nut out. Unless it managed to fall down into one of the oil drainback holes, in which case it's now laying in the bottom of the oil pan, in which case it's out of harm's way and you don't need to worry about it.

DO NOT use grease on the head bolt threads!!!! Those bolt holes go DIRECTLY INTO the water jackets of the block. If you use grease, you WILL have 34 little coolant leaks, 20 of which will leak coolant into your oil, and 14 of which will leak it down the side of the block. Use some kind of non-hardening sealer, NOT SILICONE, on the threads and under the bolt heads. I recommend the Permatex "automotive thread sealer with Teflon". Comes in a little tube on a card hanging in the sealer aisle at parts stores.

The stock FelPro gasket set (HS7733PT) is fine. You can get it at VatoZone, Advance, CSK, Pep Boys, etc. as well as REAL parts stores. No need to buy the individual performance series gaskets like 1003 or 1004. That's just extra money that does you no good.

 

That nut is likely laying in the bottom of the oil pan and not going anywhere. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

for peace of mind , i would drain oil . then through the drain hole probe around with a magnet . might be suprised what you find . i once found cotter pin , 2 washers , and a small screw . this was on a phord inline six . good luck .

 

oh man that just sucks..

 

if you dropped it down the distributor hole, it's sitting on the pinion gears of the cam. You gotta get it.

 

try getting it with one of those magnets on a extendable stick

 

Plus if you got one of those multi screwdriver things with the flashlight in it, and the long magnet stick.. That helped me alot when a piece of metal flew into my intake ports!

 

Just using tap water could lead to overheating. A/F has a different boiling point than water.

 

i tried the magnet on a stick with no luck and i can see the pinion gear and the drive gear for the oil pump and i cant see the nut at all, im leading toward it sitting in the pan, i still need to drain it and i figured i'd run a magnet along the bottom of the pan to draw anything thats in there to the drain hole so i can at least be positive it there.

the head gaskets i pulled off were fel-pro p#1034, and thats what they were offering me at kragen. are they legit with the trick flow heads? because something had to be out of wack.

just as a side note the motor in the car hadn't been run in over 6 years when i got to it. it ran fine for 2000 miles before i noticed the oil was getting water in it and i was running just tap water in the cooling system... could this have been a leading cause of the gasket failure?

 

water actually has a higher boiling point than a/f by itself.

at regular atmospheric pressure, standard tap water boils at 212 degrees. increase the pressure, you increase the boiling point of that water depending on how much you increase the pressure by.

 

No, it doesn't.

 

A/F or Ethylene Glycol has a boiling point of 387*F or 197*C STRAIGHT.

 

Yeah not to mention you dont run straight a/f anyways.

 

haha, i did that. Had to take off the oil pan to get it. PITA...

Try moving that magnet around the bottom of your oil pan?

 

Im probably the king of dropping things. My freinds get a good laugh out of it.

Tape over big holes, like carb plenum, dist. hole, and the like works excellent. A rag over numerous holes in a row, like oil passages and places where tape wont stick also works great.

If it made it down to the oil pan, you should be ok, but if it didnt, u might be in trouble. Id start by pulling the oil pan, easiest thing to do, it could probably use a cleaning anyway. Hope you find it.

 

Water is the most efficient coolant you can run... It has the highest specific heat and will be able to absorb and transfer the most heat.

 

i thought antifreeze's purpose was to 1. not freeze 2. have a higher boiling point that water. does water boil over easier.

 

The thing that makes the boiling point and the freezing point ideal, is the MIXTURE.

Think about this.....

Salt lowers the freezing point of water, right? In fact, that's what "0°" Fährenheit is; Herr Fährenheit was looking for a simple, easily duplicated standard for "zero", since the freezing point of pure water is so sensitive to pressure. So he added pure salt to pure water until he could add no more (saturated solution), and the temp that the mixture froze at, he pegged as "zero".

Now for today's big question:

What temp does salt freeze at?

I don't know offhand; but I DO know FOR SURE it's frozen solid at room temp, let alone the temp that pure water freezes at. Yet, adding it to water LOWERS the freezing point of the water.

Anti-freeze works a similar way, except that it's not a salt so the actual chemical mechanism is different. Basically it extends the temp range of the liquid state in both directions. Bottom line though, remains, it doesn't really matter what the freezing and boiling points of the constituents of the mixture are, as long as the MIXTURE behaves like you want.

 

801 C / 1474°F

 

i thought this threads purpose was about someone dropping a nut down the distributor hole. haha, i'm funny.

 

Hey thedoctorisin, how did you ever come out with the nut? did you find it? leave it? grind it up and catch it in the filter?
I just did the same damn thing.

 

put it together, tried to fire it up and it went over a couple times and stopped. crank seized. the nut got flattened out between the crank and the back of the block. i pulled the pan and used a hack saw blade to cut out the nut. put the pan back on and it fired right up. needless to say i put tape over all the holes in my motors the moment i pop it open.

 

Thanks for the relpy. I just put mine together and run it as well, so far no issues for about 6 months. I figure its in the pan. The Poor ol' Girl is creeping up on 380,000 miles and still a good pickup. She might be too worried about me buying a new truck to cough up that nut. -I've been on the the fence about it. lol.

 

+1

 

Agree and agree. I had a similar thing happen with a freaking DRILL CHUCK (was priming the oil system) and basically we tried about 45 minutes and finally got it out. But if you can see it down there and you can turn over the engine, AND you gave it your best shot to get it out with magnets on sticks and magnets on the oil pan.... I'd just call it a day man. Its likely going to settle down into the oil pan and sit there for decades.

I would try to verify that it has made it into the pan. Use as strong a magnet as you can find (maybe some bucky ***** or something) and move it around the back of hte oil pan and see if you can hear it scraping around in there somehow, or pull it to the drain plug and see it in there. IF you can do that, I'd glue the magnet on the side of the oilpan out of the way and leave it be forever... thats if you feel really nervous about it and want to be absolutely sure it's not going anywhere.

No wonder some people are terrified of molten salt reactors... that's insanely hot.

 

Start at the top! Look down the distributor hole. There is only a small space around the oil pump drive shaft so can't fall down into the oil pan.. The nut should be right there. If not, you are going to have to pull the intake manifold. The nut may be in the valley under the manifold. If not, start looking down the intake ports. Note that it cant be in the exhaust ports so dont worry about looking in those. Pray to God/Allah/Buddha/Mother Nature that the nut is sitting on top of a closed intake valve (as was the one I found). If not, the nut has gone down into a cylinder. You will have to pull the heads. Again, with luck, you will pull the side the nut is on first. Lessons learned: Cover the distributor hole and any other open holes in the intake (eg carburator removal) before you do anything else!

 

Look before you post , 🙄

 

In other words, Welcome Aboard, Jimmychevy, but please check the dates of the threads before responding. This site has existed since the 1990s, and some of the content is very old.

As for the nut in the sump, even if it wasn't removed it may be dissolved by now, if the vehicle even still exists and hasn't been recycled into three Toyotas, a refrigerator, and a park bench w/picnic table.

The good thing is that, as T-Perf knows, new members get a "pass" until they get their feet wet. He's just trying to point you in that direction.

 

For anyone else who may have the misfortune of dropping a piece of hardware down into an engine opening, the answer to the original question is: "somewhere between 'no problem' and 'catastrophic engine failure.' "