well ****....

 

Called it a night. I'll keep digging tomorrow. It fell down the frontmost exhaust side oil drain, not sure where that ends up. Might pull the head off my spare motor and take a peak down it.

 

Fell down this one

 

Front most exhaust side oil drain:

 

if it ends up in the oil pan, drain the oil and stick some compressed air in there if it doesn't come out in the oil.

But I'm probably preaching to the chiour

 

Yup that looks like the one. I'm worried its stuck in the mbsp somehow. I tried compressed air, and flushed some acetone down there. Tomorrow I'm going to get a gallon of mineral spirits and see if i cant get it to move.

 

I say spray a can of wd-40 down there. It fixes everything right?

Or we can go by G's logic and ignore it and see if it fixes itself.

 

Theoretically looks like it should have fallen through the mbsp. But its probably sitting right in the middle there.

 

Perhaps a small pump, some flexible tubing, and just pump oil/acetone/something down that hold and try to flush it out that way.

Or if you happen to have a small flexible camerea (they are like 20 shipped on amazon) you could drain the oil and go in through the drain hole. Once you find it, remove camera and put some fishing gear on the camera (hook, cup, thick grease, magenet, etc) and go in and get the keeper.

 

If it's on the front of the pan, you could also just lift the front of the car, and it will likely slide to the rear/bottom, where access via drain plug is quite a bit easier.

 

Going to try both those things. I'm not sure how well the camera will work. The drain hole is pretty small, and I have an aftermarket baffle in the oil pan.

 

Wonder how high my engine hoist can lift the front of the car.....

 

You need hydraulic suspension so you can bounce the car up and down on it.


--Ian

 

With the power you made, could have just run a camera to view the wheelies instead of hydraulics.

 

.

 

Will your scope fit down the oil drain hole so you can look for it?

 

Changing valve stem seals. No signs of this in the old motor.

Nope. The oil passages don't up just right. So the actual hole is very small.

 

Mazdaspeed SUBs are on backorder. Anyone have a spare 8 of them?

 

8 new subs on order from miataroadster. Ouch.

 

This is also how you remove bolts and things from children when they swallow them. Its good life practice.