Becareful tuning your carb.

[Ziegelsteinfaust]

I was doing some lite tuning on my carb as it ser up for 4.88 not the 3.07 gears that I have now.

After I adjusted the secondary air door on the Q-jet. I flipped my hand over, and the bit I was using was thrown into my carbs primary bores. I thought I fell on the floor or in the frame rails.

Well I was wrong. 1 mile later I heard a tin tin tin sound from the engine.

Today I got the engine out today, and had to pull plus to get a header off.

The plug was bashed in, and coolant flowed out of #8 cylinder.

I have a couple of blocks I could rebuild, and get another piston to replace the damaged one. The head probably got cracked, and I lost a good set of old AFR castings.

I will tear the engine down later to see what really happened. That engine was supposed to go into my Camaro.

[Boog]

Ooooooh. SMH. I've been there before. Old delivery truck would only run about 50 flat out. It had an engine vibration that culminated when the air cleaner stud got loose and dropped down the throat of the wide open carb. It found it's way smooth into one cylinder where a valve chopped that stud into 4 pieces and deposited them into 4 different cylinders. One cylinder was cracked and the piston and head beat all to be damn. It gave all. RIP ford.

[truckster]

The first engine I built many years ago was a 400 SBC. When I was putting the carburetor on, I couldn't find one of the 5/16 nuts. After searching for a while, I went and got another one.

I got it all buttoned up and started it, and I found the nut immediately. I ended up pulling the left side head and one of the pistons had a nice hex-shaped indent on it. It wasn't cracked and the valves looked OK, so I put it back together and started it up. I got lucky. It ran that way for years.

I'm sorry your story didn't turn out as well.

[HO455]

Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Hopefully your block is undamaged and the coolant is from the head. A good lesson for all of us to leave the screwdrivers with replaceable bits in the tool box when working on the engine. Those cursed bits will remove themselves from the driver whenever your not watching.

I used to know a stock class drag racer who ran two intake gaskets with some window screen material sandwiched between to prevent things from falling down the intake. Not that most of us are inside our carburetors as often as he was.

[BRL]

Tragic story, sorry to hear about that.

Had my carb. off once and didn't bother to stuff a rag in the manifold.
A washer slipped out of my fingers and I heard it tinkel down one of the intake runners.
Ended up having to remove the intake and thankfully found the washer sitting on top of a CLOSED number 5 cylinder intake valve.

Another time I had the manifold off and a washer fell down the lifter galley rear oil drain hole and disappeared, years later I discovered it sitting in the bottom of the oil pan.

Sounds like good advice to keep detachable bit screwdrivers away from the intake, never even considered that before.

[Dead Parrot]

Ouch!