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** Sorry the title is misleading. I dropped the stud nut.**
My name is Vaughn and I have been cruising the site for a couple weeks as I got a retired company car. It is a 2002 Lexus LS 430 UL. It came with the blown sub, leaky valve covers, Leaky filler tube and a few other issues acquired during its 200,000 mile life.
I was very eager to get started on it and I took the filler tube off and threaded the nuts down on the studs and must have ran my arm along it a couple times for it to unscrew and fall. I didn't see it but I am pretty sure that it fell into the valve cover opening. I took the valve cover off and it is not in the top. I dropped the bottom engine cover and I did not see it there, I don’t see it on the garage floor either.
I think it fell in where my finger is pointing in the picture below. Where does that go? Hopefully back down to the pan. What is the deal with the oil pans? It looks like an upper and lower with a baffle in between? My expanding magnet stick doesn’t fit since it is quarter sized at the end. I have a couple different sized flexible extending magnet pickup tools coming from Amazon.
Hate to start of my posting like this. I will try to return favors when I see questions on the board.
Thanks for any input. Don't worry I gave myself a thorough tongue lashing.
Pic 1
Closer version of pic 1
New to me car is unfortunately out of commission until this is resolved
You have done the "hard" part already, and that is to take the valve cover off to look inside. Refer to the diagram below, namely, the cylinder head gasket. There are not many openings that the bolt can fall through. You can use the gasket shown on the diagram to guide you for the oil flow path locations. A small magnet will be very helpful also in pulling out any loose metal parts (the bolt). Run your magnet around nearby area because there's always the possibility that the bolt is trapped elsewhere in the engine bay.
Question for you - have you looked inside the spark plug tubes to see if the bolt ended up in there?
That's great info thanks! So it looks like I am not too bad off. I don't think it could have gone through anything in the cylinder head gasket since the biggest opening besides the cylinder is for the valve cover bolt.. I stuck my magnet in the front two spark plug tubes with no lock but I will check again. So I should be good when I get my magnets tomorrow. Thank you. I will post pics when I have it out haha. I have family coming in tomorrow so i may not do much before the weekend. Have a great week.
Originally Posted by rkw77080
You have done the "hard" part already, and that is to take the valve cover off to look inside. Refer to the diagram below, namely, the cylinder head gasket. There are not many openings that the bolt can fall through. You can use the gasket shown on the diagram to guide you for the oil flow path locations. A small magnet will be very helpful also in pulling out any loose metal parts (the bolt). Run your magnet around nearby area because there's always the possibility that the bolt is trapped elsewhere in the engine bay.
Question for you - have you looked inside the spark plug tubes to see if the bolt ended up in there?
That opening goes down really far. I am not sure if it goes to the pan or not. The flexible magnet pickup tool was too big and the thin extending magnet wasn't flexible enough. I have a new one coming tomorrow that may work. If I can't fish it out, I plan on dropping the pan.
05-25-15, 12:23 PM
Lost my oil filler nut bolt :(
Where does that go? Hopefully back down to the pan. What is the deal with the oil pans? It looks like an upper and lower with a baffle in between? My expanding magnet stick doesn’t fit since it is quarter sized at the end. I have a couple different sized flexible extending magnet pickup tools coming from Amazon.
