trhs75

Well, I thought as part of my quest to reduce oil consumption in my daughter's '99, I should change the PCV valve (the plastic, push-in kind). It came with a new grommet for where it seats in the valve cover. Got the PCV valve out, but the rubber on the grommet was old (fourteen years of heat and grease!) and hard. I pried and tugged. The top part came with the pliers, but the inside part dropped inside. Great! I could feel it through the hole with my finger and push it around, but I couldn't get a hold of it, of course. Then somehow I pushed it toward the driver's side and couldn't feel it anymore. I hooked a piece of insulated copper home wire and was able to drag the piece back to under the hole. With a couple of curved locking hemostats, I finally was able to grasp the piece, lift it up, and begin to cut through one side of it with surgical scissors. Once I cut through one side of the ring, I was able to lift the piece out.

I don't know why I'm going on and on about this -- I was just so glad not to have the car towed to the dealer for removal of the valve cover (and probably the throttle body and everything else in there) to retrieve my piece. I got lucky in the end; I hope none of you do what I did. Learn from me! Maybe I should have just left the grommet in place!

salimshah

It is the ledge that some folks lament about that saved you and me and many others.

Salim

carguy07

There have been several guys here that did something similar. I think one retrieved it with vacuum cleaner. Good to hear you got it out. That is one of those things that would happen to me.

trhs75

Yes, I was way to smart for this to possibly happen to me!!