why not just use a magnet to retrieve whatever's in there?

 

it should be ok. a little roughness to the top fo the piston won't hurt anything. i had a turbo mitsu with some damage to a piston from a bolt falling in and still made 341whp with it, daily driven, no problems.

 

Damn, Matt: this is horrible news.

I would definitely take the advice of the guys here and manually spin the crank with a flash light looking down the spark plug bay. You should be able to see/hear something as a result of this to narrow your search.

If it is on top of the piston and it is metal, a magnet might be able to get it through the park plug bay. Most likely, I would imagine that you will be pulling the head. As much of a pain in the *** as pulling the head is on our cars, you definitely want to know which bank the object is located.

Good luck.

 

Are you sure it's not something that has dropped down into the torque converter area and is rattling around inside the bellhousing?

Removing something from inside the motor is difficult on a 4 valve motor like the 1UZ.

Good luck Matt.

Matt.

 

good luck!

 

whoa..that suckx matt. must've been painful hearing that loud tapping sound during crank. goodluck, hope nothin serious.

 

+1 for the magnet idea and pray its its a metal that will catch

 

sorry to hear that man. i would try the magnet trick like they said.

 

Is the 1UZ an interference engine? Could your timing be off and you're slapping valves on the piston?

 

a friend of mine had a similar issue as yours. he brought his car to a mechanic. the mechanic had a snake video camera thing that he stuck in the motor to look around. he found a washer on one of the cylinders. he then removed the spark plug and used a magnet to get it out.

 

depends on what year his car is Shern, i know for the LS400s that 89-94 is non interference and 95+ is.

 

noninterference motor. I didnt mess with the timing at all.

I'm. Going to try the magnet trick

If I can't see anything what makes me think something fell?

I don't remember anything falling into the tranny

 

WOW, this sucks. I have nightmares about this exact kind of thing whenever I go under the hood with a wrench.

We're all hoping for the best.

<-- fingers crossed.

 

Good luck matt, hope you find whats in there. Same crap happened to me except it was a small piece of that plastic that goes around the vac lines.

 

while shimming the valves on a 4AG a while ago i had a shim fall into the motor. i got it out by manually rotating the motor and a magnet. it was a biatch but i got it done. i was nervous but it works well.

try that first and then decide whether to pull the heads or not.

if i could get a shim out of a 4AG then you can get it out of your 1UZ