Things you don’t want to find in an engine or gearbox

[diffwhine]

Ok - not series, but found in a 200tdi engine today.

Trying to work out where it has come from. Found lurking round the camshaft. It's about 14mm across flats and beautifully polished on either side.

Bizarrely the rest of the engine seems ok. How it got there and where it came from is a total mystery.

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[diffwhine]

And yes - it was making a horrible noise!

[GHOBHW]

what even is it?

the head of a bolt?

[Genocache]

If it is not from the rocker area I can't think of where it might have come from. Curious.....

[diffwhine]

Yes - I reckon its the head of a bolt. The worrying bit is that I cannot find any sheered off studs, missing bolt heads or anything. True F.O.D....

[Calum]

I once got a BMC 1098 for free out of an A40 - I was told it had dropped a valve and as such was removed from the car. When I stripped it down, I found a brass manifold nut, VERY beaten, under the rocker cover. My guess is it had been rattling around in there and occasionally sticking a valve open or something. Certainly no dropped valve and no damaged valves either!

We bought an Iron Fairey crane at my old work, an ex-RAF 'Garnet' from the early 60s. Nice little crane to use, Fordson Major diesel engine in them. It wasn't running when we got it and I did a lot of repairs to it. Interestingly I found the rocker box on that full of gravel! I assume someone had tried to sabotage it, as the fuel tank was full of sand as well (I did find sand everywhere to be honest - I assume it had been used to lift items to be sandblasted) I had to drop the sump out and it was decided to clean it out as best as possible without pulling or stripping the engine. Not the route I would have taken but we never tried to run it before I noticed all the gravel and it never caused us a problem but I was still always waiting for another piece to suddenly make its presence known...