What tools have you left behind........

[airbatica]

I don't wrench on cars for a living, so I don't lose my tools very often. The last one I actually lost was my O2 sensor crowfoot. I was changing the O2 sensor on the Saturn SL2 (about the easiest thing to do on that POS). I had finished, buttoned everything up, and closed the hood. The crowfoot was still under the hood. I took it for a drive to reset all the monitors, and was hauling *** down the freeway when I heard a Ka-thunk like something had just fallen off. Look in the rearview mirror to see the crowfoot bouncing down the freeway.... no way in hell I was going back for it.

 

[mlittle29]

I opened the cowl on a Beechcraft Bonanza for inspection, and found a brand new long Snap-On screwdriver......It was not marked, and no one ever mentioned missing one. A big No No in Aviation.

I once opened a panel cover of an F-16 and saw a Snap on Screwdriver. bad news is that the Jet had just flown from Ft Worth to South Carolina and this was during the acceptance inspection.

A big NO NO in aviation is correct. I notified Lockheed of the incident and told them i was keeping their screwdriver....funny....they didn't seem to have a problem with that!

 

[mlittle29]

I also "inherited" a Makita 12V flashlight under the hood of my car. Too bad I didn't find the thing until 5 months after that mechanic worked on it and i had removed the engine cover to do some work myself.

It is a shame I don't even own a Makita 12V battery nor charger. I think i still have that flashlight laying around...not sure why, but i do.

 

[tjmonsen5]

I lost my 10mm socket bit while working on my sisters crysler LHS. It dropped back towards the transmission, and I absolutely could not find it.

 

[mrbreezeet1]

I once opened a panel cover of an F-16 and saw a Snap on Screwdriver. bad news is that the Jet had just flown from Ft Worth to South Carolina and this was during the acceptance inspection.

A big NO NO in aviation is correct. I notified Lockheed of the incident and told them i was keeping their screwdriver....funny....they didn't seem to have a problem with that!

See I'm just an auto/light truck mechanic, I could be wrong,
In your case it might be justified, but I think I just would have kept it and kept my mouth shut.
Don't want to get no one in trouble.
Again, I could be wrong, maybe you guys are supposed to report it.

 

[Hawk Thor]

when i first started working in ship repair i lost a pair of vise grips in the bilge. i dropped them, they went splash. i couldn't see through the water (or whatever that was) to find them.... i just left those behind.

I too work in ship repair. We have magnets for fishing up tools from the bilge. I dropped my new Toptul ratchet, 17mm socket and 6" extension when removing sea valves from a chest the other day.

I got our magnet and started scraping the hull and dragging the magnet. I got my tools back. I also got a large flathead screwdriver and a 6" Irwin locking plier. Tools that are not market are the property of whoever pulls them out of the bilge, thats just the way it is here. Marked tools are returned to the owner if by any means possible.

We have these magnets on threaded rods. We can add rods to reach even the deepest of these mucky, wet, hell holes.

 

[mlittle29]

See I'm just an auto/light truck mechanic, I could be wrong,
In your case it might be justified, but I think I just would have kept it and kept my mouth shut.
Don't want to get no one in trouble.
Again, I could be wrong, maybe you guys are supposed to report it.

Yep had to report it. Air force regulations. No one gets in real trouble unless someone gets hurt or you are a repeat offender. FOD on a jet can really hurt people and cause $$$$$$ damage.

Also the guys on the other end were probably turning their shop upside down looking for it.

 

[mrbreezeet1]

OK , Sounds good, I understand.
Thanks,
what is FOD?


Foreign Object Debris/Foreign Object Damage.........LOL
Google 1st hit....................

 

[Subytech]

I left behind a craftsman pick and a bluepoint hammer

 

[Kev442]

I've never had to buy a 1 1/16" wrench. I now own 2 of them from mechanics placing them on the inner fender well while pulling the spindle nut on a GM A body.
The wrench of course slides down the back of the inner fender and gets trapped behind the fender against the firewall outside of the AC box. Not to be seen again until I part the car out many years later and it lands on my foot while yanking the fender off.

I've have never had a client return my mini maglite flashlight yet in 30 years of wrenching. Many other tools, but never a flashlight. I now use the HF freebies instead.

 

[dieselmike]

TM737(ouch)+ cman 1/4 drive socket set-stolen by a customer while working on trailer.. no proof..
10mm stubby ratchet.. no idea where it went.

 

[asemastertech]

Over the last 10 or so years I have lost a good share of tools.
snap on 80 tooth 1/4 inch ratchet on a caddy
snap on 1/4 inch universal on a windstar
rechargeable mag light
snap on 1/2 inch wrench
snap on gasket scraper on a tauras, got it back 6 months later still under the hood
numerous snap on sockets and cornwell swivel impact sockets
snap on pick on a mazda pickup
channel lock pliers on a ford truck, got that one back a while later
sometimes its more beneficial to just buy a new tool than to spend an hour looking for it

 

[knocker]

Well today the XC90 came back from the body shop like I was hoping it would. Well someone else from said body shop had tryed to fix it them selfs and have torn the car apart and walked away w/ my 12mm socket and left me w/ a big mess of wires and trim panels to try and put back together Long story short never leaving anything in any car expecting someone not to touch it.

 

[Jim C.]

Nothing!!! I don't lose tools!! But a tech once left a snap on 1/4" drive ratchet with a snap on 7/32" socket on it in the trunk of my car. I found it a few weeks later. I took the car to the dealership for a recall to fix the trunk latch/lock mechanism.

Jim C.

 

[mlittle29]

OK , Sounds good, I understand.
Thanks,
what is FOD?


Foreign Object Debris/Foreign Object Damage.........LOL
Google 1st hit....................

You got it! Imagine what a loose tool can do inside an aircraft traveling at Mach speeds and pulling crazy g's. Up in the air there is no forgiveness.

 

[raross]

Working in the heavy equipment business as the Field Manager, had a couple of my guys change out the differntial gears in a Wagner log stacker, now remember this is a huge differential, on a machine that will offload an entire log truck in one grab. About a month later when the customer was changing the differential fluid for the first time he found a lot of debris in the oil some light metal and some paper, a few pieces upon inspection said “Duracell” on them. Had one of my senior mechanics go out and pull the entire assembly and bring it back to the shop, upon teardown we found some grizzly remains of an entire 3 cell Maglight Flashlight! A few days later I asked my mechanic repairing this, if we could go back and install this today? He told me “ Yes it was ready to go back in but, to be safe we needed to wait until dark and look inside to be sure there wasn’t a light left on in there!

 

[Rural53]

Earlier in the year I left a set of snap ring pliers, that my now deceased father gave me about 20 yrs ago, in the grass on the side of the road after rebuilding a front hub on my Nissan Patrol after a wheel bearing collapsed

 

[osborn.ozzy]

Cant tell you how many flash lights I have left in cars....

 

[aussiek2000]

I lost my 10mm socket bit while working on my sisters crysler LHS. It dropped back towards the transmission, and I absolutely could not find it.

Probably laying in one of the gusset holes on top of the trans. Dropped a frew bolts there myself. As far as losing tools, I lost a 10mm SO semi-deep under the radiator of a Monte Carlo, Left a 3/8" SO ratchet on the cowl of a Traverse.

 

[chrisziem]

See I'm just an auto/light truck mechanic, I could be wrong,
In your case it might be justified, but I think I just would have kept it and kept my mouth shut.
Don't want to get no one in trouble.
Again, I could be wrong, maybe you guys are supposed to report it.

I was a flightline vehicle mechanic in the USAF. This is a huge no no as you need people to be accountable and responsible for there tools. Don't want people dying cause some slob's wrench was sucked into the turbine!

Mot marking the tools is bad because people are trying to duck accountability or are just not detailed enough to mark all there tools. I don't want to fly in a plane worked on by yahoos like that!

 

[Big-Foot]

I don't have to lose my tools myself. Either my son walks off with them, or they wonder off by themselves hiding and chuckling lightly under their breaths while they watch me searching for them...

Years ago, I was working on a customer's car (old Pontiac Bonneville) where I needed to remove the fuel pump to gain access to the motor mount I had to replace. When I went to pull off the 3/8" steel fuel line up to the carb, there was a long wad of electricians tape on the fuel line and it looked like maybe some insulation of sorts that was right next to the belts. After unwinding all of that **** I found it was there to keep a 1/2" Snap-on combination wrench in place! You guessed it - the last guy to work on it had used the BOX end of the wrench to tighten the fuel line to the pump and he just donated it.

I was laughing my **** off on that until I went to get the fuel line reinstalled and realized that he used the boxed end in order to tweek the line into position as he started the threads.. I considered redonating the wrench to do the same thing but decided to use a flair wrench instead.

 

[2JZGTESC300]

Not me but my Apprentice Technician left a Snap On 3/8'' drive long flex head Ratchet in a Transmission rebuild job on a 04 Honda Accord. The job was done Monday, but he just told me yesterday while working on a car. Since it was a expensive job, the customer is making weekly payments. I told him to call her up and tell her that you left an expensive item in the car and see if she could find it or bring it back. He uttered in silent. So I said, she'll be back since she owes us payments still.

Then I joked around and said, finders keepers.

Later that afternoon, I gave the customer a called and she tried to look for it but it wasn't no where to be found anywhere inside the car nor under the hood.

It was a sad day for him.

 

[Arne73]

I worked overnight on an installation in an office building. The next day I realized that I left my Klien linesman pliers in the drop ceiling of an office. I walked in with my ladder, smiled at the receptionist, set my ladder up and retrieved my pliers.

 

[metaleltr]

Found a windshield cutout knife under the cowl screen of a BMW.

 

[Eric Nordstrom]

I left a full set if s-k 3/8dr. metric sockets in the salvage yard a few years back
I still have the 18mm. that was on the ratchet at the time. I still get pissed when I think about it.

Eric

 

[Peoria Man]

I left a full set if s-k 3/8dr. metric sockets in the salvage yard a few years back

I tend to leave things there too. 10mm and 13mm sockets, which naturally tend to be sizes I use all the time. And most recently, I left a Craftsman 1/2" drive extension in the junkyard. At least that's where I think it is; I carry my JY tools in a cheapie plastic box with a removable upper tray and things tend to fall out of the upper tray when I remove it to get to the stuff underneath.

I need to go back and see if its still there.

 

[RedFordTruck]

I lost a 12mm 3/8'' drive deep craftsman socket into the abyss that is the front clip of my f-150. Meant to get it but forgot about it until a week later and it was gone.

Also lost a shovel in a field of tall grass... found it about 2 months later with the bushhog...

 

[Kentuckian]

While doing an engine rebuild on a customers 460 in a 1970 Lincoln Towncar I dropped a 9/16 socket in behind the right side hideaway headlight. After a long search I figured the socket was not worth disassembling the headlight unit. That was way back in the late '70s.

 

[CORTEZSS69]

I lost a 9/16 socket in the left frame rail of my chevelle a couple of years ago. I spent the better half of an hour looking for it with no luck. It must have rolled from the core support to the middle of the car is my best guess. Good thing is,that it was one of my craftsman and not one of my new snap-on.

 

[willhollin]

I left a pair of 24" Facom aluminium Stilsons on top of an oil tank after finishing a job. There were some builders working next door on scaffolding so I imagine it is in their possession now.

Also a 10" pair of Knipex plier wrenches, the real expensive ones were left on a job somewhere!

 

[ianguilly]

Just lost my snap on 1/4 universal impact joint with a gearwrench socket. Damn thing fell somewhere in a rear body panel and i could not find it for the life of me. I use that combo like every single day...darn.

 

[Toolhorder]

I opened the cowl on a Beechcraft Bonanza for inspection, and found a brand new long Snap-On screwdriver......It was not marked, and no one ever mentioned missing one. A big No No in Aviation.

wow!
My worst fear

 

[SpiderGearsMan]

replacement costs are ridiculous

 

[bgott]

In the last month I've left a 10 mm socket and a long screwdriver, both Snap-on, on customer's cars. I called both customers and had them come back and have retrieved both tools! Wonders never cease!

 

[JKady]

Left a 12mm Cornwell ratcheting wrench... somewhere in an Exploder I swapped transmissions in for another shop.

My 14mm impact wobbly was hanging on the 1 ton Dodge I just finished the trans in today, been there since Wednesday guess it's a good thing it's been nice this week, was glad I pushed the truck back in and found that just before my dealer got to the shop or I woulda bought another one.

 

[Mastermind]

left my freedom light in a door....drove me nuts all weekend....couldnt figure out what the noise was...figureed it out first thing monday morning, went to my truck, pulled the panel off, and light was still on after the whole weekend roling back and forth in the door.
left a snap on lady finger on the top of the grille on an s-10 blazer, happened to be the shop owners brother, truck came back for other damage months later, first thing i saw was the tool when i opened the hood.

have found countless tools in cars when working on and detailing. also worked at a junkyard for a while, find a ton of tools there.
snap on 3/8 ratchet
panel tools
several ratchet wrenches
6 pairs vise grips
lotsa cheap screwdrivers
entire craftsman box in the trunk of a junkyard car once.

 

[bgott]

I forgot about the Blue-Point magnetic LED light that I keep leaving on frames and sending down the road. I've sent it and got it back twice now.

 

[Moose-LandTran]

Left my Wiha T25 Torx screwdriver and a Snap-on 8mm nut driver in cars in the past few months.

 

[vga]

I dont. I have removed the intake manifold off of a car looking for a 10 mm socket. If it had moved into the belts I wld have felt pretty stupid. I want to know where everything is at all times.

 

[osborn.ozzy]

got an oil gun stuck in the timing chains of a 4.6 northstar. Explain that when the boss asks why you have the valve cover off when it just came in for an oil change.