Dropped something in coolant port help!
 

I was drilling out the coolant nipple hole on the rear iron (stupid) to tap for a 1/4 NPT plug and had a small piece of shop rag in the port to keep the shavings from falling into the engine (stupid)....well needless to say I drilled a little too much (stupid) and pushed the piece of rag into the port and now i don't see it ANYWHERE. I fished around with picks and anything I could find for about 3 hours and got nothing.

Looking for any ideas before I light this car on fire. I have a smartphone boroscope coming in the mail this week but don't have high hopes that it will be small enough to fit in the port. Engine is a fresh rebuild with no fluids in it yet. Thanks

You could get an old metal coat hanger and fashion a hook to grab it. Take your time -bend it bit by bit and fit it after every bend. Sharpening your hook might help, and then bend the tip of the point to form an even smaller hook. It can't be far. Im sure if you approach it with patience you'll get it out. If you are able to touch it you'll definitely notice it.

Thanks i actually gave that a shot for a while with a piece of tig filler rod and couldn't feel anything. I kept waiting for the 'tink' of metal on metal to change but nothing. I feel like im going crazy because it has to be in there but nowhere to be found. I think it may have fallen down like where the rotor housing coolant passages to the intake are (plugged with a freeze cap right now).

Anyone know if i'll have access to this area if i pull the freeze cap out?

Should have just used grease on the tap to grab the chips. I'd be a lot less worried about a few metal chips (happened to find them in the coolant passages in all kinda old American engine that no one did no such thing to) than the piece of rag. My personal opinion is go for it. Maybe it will get eventually ground up by the water pump. It probably isn't big enough to have an effect on your radiator or heater core if it gets trapped there unground.

I had an engine eat a shop towel when testing for compression.The compression was like 15 so I knew something was up...(and I had driven 6 hours to get this engine!)
I picked as much of it out as I could,and tossed a good amount of oil in the housing to loosen up the towel so it would basically disintegrate when it finally got started. (comp went up to over 90 after I plucked the crap out!)

Just saying that to ease you mind that unless it was a BIG piece of shop rag then I wouldn't worry about it...If you do get excited there are ways to flush the engine,so you could research that.

Didn't even get to tapping this was still in the drilling phase ._.

The boroscope thing came in but still not sure if it's gonna work yet. I'm at the point where I probably will just dgaf and run the motor with it and hope for the best.

Will have status update this weekend.

It depends on the size of the chunk of rag. If temps go up or your heater doesn't work, you know where it lodged. On second thought, the thermostat could, and would, be a bad place for it to jam up. It's up to you. Maybe you should pull the thermostat for a bit if you dgaf.

Valid point. I don't want it to come to that but there's also no way I'm pulling the engine and disassembling again. I'm already 1000% past dealing with this build. Im gonna take another shot at it this weekend so we'll see what happens.

I heard of someone once putting a garden hose in one of the engine holes and could force the path of water to work up from the bottom and out of that coolant port which sounds like (really reaching here) it could push the rag piece up to a more accessible point close to the hole. Just have to figure out exactly how its done.

I feel that's your best option. I'd suggest pulling both radiator hoses and remove thermostat, and flush water into it with a garden hose. With any luck it will come out.

that port is so small that it couldn't do much of anything just forgetting that it got in there. eventually the water pump will chew it up or it will wind up in the bottom of the radiator anyways.