Part in my Oil Pan....

Ok, here is the whole story behind the part that I posted a few days ago.

My plan for the weekend was to drop the oil pan on the TR and replace the gasket. I drained the oil then went about removing the oil pan. Not that hard just took a while (I think there where 17-18 bolts holding the pan on) and a few light taps with a dead blow to get the pan off the car. After I got the pan off the car I took it over to my workbench to clean it up. I start taking the remnants of the old gasket off and I notice something in the bottom of the oil pan, uh-oh. Start fishing metal pieces out, at this point I'm in a bit of a panic. Thinking to myself, I'm going to have to tow the car to Decatur, pay a bunch to rebuild the engine ect. The picture shows what I fished out of the oil.

I get back under the car to examine the bottom end of the engine, trying to see where this part may have come from. Crank looks good, counter weights look fine, piston rods intact, bottom of the pistons look good, no groves or scoring in the piston liners....hmmmmm. I dilute the rest of the oil left in the oil pan and filter it through a coffee filter. No small metal shavings, odd. Look through my workshop manuals and parts catalogs, can't find a part that looks like this thing. Decide to call in some help, I e-mail the pictures to a guy I know who races Spitfires and has owned 20+ Triumphs (4, 4a, 6, 250, a few GT6s and Spitfires) and has worked at a Triumph shop up in NC on and off for a while. He calls me back and says this....

"First thing, that isn't from the engine so no harm done. I don't know how in the world it got there but what you have appears to be an old spark plug gapping tool!"

So there you have it, my TR was hiding a spark plug gapping tool in its oil pan. Very odd, at least it didn't say Lucas on it...... ::)

So an hour job turned into a whole day thing with just a hint of anxiety thrown in for good measure.