Washer in carb

You have just acquired a winter project. The washer has an excellent chance of destroying your engine if started with the thing loose inside there. Unless you are luckier than the law allows, upon starting it will wind up on edge between the head and piston and the piston will crack, also potentially cracking a ring. This will score the block's cylinder wall, requiring a bore job & new pistons, rings etc. If your block has already been bored 030, the block will need replacing as 351Cs cannot reliably take over 0.030 (and some cannot accept even that much!) It may also jam under a valve, bending it and maybe breaking the head off the valve, causing even more internal damage. Stock valves are welded two-piece and don't take bending well. To fix: remove the air cleaner, the carb and the intake manifold and then use a magnet on a rod to search around in the intake ports. If it's not there, it found one of the open intake valves and is now inside a cylinder- and there's no way of knowing which one, so pull both heads to retrieve it. Next time, use integral (capture) washers on the stud nut. Personally, I would take this opportunity to do a valve job on my engine as the whole top end will be apart.

As an alternative, assuming that it was not a stainless steel other non magnetic washer, you might try securely attaching a magnet to something flexible (a plastic shaft, wire, music wire, etc,), remove your carb, and direct the magnet down each runner until you feel it grab on the stem of the intake valve. If it hasn't found one of the cylinders with an open intake valve, chances are pretty good you'll snag it. If it found an open intake valve, you're screwed. Chances are, it didn't. If you have a single plane intake, this is easy. If you have a dual plane, its still not too bad. What do you have to lose? The magnet? -You're no worse off. -Good luck.

And if you are going to have to pull things apart anyway, you might try gum on a stick.
Worked for me, and no gum was left in the intake. Select gum that is sticky.

Chuck

You might try a small flexible tube attached to a vacume cleaner. With a small tube, you would probable get a lot of suction, so maybe close would count.

I don't think you mentioned what manifold you have. If it's single plane high rise, I'd guess your in worse trouble. If it's a dual plane, I'd imagine the washer is sitting just under the carb.

You also might see if you can barrow or rent one of the fiber optics camera setups that seem to be very common now. It would probably find the washer pretty quickly.

Good Luck : )

If you just dropped it and have not engaged the throttal spring then hopefully it is still resting on top of your throttal plates in the carbs. They would be in a natural closed position (in theory at least) After removing the aircleaner.... carefully look down and see if it is just there and use the magnet to fetch. If not then step by step like everyone has suggested remove the carb and look beneath. Hopefully you have a dual plane and it is just resting on the first plane.

Good luck...

No such luck. The stuff Jack said would happen already started. Spark plug trashed, best case is a bent valve, don't even want to think about worst case. Thanks all for your help, especially Jack with his clinical description of what could happen.

After ALL the warnings you still started the car!!!!!!

Kinda lucked out. The washer came out looking like a little brown ball. Looks like it had a hell of ride between the #1 and #4 cylinders. Aside from a couple of spark plugs and a new valve, the engine is back together and actually runs better than before. However, don't try this at home.

I cannot believe this! You actually started the engine without retrieving the washer first!!!??? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? So much for heeding good advice!

Ya, Dallas, I did. No excuses, I can only image the hidden motivation here. The guys at the shop got a kick out of it too. I promise I won't do it again. On the brighter side, I did get a real good look at the engine which is pretty much stock and solid. Thanks everyone for your concern.

Rudy,
The past is the past. Your engine is okay now. Lets get on to important things.
Best of luck.

Lar