dropped something inside engine

[stilkus]

hallo,
yesterday while I was using the endoscope camera to check for cylinder wall scraping I wanted to move the piston down and ended up sucking the camera ( aluminum ) and getting it's tip crushed flat by the pistion and one of the valves, now I can't get it out.
I thought about dropping one of the valve seats then fetch it through the intake port, so is it possible to remove the end of the cam without tearing apart the whole timing chain cover ? the camera is in cylinder number 5 of a vq35de engine.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Is it the whole camera, or just the tip? If it crushed itself already, I'd say the majority of the damage has already been done. Try to get whatever you can out, maybe spin the engine by hand a few times and pray it comes loose/doesn't damage anything else... otherwise you're probably looking at either dropping a valve, or pulling the head.

[stilkus]

Is it the whole camera, or just the tip? If it crushed itself already, I'd say the majority of the damage has already been done. Try to get whatever you can out, maybe spin the engine by hand a few times and pray it comes loose/doesn't damage anything else... otherwise you're probably looking at either dropping a valve, or pulling the head.

Only the tip was crushed and because of that it won't be pulled out of the spark plug hole. I wanted to know if maybe i could lift the end of the intake camshaft to drop the last intake valve without taking the whole cam chain Cover off or won't it work?

[PapaSmurf2k3]

I've never attempted that, but I'm guessing the chain will be under tension, and that would be a pain to pull off. If you lose your grip, you could damage the cam too.

[stilkus]

I've never attempted that, but I'm guessing the chain will be under tension, and that would be a pain to pull off. If you lose your grip, you could damage the cam too.

Okay, so you were right, It was impossible to remove the camshaft or tilt it so I went for the real Job now, which is to remove the whole engine/subframe and replace everything inside with new rings and honing. I would like to know if it's possible to discover weather a valve/connecting rod were bent in this process. I guess with the valve I could visually inspect it but with the connecting rod, how is this possible ?

[PapaSmurf2k3]

You mean with it still in the engine? You might be able to catch it on a compression check, but if not, you should be able to measure the distance of the piston to something (like the top of the head, or the top of the block if you have the head off) at top dead center.

[gyrfalcon]

Why don't you just handle it like a broken spark plug that has come apart and dropped ceramic bits into the piston shaft? Use a long tipped blower and blast it out with compressed air. You can use a different camera to make sure you got everything out... if you can managed not to crush a second one.