oops!! hate loosing stuff inside gearboxes

[peter de vries]

Was working on the pto shaft on my ddh cletrac today. It has two fiddly 1/4 unf bolts/nuts securing the pto shaft to the winch input spline. Got the first in ok being VERY careful not to drop anything into the differential compartment. Unfortunately the second nut somehow jumped out of the socket at a critical time and fell somewhere into the differential compartment. Had a look with a torch...no good. drained the oil from the differential housing and sieved it to find the nut....no good. poked around a bit with torch, hands and screwdriver....still no luck. blew the compartment clean with compressed air....nothing. bearing in mind this is only a small nut and could hide anywhere!! So i gave up and re-filled the gearbox and will drive it back and forth a bit hoping it will find its way into the drain plug( the lowest bit in the housing). i will then re-drain the compartment and have another look. The thought of that nut getting jammed in the diff or gears is not good... I am sure i am not the first to do this though. Sometimes no matter how careful you are things can go wrong, and i spent the best part of today in a fruitless search for one tiny nut.Bugger.