[lust4speed]

My suggestion would be to leave it and not worry.

I've found a 1/4 pushrod, 1/2 pushrod, almost full pushrod, nuts, washers, strings of silicone, gasket material, nylon teeth off original timing gears, and stuff not even related to the engine. Everything just finds a quiet place in a corner of the pan.

[Sirrotica]

Originally Posted by lust4speed

My suggestion would be to leave it and not worry.

I've found a 1/4 pushrod, 1/2 pushrod, almost full pushrod, nuts, washers, strings of silicone, gasket material, nylon teeth off original timing gears, and stuff not even related to the engine. Everything just finds a quiet place in a corner of the pan.

^^^^^ This

It's not going to go through the oil pickup screen if it's of any size. Having worked in many dealerships and independent garages over 50 years as my career, no matter how careful you are, stuff like this happens, but we never stressed over it. You put the engine back together, and send it down the road never to be heard from again.

If the engine has a windage tray, it's more than likely lying on the top side of it, difficult if not impossible to retrieve without pulling the bottom off the engine. Flushing it out of the drain hole are probably slim to none.

Not sure where the fiberglass statement comes from, in all my years working on Pontiacs. I've never encountered fiberglass valley pan gaskets, cork is what the ones I've seen are made from. Paper is also a fiber, as is cloth, and I think back over the years of assembling, and repairing Pontiac engines and have zero recollection of an fiberglass gaskets in any of them.

In 1973 Pontiac started using RTV on valley pans, so before that they were cork. Most replacement gasket sets are cork too. I never even use gaskets on valley pans, only RTV for the last 48 years.

My advice if your paranoid about that gasket running through the oil pump and causing damage would be to put a by pass oil filter on it and it will filter the oil to under 5 microns. I wouldn't bother to do this if it were my own engine, but if it will make you sleep better at night spend about $200-300 for a by pass oil filter. You can't duplicate the removal of fine particulate with a conventional oil filter with 40 micron pores in the filter media of an OEM filter.

A member here wiped out a flat tappet camshaft on a brand new build, and contacted me about what to do without completely disassembling his engine after replacing the new cam and lifters. I suggested he buy a by pass oil filter after flushing the engine best he could with solvents, and fresh oil. He followed the advice, and the engine is healthy after the replacement of cam and lifters over a year now.

If it were my engine with a piece of gasket in the pan, I'd just run it, and forget it........

[Joe's Garage]

Lift the motor W-A-A-A-A-Y up and pull the pan off. Then search for and find the chunk and remove it.

Pain in the ass = YES.
Never need to worry about what might happen with it inside = YES.

As mentioned, it's probably on top of the windage tray, or stuck to the crank or a rod. Eventually, it would probably end up down in the oil - but maybe not. It could just sit up there on top of the windage tray forever.

As a side-note, many years ago (decades, actually), a good friend of mine changed out the cam on his RAIII 1970 TA. He laid an old greasy dark-colored dishtowel in over the lifters and pushrods while he scraped off the remaining gasket material and then forgot to take it out before he put the valley cover and intake back on......

That one got ugly really fast........

Note to self after that: Always clean off all the old gaskets BEFORE you start to install new stuff or even think about reassembling.

If it was mine, I'd probably flush a couple gallons of cheap, new WalMart oil over the top of the cam/lifter area with a really big drain pan underneath. Maybe even pour it through several times, from all directions and all areas of the lifter valley, to see if it would dislodge the gasket chunk and get it down and out the drain hole.

You might get lucky.

Good luck!