The Hand of God

I have a 2016 Dodge RAM 2500, with a 6.7L Cummins engine. It's been a great rig, but like anything mechanical there's always something here or there that needs attention. One item on that engine is the air heater grid. It's a plate under the air intake that heats the incoming air during cold weather starts. On that grid is a bracket with a nut and bolt. The bolt is standard steel, while the nut is stainless steel. One potentially huge issue with this grid is that it may overheat, causing the bolt to melt, and the nut to fall off. That's bad enough, but when it drops it can easily roll into the #6 cylinder and destroy the piston and/or the entire cylinder. It's an issue the Dodge knows of, and will do nothing about. New engines can run $20k. I recently got a code saying there was an issue with the grid heater, and our mechanic said to park it immediately and he'd get the replacement kit coming from Banks Power. They were changing it yesterday, when I got a call to come down. I went down and he showed me the grid, and where the bolt had melted. 

He said he didn't think it had gone into the cylinder, but it was in there
somewhere, and they had to find it before they could put everything back together. Finding it could get as bad as pulling the head, which requires taking the entire cab off the chassis, and that means a LOT more money. While I was there they hunted up a small camera on a wire. We all went over to the truck, and he carefully slid the camera into the engine and started looking. He was moving the camera, and watching the small screen, when two of them said, "There it is!" They found the nut, and there was still a piece of the bolt in it. Being stainless steel, the nut is not magnetized, but the bolt was. At this point, while leaving the camera in place, they fished a small magnet into the engine, very carefully moved it over, and connected with the bolt/nut: "Got it!" Then, he very carefully snaked it back out of the engine. All four of the mechanics in the shop immediately told me to go buy a lottery ticket, because what I saw never happens. That bolt/nut had dropped down, and was sitting right at the edge of the cylinder. He said one bumpy road, or one hard acceleration on the freeway could have put it into the cylinder, and now we'd be talking many thousands of dollars of work. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason it hadn't dropped into the cylinder was nothing short of the hand of God. And now, thanks to divine intervention, and the work of an excellent mechanic, I'll get my truck back today, fixed and running great, and I'll never have to worry about that particular problem again.