Wedding Ring

In 2003 I was getting ready to head home. To my horror, when I reached for the steering wheel my wedding ring came off, hit the dash, and went down a vent. I shined a flashlight down the vent, but no ring.

Fast forward 5 years.

My wife started to strongly encourage me to get the ring back. I started doing some research on the Internet. It felt good to confirm I wasn't the first to lose a ring down a vent. There was advice about lowering a magnet down the hole (which doesn't make sense for mine, the ring is gold and silver which aren't magnetic). There was also advice about using a grabbing-snake like tool that you can buy from Sears, taking the blower off the motor and reaching through the venting from the backside, and finally taking off the entire dash.

It appears the only suggestion people had success with was taking off the dash. I knew however this would be the most work so I went ahead and tried the other suggestions first (including taking the blower off the motor). When I didn't have any success, I decided to bite the bullet and get working on the dashboard (and center console, thanks to how BMW designed the interior).

After a couple of hours I got the dash off - however I was dismayed to see the main vent tank was still difficult to get into (it was better than before however). Laura and I shined a flash light in the tank, desperately hoping all of the prior effort would pay off. Fortunately Laura caught a glimpse of gold in the light! We then spent about 20 minutes fishing in the tank using the Sears snake-grabby thing, after a couple of close calls we managed to pull the ring up!

So, the story ends on a happy note, after 5 years the wedding ring is back on my finger. Err... maybe that's not such a happy note?