Crankcase Breather Flange Broken Piece

[Imatk]

I removed my crank case breather flange today and it probably has never been removed before on my '87 16v.

I had to use a rubber mallet to break it free from the side of the block... which worked.

But then the round part with the o-ring was still inside the block.

I tried pulling it, twisting it, and finally hit that part with the rubber mallet and it came free.

The only problem was I managed to crack off a piece of the flange inside the block. It's probably a half-inch length of the aluminum.

So because it's aluminum I obviously couldn't fish out the piece with a magnet so I drained the oil hoping it would come out with the oil... no joy.

My next step is to drop the oil pan and try and find it.

I'd really like to know if anyone has a "trick" to taking off and installing that round part of the flange.

I found a used one on Ebay and I bought it, but I don't want to crack that one by trying to install it.

Thanks for any help.

[Imatk]

Well as an update, I dropped the pan, found the piece and installed the new flange.

The new flange went in easily so I'm not sure why the old flange wouldn't budge, but I'm guessing it was the o-ring.

Interestingly the new flange has a little ear on the end probably to help remove it unlike the one I broke which had no ear on it.