Hello everyone, first time poster here and am a happy 2nd owner of a 210K 2008 Acura TSX 6MT. Hoping this is an appropriate place to post this question as i've lurked here over the years admiring people doing engine swaps and teardowns. over the christmas break i was giving the car a decent overhaul- starter rebuild, vtec solenoid gasket replacement, motor mounts replace, and a few other things, including performing a valve adjustment. Everything was smooth sailing until my butter fingers caused a feeler gauge to slip while poking around and then it fell into the top of one of the exhaust valves on cylinder 2. At first I was wondering if it fell outside the engine but i certainly confirmed it when i tried to get one of those arm puller tools, stuck it into one of the openings i could see and i heard it fall even further .

I'm waiting for a borescope and smaller magnet tool to show up to my house, and am planning to rig up my shop vac with duct tape to attach to a small aquarium tubing to see if i can suck it up, but wanted to ask all of you K24 experts how far this feeler gauge could have possibly fallen? Is it realistic that i can pull it back up from where i dropped it?

I am desperately seeking advice and possible worst case scenarios in my situation. Could I be looking at an engine tear down here? Or just swapping the entire engine, if that's more economical? Needless to say I am totally pissed off at myself and feel terrible. I thought to myself i should have had a huge string tied to these feeler gauges too but never did it.