For the last few millennia I have had a tiny spanner with a hole in that is the perfect fit for the valve clearance adjuster screw.
Yesterday it vanished.
Can anyone point me in the direction to buy a tool for the job? I don’t like using adjustable spanners.
It is written in the stars that if someone tells me what I want and where to get it, the day it arrives will be when my old faithful tool reappears!
(Maybe a subject for another thread: “Do tools have their own life??” and a sub thread: “Why is it always the really obscure nuts that disappear and never the M6’s etc?”)
Because you don’t have an oil filled drip tray under your bike.
If you do then all the dropped nuts and tools will be in it.
And there is a scientifically sound reason why this should be so.
quote: “And there is a scientifically sound reason why this should be so.”
please elaborate!
I took a good quality Imperial spanner (can’t remeber the size) and carefully filed the jaws worked well for years and hundreds of operations.
HTH
Steve
Of course.
If a nut hits the concrete floor it will bounce and go anywhere.
Even a small amount of oil in the drip tray first slows down the nut and then holds it.
Among my selection of brake bleed nipple spanners is an open ender that is a dead fit on the valve adjusting nuts, not sure of the size as it is buried in my “special tools” drawer.
Good call there!
We’re heading into car boot sale territory here. 
Steve
What bike is this for?
Any bog block…
Well at least you’re honest.
And I thought it was magnetism 
That’s a picture of the tool I made many years ago from a damaged spanner. Just took a little cutting and filing. It fits the adjuster on the back of the clutch as well.
What about a bicycle spoke adjuster
http://www.giant-bicycles.com/_generated/_generated_au/parts/products/images/1000/2010/2010_gear_0008s_0011_950829.jpg
Right OK, I can tell you the standard toolkit tool was a short strip of steel maybe inch and a half long, with a slot in one end.
As Don-Spada you might make something like that without too much difficulty. Tho personally I’m not allergic to adjustables and probably too lazy to make the special tool if I didn’t have one so I’d probably use the adjustable.
The tendency of any dropped item to dive under the nearest vehicle is correctly termed ‘Bike Suck’ or Car Suck’ depending on the vehicle.
Both of these will be overridden where appropriate by ‘Drain Suck’.
As I have had to work on the driveway for a while, what about “gravel grip” and “part ping”, the latter is where the offending item travels at least 5 meters from where you definitely saw it drop?
Then there’s the camouflage factor, the thing is in plain view but is EXACTLY the same colour as the concrete / gravel / pebbles / grass / paving slab / dirt between the cracks …
I have a hydraulic lift built into a raised wooden floor, so that it sits flush when lowered. When raised, as it is now, I use it for a work bench and have my Ambassador engine spread out all over it.
If ever I drop anything, it always disappears under the lift and then under the raised floor, which I neglected to build sides to. I don’t know how many times I have been lying under the lift, torch in hand, poking with a stick to retrieve a wayward part. I must get round to sorting it!!
Yes you must! 
How about plastic sheeting?