WTF is this THING in our 340 ?!?!?!?

That does not look like any tooling I've ever used.

Weird.

I will say this, so others may learn. An engine will swallow many things with ease. **** will move through an intake like...well...poop through a goose. I had a pretty good sized throttle body on my own engine and the neighbor just had to watch and help while I lashed the valves. He was using a 1/2 wrench that was about 3 1/2 inches long, on something and he set it on the throttle body. I never saw him do it. Neither did I see him do it. I was almost done when he showed up. I put the valve covers on, jumped in the car and checked everything out, including opening the throttle. I fired up the engine and it ran for a bit and started missing on the drivers bank. I thought WTF is going on, and it started hitting on all 8 again and I thought that is weird. About that time, it started missing on the passenger bank. I'm thinking you must be S¥€#%ing me!!! It started hitting on all 8 again. I'm standing there thinking this is insane. About then, it started missing again, and this time it didn't stop. So I pulled the fuel, killed the mag and though how does this happen running the valves?

I pulled the drivers side valve cover and didn't seen anything. Pulled the other side and there it is, the #4 intake is stuck open about 1/2 inch. I'm thinking, wtf, I stuck a valve? It's my heads. How'd I pull that boner. So I started pulling my junk apart.

In the end, after I pulled the intake I could see the end of this wrench sticking out of the number 4 intake port. Once I got it all apart, I found what really happened.

The wrench started out falling into the drivers side and went into the number 3 or 7 hole. It beat the hell out of that valve and seat, and then it blew back out of the hole it started in and blew over to the number 2 side where it went into number 2 and beat it up real good. Then it blew back to the odd side and hit the other hole. Don't know which one happened first, 3 or 7 but it got to the second hole on that side and ate it up. It then blew back into the intake and back over to the even side where it parked itself in the number 4 hole.

That was all at about an 1800 RPM idle and took no more than about 1 minute. I think very few people have an even reasonable understanding of what happens in an intake, even at an idle. When a wrench that size can move around like that, there are some serious pressure and reversion pulses in an intake.

The other thing is, check out all the cylinders. Things will visit all around.

The top picture looks like the little check needle under the accelerator pump nozzle on a Holley carb.

I still have the wrench.