Car Craft restored a ’69 340 Swinger that we gave away at the ’85 Street Machine Nationals. Way back in the ’83 issue of Car Craft, we began a trade series that started out with an aluminum connecting rod and ended up with the Swinger traded in by Tom Troycen from Coralville, Iowa. When we got the car from Tom, we fired the engine up and it almost immediately broke one of the aluminum valvespring retainers, which dropped the valve, broke the head off, and shoved the valve head through the top of the piston. This is one of the 340's surviving aluminum retainers I found while rummaging through a box of old parts in my shop the other day. There's a reason why nobody uses aluminum valvespring retainers. If you want to see the Swinger, there's a photo of it in the Nov. ’06 issue of Car Craft in Rear View on page 114.