I bought one of those vacuum lock-up kits from summit... worked well, till i riped apart my engine and broke the vacuum switch. I was thinkin... that vacuum switch must send power to the lock-up seleniod when the engine is pulling vacuum or running right? So can't I just put that switch on keyed power and do the same thing? I was going to run it to my ECM and be done with it... except my ECM and harness was out of a manual camaro. So where the wire should be... there aint one comeing out of the ECM... just key it?... or switch it? or what ever... constant power (well when the car is on) to the seleniod wont hurt it will it?

 

From what I understand the vacuum switch actually disengauges (turns off) the lockup when there is a drop in vacuum, such as WOT, or of course when the engine is off. This keeps the TC Lockup from lugging the engine when you put the pedal down.

I have just recently done some work to wire up my originally-manual-equiped car, I basically provided power to the hot side of the solenoid (through a break cancel switch) and a ground (through the 4th gear pressure switch) so my TC Locks up whenever I'm in 4th, which is not so great, so I am now looking into a vacuum switch myself. When I hit 4th, the TC Locks up, and if I give it fairly light throttle (not enough to get it to kick down to 3rd) my engine lugs.

 

The switch sends the signal to unlock/lock the converter at a certain vacuum point, I don't think you can wire up anything that will take it's place and still be automatic. It's a TCI kit I think, or at least mine ordered from Summit was, I'm sure you can buy the switch itself for pretty cheap from them.