Sorry about being so vague in the topic name, but I just don't know what this thing is or does...

Anyway, for a while now my '86 2.8 felt sluggish - as if I was driving uphill all the time or dragging an anchor. There is a big, easily perceiveable loss of power. Went to see my father-in-law yesterday for the new year supper - I couldn't keep up with tercels and old rusty vans on the uphill parts of the highway... The engine did rev, but it just wouldn't go. Sure, even a slight pressure on the throttle made the speedo start climbing (so it's not a slipping tranny, i think), but it was taking ages, and it would completely run out of breath uphill - it shifted down really low to keep the pace!

Checked the brakes - they're perfect...

Transmission - it seems to be working perfectly - good shifts, no lag, no slip.

Torque converter - seems perfect. No stalls, yet no excess slippage - if I let go of the brake, the car starts crawling gently... even uphill! So I guess it's fine.

So i figured it's the engine - as it indeed felt a bit jerky...

So I pop the hood and look for problems - air filters were clean, but I did notice a cracked "cable" coming out from a big rubber plug just behind the big air duct. I reached for it to have a better look... and the "cable" snapped off like a dry twig! It turned out to be empty - not a wire, but a hose of some kind, leading from the central of the three ports in the rubber plug to some port on the side of the injector module deep in the middle of the air ducts wrapped around it... you know what I mean. The rest of the hose disintegrated in my fingers... Here's a picture of the rubber plug and the only remaining hose/cable. The one that broke was coming out of the center of the plug.



Can you please tell me just what exactly this hose does (and what does the entire rubber plug do for that matter) and could it be the reason behind the loss of power I've been experiencing?

I'm guessing it's some sort of a sensor which takes part in determining the fuel/air mix or something related. Now, plugging the hole in the plug where the hose snapped off made the idle noticeably smoother - so I taped it up for now... but I am afraid of the rest of the broken hose injesting stuff into the injectors - and of course my mechanic was gone for the day because of New Year....

Please help... I'm worried sick

 

if i recall right the one that u broke goes down the to fuel presure regulator.

i cant even check mine to be sure cause i removed the rubber plug from mine and welded the hole sshut cause with the turbo i would keep poping that stupid plug out the back of the tb

 

Those are vaccum lines. I was working on my fuel injectors and broke mines today also. Ducktape, electrical tape or go to the parts store and buy some vaccum line repair hosing and patch it up.

 

Thanks, guys! I was thinking of using a hose from an aquarium air pump kit... Should help, unless the rest of the hose snaps off deep in there, at its base. I swear, it's as fragile and brittle as if it was made of ice or something. I'm sure our canadian weather lately might have had something to do with it.

So does this damage explain the loss of power, or is there something else i should be lookign for, too?

 

thats probably it, a vacuum leak and no fpr. if you have some of the old hose stuck in there, you can simply pry out the entire rubber piece. you can just tape it up for now and it'll be fine, but its not to hard to fix a vacuum line. you can do it!