I have a 1986 Camaro with the 2.8L Iron Duke engine with a 5-speed manual. Am doing an engine rebuild on the motor but when I was taking it apart and out of the engine compartment I managed to break what seems like every dry rotted vacuum (I am assuming) line and I can't seem to find an exact replace online for it yet. But my question is if the lines are actually needed and if it would hurt performance at all. If it does does anyone know where I can find a direct replacement?

 

Yep, there'll be a few important vac lines you'll want to sort out, but many can just be plugged (you don't want to leave any vac ports on the engine open). Off the top of my head, the most important ones are:
-the brake booster (large diameter line that runs into the back of the intake)
-Fuel Pressure Regulator (sits behind the throttle body, on top of the fuel rail under the upper intake, towards the front of the motor)
-MAP sensor (can't recall whether or not mid-80s 2.8s had this, but if you do, it'll look like a little black box with a vac port.... on the 3.1 at least, it's connected to the single vac port that sticks out of the back of the upper intake, towards the pass side, left of the "T" fitting)
-Possibly EGR... take a look at that black thing sitting behind your alternator; memory is telling me that this is the EGR on the 2.8s, and that there are vac lines running to it. Check out AustinThirdgen.org, they'll have full factory service manuals with vac diagrams that you can check over. 2.8s had some funny business going on with the EGR/ charcoal can

Aside from this, the other vac lines in your 2.8 should be for accessories/ non-essentials like cruise control (which it looks like you don't have anyways), the heater valve, and HVAC controls (the HVAC is usually plumbed into the side of the "T" fitting on the back of the intake, opposite to the brake booster), and you can just plug them. Don't worry if you snap one of the plastic lines btw, you can just slip tubing over the broken ends, or just replace them completely with rubber line. If you broke one of the plastic lines coming off the back of the throttle body, you can get little plastic "male to male" fittings that will let you hook up a rubber line as well. It may seem like a lot of work, but it's all relatively straightforward in how it's laid out. Just take your time, check diagrams, and plug anything you don't care about I'll come back and edit this message in a sec with a link to the diagrams on AustinThirdgen

EDIT: And here it is! If you scroll down on that page, you'll see the diagram for MPFI 2.8s. I'll go ahead and paste the image below just in case anything happens to the site, I know it's gone down temporarily a few times over the years.... unfortunately only shows the vac lines for emissions (missing MAP sensor/ brake booster and some others), BUT you can also find the entire factory service manual on the left bar of AustinThirdgen; the Firebird ones will be the same (aside from light wiring and such), doesn't need to be the exact year/ model. Looks like they have an '89 Camaro fac manual, '86 Berlinetta manual, and an '88 Firebird manual. Any of those oughta have the 2.8L MPFI diagrams. Good lookin Camaro btw, oughta be pretty fun with the 5 speed!

 

Thank you so much for this information. If i'm not mistaken I believe the EGR on my 2.8 does have a line running from the back of the throttle body where the line for the fuel regulator feeds to but I can not verify at this moment. In the meantime should I just buy some hoses for all of the plastic lines or is there a harness I could possibly buy, both are fine by me I just want to know what would be the best situation for me.

 

No worries! You should just be able to buy bulk hose at your local auto parts store, vac line is usually pretty cheap. If you need any of those male to male barb adapters for the throttle body ports, I believe they'll be in one of those "Dorman Help!" packages. Not aware of any premade harnesses, you should be good to just run new rubber lines. The vacuum just has to get from point A to point B, doesn't really care too much about whether you have plastic or rubber lines I broke most of my plastic lines back when I replaced all my vac hoses, and it hasn't caused any issus for me over the past 6 years or so. Take a few of the hoses in with you when you go to buy hose, I think there are a couple different sizes (aside from the massive brake booster line lol). I wanna say most of it was 1/4", there mighta been some 3/8" mixed in there too though

 

This is wonderful. I definitely will head to the store and get some rubber lines. Again I appreciate it a lot. It's my first camaro and i'm learning everything about this car along the way!

 

Any time, hope you enjoy it!

 

"Iron Duke"?...

 

Yeah that's what I heard when I was talking to people about it and its just kinda stuck with me. I know that its the LB8 engine but iron duke sounds better. Now that im remembering probably according to a magazine I read isn't that the 4 cly?

 

Yep, the good 'ol Iron Duke is the 2.5L 4cyl. Pontiac motor, funny enough... only Pontiac motor you could get in a thirdgen They put em in early thirdgens for some reason, as well as Fieros (which eventually got the 2.8L V6 as well), and the Northrop Grumman LLV; the USPS mail vans that you've seen around the roads for the last however many decades. Came in plenty of other GM cars in the 80s, but those are the 3 I always remember. Not gonna start rambling again, but the Iron Duke is a pretty dang good motor for what it is, nigh unkillable.

 

Maybe the best thing for me to do is to just buy an old mail van from USPS and then swap that into the camaro for a invincible sport tank

 

I'd love to get an old USPS LLV, but they don't pop up on gov auctions all to often... USPS doesn't seem to like regular people driving around in USPS vans, weirdly the ones I have seen go on sale have been stripped of all the USPS markings, maybe they'll start popping up more now that the USPS is transitioning away from the LLV... an Iron Duke swap would be pretty funny though. The Iron Duke actually uses the same bellhousing pattern as the 60degV6, so in theory you'd just need motor mounts and the wiring to make it work if you wanna get real crazy, try to track down one of the fabled Iron Duke Super Duty motors... think they were only available on special order from GM back in the day, but rated somewhere around 230hp and up! Pretty wild for an 80s GM 4 cyl, but good luck finding one these days... 300+hp versions were used in the old Nascar Dash series, and there was a surplus of them on the market for cheap once that ended in 2011, but seems like the supply has dried up now I always liked the idea of putting an oddball motor in a thirdgen...

 

Wow I didn't know that there was a Super Duty motor. And how did they manage to pull 300hp+ out of a 4 cylinder . I'm not saying it's not possible but for 1980's, that is impressive. I'm imagining that if you're pushing that about of power wouldn't you need a pretty heavy engine, instead of using a cast iron block I would say it would have to be a early forged block to handle all that pressure and stress from the increase in angular acceleration! Sounds like I gotta get my hands on the super duty and put it in either the Camaro or what about a 2008 Saturn Vue