I have an 86 V6 and was replacing vacuum lines on my car this afternoon and am wondering what vacuum line runs from the right hand side of the engine back to the firewall. Its about 12 inches long and I do not have my books handy to look it up. Can someone let me know what this is for? It had a pretty big hole in it and I'm wondering what that might have affected.

Thanks!

There are two firewalls, forward and rear. The big line that sticks out from between the plenum runners and points forward connects to the line that runs to your power brake booster. The two smaller lines that run to the rear are for the canister purge and vent lines, and cruise which taps off the vent line if you have cruise control.

JazzMan

Must have been the power brake booster then. Seeing as how I have no idea how long it has been that way am I going to notice a significant difference in braking now?

You may be talking about the fresh air line from the EGR Solenoid to the air cleaner, If so then don't worry about it because the EGR Solenoid has a filter anyway. Jazzman can post a picture of this line if you ask him. he is our main man for pictures.
Don

Jazzman...can you get me a pic? Just so I know we are all talking about the same line...

In this picture you can see the steel tube sticking out from under the plenum, that's for the brake booster. If this was disconnected you'd lose your power brakes instantly.

Upon further re-reading of your original post, and what another person said, I believe you're referring to the fresh air supply line for the EGR solenoid. It connects from the back of the solenoid to a steel cross tube on the forward firewall, and the other end of that tube connects to the air filter housing.

In this picture of the EGR solenoid you can see the rubber tube connected to the far side of it:

There is a filter inside the EGR solenoid, though it has long turned to mush. The purpose of the tube is to provide relatively cool air from the filter housing to the EGR solenoid when it bleeds off vacuum to the EGR valve. Without the cool air supply the solenoid will be sucking in the superheated dirty air from right above the exhaust system.

JazzMan

Maybe these will help:



photo:JazzMan

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Yup, it was the tube running from the EGR solenoid. It has been replaced with new tubing, along with every other rubber line I had back there! As far as the EGR solenoid is concerned, how often should that be changed?

The EGR solenoid can be run until failure, much like the AE-35 unit. Generally, no need to mess with it unless you have a code 32 or a driveability problem associated with EGR failure.

JazzMan