The "Rats Nest"?

RexSeven wrote: I replaced most of the vacuum hoses in my old FC (now Dave Estey's) with silicone and damn is there a lot! Some of the hoses connected to old, brittle plastic emissions doohickies that were a major POS to remove. Getting to all of them would have required removing at least the upper intake manifold. This scene is what greeted me when I removed the air filter box on my '94 Alfa Romeo 164. Like the FC, many of the vacuum and coolant lines are being replaced with silicone to better withstand the intense heat.

Oddly enough there weren't too many "unnecessary" vacuum lines in my GTV6. Just the usual crank breather, MAP, and... shoot, I can't recall any others...

Hungary Bill wrote: Oddly enough there weren't too many "unnecessary" vacuum lines in my GTV6. Just the usual crank breather, MAP, and... shoot, I can't recall any others...

There aren't as many vacuum lines in my 164 as I expected, however, there's more than vacuum lines in that tangle, like coolant and fuel lines and assorted wiring (like the O2 sensor wires). It's not as bad as it looks when working on it as most of the routing is easy to keep track of.

mad_machine wrote: at least they did not try to do what Porsche did with the 928. Vacuum actuated power locks never seemed like a good idea

That describes most VWAG products until recently.

A lot of other German cars, too.

They got that from Mercedes diesels, the entire car was vacuum controlled, except the power windows.

I like the Ford trucks from the late 90s era.

The ones with the 7.5 gasoline engine had Hydroboost.

The ones with the 6.9 diesel engine had vacuum brakes, so they had to have a vacuum pump on the engine.

mad_machine wrote: at least they did not try to do what Porsche did with the 928. Vacuum actuated power locks never seemed like a good idea

they worked fine in the 66 Lincoln that i had 20 years ago...

Favorite classic car story.

One of my customers goes to car shows where they don't just look at the cars, they check them for function. At one such show, a judge was standing over a Packard's opened door and requested that the owner raise the window.

The Packard proceeded to dump no small quantity of hydraulic fluid onto the judge's shoes.

People bitch about regulators failing, but that ain't nothin' compared to how expensive hydraulics can be. I hear that the window controls for a Mercedes 600 can be in the $10,000 range.

Knurled wrote: The ones with the 6.9 diesel engine had vacuum brakes, so they had to have a vacuum pump on the engine.

I'm pretty sure vacuum pumps are common on diesel engines. Both my TDI and my Cummins have them. The TDI is driven off the end of the camshaft and is unbolted for TB changes as the drive slot is used to lock the cam at TDC. I forget how the 6BT drove it. The TDI has a small baseball-sized reservoir as well.

The TDI has a good number of vacuum lines although it's not too hard to figure out what they all do. Of course, the diagram in the engine bay helps. Didn't help so much for the Cummins since all the diagrams were for a V10...

I think the only people who bought V10s were the people who didn't want to wait eight months to get a Cummins.

I just wanted to say that this is the most horrific thread I think I've ever seen here, and I've seen threads with pictures of Jukes AND Azteks. The hose chart Kenny put up is gonna give me flashback nightmares.