Man, it's just one thing after another with this car sometimes!

You may have seen a few of my other threads recently. I started out replacing a belt tensioner arm and pulley, and decided to do the vacuum pump as a "since I'm already there" kind of thing. Before the job, the car was running well enough, other than the odd noises that were starting to come from tensioner pulley and arm bearings, which were completely shot.

Anyway, everything was going fine until I was installing the new VP and I over-torqued one of the bolts and snapped the head right off. I put everything back together as best I could, hoping 5 good bolts of 6 would do the trick. The car continued to run fine, but had developed an oil leak (from the VP, of course), so I parked the car in the garage for a few more days.

I finally got the snapped bolt out without too much trouble. Reinstalled the new-ish VP with brand new hardware. Was extra careful to tighten all 6 bolts gingerly in a cross-wise manner, first by hand and finishing with a half-turn or so with a ratchet. Hooked up the brake booster line.

Before I moved on, I wanted to make sure this thing wouldn't leak, so I went ahead and started it without putting the serpentine belt or fan back on. Started right up, I mean, quicker than maybe it ever has in the year I've owned it, but in a couple seconds it started idling really rough and knocking/pinging/nailing or whatever you want to call it. I shut her down (which seemed to take longer than normal) and took a closer look - realized I hadn't hooked up the other line coming off of the vacuum pump. Okay, so that would explain the delayed shut-off, but would it have anything to do with the idle?

I hooked the other vacuum line up and tried again. Nope, same story. I took another look and realized the vacuum line I had hooked up wasn't properly seated on the barb, and was possibly leaking. But again, would a vacuum leak even affect idle on these engines?

Where I'm at now is waiting until tomorrow to put the fan and serpentine belt back on, going for a drive, and seeing what happens. Maybe it just has to do with sitting for a couple of weeks? I don't know - but I don't see what I could've done to noticeably affect idle quality through a simple VP R&R - especally sine I just dod the very same job without negative effect (other than the snapped bolt).

Any ideas?

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