Greetings Gary,

If your engine vac system is set up like mine, and from what you say, it probably is. The brown line goes to your key switch vacuum valve, and off that valve comes a brown with blue stripe going to your Injection pump shutoff valve. This valve bleeds off the air in the brown / blue line when the key is turned in the start position and then reverts to a vacuum on the solid brown line. The easiest way to test out this switch is to pull the brown line off the tee under the hood and pull a vacuum with a hand pump at that tee without the brown line being involved at all.It's gonna take some pumping to draw a vacuum because you are also drawing down your vac storage reservoir. If the locks all go down when you depress the door knob, and continues to hold a vacuum, minus about 4-10 psi for the door lock actuation that is, the rest of you system is leak free. Then put your hand vac on the brown line and pull a vacuum and see if it holds, then turn the key to the start position, and pull another vac on that same line. If it bleeds off the start vac valve is leaking air all the time in the run mode, it should be drawing a vacuum. It is only held in place by two screws on the ignition switch itself, so removal is pretty easy if you remove the kick panel and have small hands to get to the back screw blindly. I cleaned mine out with wd-40 to get rid of the gunk holding the o-rings, then sprayed a little silicon into it to lube the rubber seals contained within. So far it's been doing great, but as a back up I ordered another valve just in case this one fails me again. They're cheap, some $16.00

Any other help I can provide, just let me know.


Charles

P.S. All testing is done with the engine off.

[Edited by can-do on 07-06-2001 at 12:23 AM]