Thanks for the replies. Babymog, your experience and posts have been helpful in the research I've done on the '87 300TD. With the vacuum pump, I guess I'm not much of a gambling man... It seems that if I can remove the word "catastrophic" from the equation with a new and improved part, it might be worth the money. I try to balance out "fix-as-fail" with preventive repair/replacement. Unless I'm incorrect (and, anybody, please tell me if I am) the Vac Pump doesn't give much, if any, warning before failure and the resulting "catastrophy."

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-RK
'83 240D, auto, 170,000 miles "Old Blue"
'87 300TD, 140,000 miles