wgfv hose and performance

[auditude at neta.com]

It's been drizzly out lately, and a few days ago it rained pretty hard. 
 So I'm wondering if the barometric pressure is affecting my 
performance.  I know low pressure is supposed to bring in rain, isn't 
that right?

I replaced my wgfv to wg vacuum/boost hose with a piece of 
vacuum hose I had.  The hose that was on there didn't look too 
good, and had broken at the end of the wg nipple last week.  When 
I trimmed it and put it back on, I was surprised by how strong the 
car felt.

I noticed today that the nipple on the wastegate is quite a bit larger 
than the nipple at the top of the wastegate frequency valve.  On my 
car, the hose was pressed onto the wg nipple, and the frequency 
valve had a little factory hose clamp on it.

The vacuum hose I put on looked to be the same as the hose I 
took off, with the braided cloth sheath around it.  The original hose 
had a rubber hose around it, presumably to insulate against heat.

The little vacuum hose I put on was incredibly difficult to get onto 
that nipple.  I'm not thinking that this setup was factory spec.  The 
hose was however the perfect size for the wgfv, and slipped right on.

After I replaced that hose, I took it for a spin.  The car felt slower 
than it had been just recently.  But it is also sorta raining, and I 
don't know if that's good or bad for turbo performance.  I would think 
the air would be nice and cool and dense and enhance combustion.

Anyways, I put a larger diameter hose on it, thinking it wasn't 
getting enough flow to properly keep the wastegate closed.  It was 
then that I noticed the first hose was so completely torn up at the 
end, that there was basically a rubber plug in the middle of it, 
where the wg nipple performed a kind of a hole-saw effect.  I'm 
wondering if the wastegate was blocked off from the wgfv signal.  
Would that be responsible for that previously-impressive boost I 
was seeing when I first cut off the end and put the hose back on?

I guess when I first got that strong boost, I thought I had finally 
gotten everything on track and was seeing normal boost and power 
levels.  But now it's slower than that, and the stock boost gauge 
shows 1.2 over 0.8/0.9 instead of the 1.4 over 0.9 I was seeing a 
few days ago.  I pulled the codes and all was okay, so maybe that 
semi-plugged hose was making me see higher-than-ecu-intended 
boost?

I guess the good news is that I'm getting a TAP chipped ecu and 
wg spring.  I'll wait until it stops raining and see if the power doesn't 
come back.  Unless someone knows a different reason and I 
should fix something.  The wot switch is new, as is the mf temp 
sensor and michelin man hose.

Thanks,

Ken
'88 5kcstq et al