re 88 80Q brake booster

[Eric Huppert]

Nick,

That would be me!

My parts guy said it's a somewhat fairly common problem... The story
goes...My sons car, for sale, son tells me it's not running right the day
before they're coming to buy it....ARGH

Once I drove the car I could hear the vacuum leak while driving. Pressing
the petal changed the level of leak, but it leaked constantly. Takes a good
amount of air to pull vacuum in the canister when starting. After a minute
or two it would run okay (somewhat okay!)

Of course I didn't drive the car until after spending four 10+ hour days
going through every single possible ign and fuel component and associated
wiring, pulling injectors to check for bleed down, checking possible vac
leak points numerous times!

Only remedy is to replace... Not that bad of a job. You can disconnect the
master cylinder and carefully bend away from the booster. (First remove the
clutch hyd line)  Remove the pin on pedal assy. Remove three nuts securing
booster with a 1/4 drive with long extension and swivel... After four days
of struggling I didn't feel like bleeding brakes hence the bend job with the
mc..

Tricky part is getting the three nuts back on with swivel... You can't get
your hands anywhere close to start nuts, just takes a LOT of patience. I
actually let my son struggle with it for 20 minutes before I jumped in.
Figured he should feel a little bit of the pain!

Also, make sure the return spring is hooked up once it's back together.
Didn't realize it had gotten knocked off and pedal wasn't returning
correctly!

Once again, if it's leaking bad you'll be able to hear it in the car... You
could also check with a vacuum pump...

Good luck,

Eric