Ugh.. not a good week for me. Sorry for this to be my third question post in less than a week. This is my "learning" truck so hopefully one day i will contribute more.

Necessary info: I have a 1990 F150 with the 300 engine. 145k miles.

I was changing my valve cover gasket (leaky leaky) when I noticed a cracked orange line at the back of the engine. One end connected to the back of the engine near the furthest back spark plug and the other end connected near the front passenger side by the battery. The line, as you can see from the pics, was completely split in two.

Is this one of my vacuum lines? I have had some occasional high idle. I change the idle air control valve and that helped somewhat.

Also, can I get a new line from my local parts store or will I need to go to a dealer? Alternatively, could I join the two ends and tightly wrap them to re-create a vacuum? This would be a short-term solution though. In the long term, it needs to be replaced if it is that brittle.

Thanks in advance!

 

what i did as a temp fix for one: grab the smallest carb vacuum cap i had, cut off the end, inserted both ends of the broken vac line and used some electrical tape to hold it together.

 

You can use regular vacuum hose to replace the whole thing.

 

Replacing is best. Any parts store carries hard or soft vacuum lines. For a good temp fix just connect both ends with some some vacuum/washer fluid line ( about $1/foot)

 

Fixed this with a replacement vacuum hose. Thanks for the help fellas.