The Idle vacum can be an indicator of the condition of the engine.Most
vacum guage boxes or manuals will give a Trouble shooting guide.
Timing plays an important factor in correct vacum readings so make sure
it is correct first. As you advance/retard the timing the vacum guage
reading will change. If the engine is blowing oil out of the breather I
would also suggest checking the compression. You may have enough blowby
that the engine intake stroke is not creating the required vacum.
If the timing is good and the compression test bad the worst you will
have is low power and a messy engine until you decide to pull and
rebuild.
P.S. An old trick to finding vacum leaks (here is where I put in the
disclaimer that WD 40 was flamable and explosive you should be very
careful not to use it where it could start a fire or get hot enough to
explode) is to use the old formula of WD 40 (flamable) and with the
engine running sparingly spray all points that are suspected leaks. If
you hear the engine RPM pick up you have found a leak.
Norm Garland
nfgjr@juno.com
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