See attached pic. This unkown thingy is right by the distributor. THought it might be the timing advance for my distributor, but I have no clue. Couldn't find anything about it in the manual.

What is it and does it matter what side those hoses are plugged into? Hoses go into throttle body before and after tps and I didn't label them while unplugging them from the thingy at one point. truck doesn't seem to run differently if you switch them, but I can never really tell if my truck is running good or bad until I'm on the highway in the mountains.

cheers, confused.

 

I would say it is probably your vacumn advance/timing , I have the 3.0 but will try and find you a pic , in the mean time do a search for "vacumn routing" and you may find a nice pic to help you , I am subscribed to one , I will try and get you a link for it .

 

It increases the idle when turning the wheel, thus preventing the engine to stumble or die. Most people just remove the hoses and plug the fittings on the throttle body when they fail.

 

Plus.

It is a pressure valve on you power steering pump that opens as power steering pressure (and load on you engine) increases to allow more air to bypass the throttle keeping your idle from dropping when you turn the wheel.

Some of them are metal like the picture you posted and pretty tough, the plastic ones break pretty easy and they all are rather expensive.

Definitely has nothing to do with the distributor