My 98 Tacoma 4x4 is missing the bracket circled in the photo. It's a vacuum check valve bracket on the brake booster. What's its purpose? I've searched and came up empty.

 

The purpose? My guess is the engineers thought the flexing of the motor versus the static mounting of the brake booster on the firewall would over time cause stress at the vacuum assist port and either cause an issue with metal fatigue (similar to the clutch pedal bracket mount of the 2nd gens) or diaphragm fatigue leading to poor brake performance in a potential emergency situation.

So a .10 piece of tin and a bolt takes up the forces.

 

Well, that does make sense fierohink. thx. Time to look through my scrap pile for something similar and make one.