I've been reading for days about the little carburetor heater device in the stock exhaust manifold, but I just can't grasp all the details about how it works.

There is a little vacuum pod on my exhaust manifold, and the car runs Beautiful with the vacuum line off of it. It fires right off when it's cold outside, and never has any problems sputtering or dying.

I was re-doing the vacuum hose routing when I had to re-wire my engine bay after the fire, and hooked up the little vacuum pod on the exhaust manifold. With it hooked up and vacuum pulling the rod, the car sounds like it's running on 3 cylinders and will eventually die on its own. All it takes is to unplug that little vacum pod, and the engine runs like a champ.

There is obviously something wrong with this little mechanism. I want to eliminate it. I don't care about cold starting because:
A) the car already starts on the first lick when cold, and runs great even when cold
B) this isn't a lexus, so I don't mind if by some chance it doesn't run butter smooth until it warms up

Is there a way you can either block this thing off or eliminate it without resorting to putting on some headers?

It sounds like your talking about your EGR. Yes, it can be blocked off, if you don't have to smog the car.

Where is the vacuum line that goes to it coming from?

CJ

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Part of Tyrde-Browne Racing

A picture would be extremely helpful to answer this question.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Without the vacuum line it is just a plug thats the egr valve when it gets vacuum it pulls a little rod that opens a plunger to allow exhaust to be re burned i dont have mine plugged in either

Yep, that's the EGR valve, and as previously mentioned, simply disconnecting the hose is all you need to do to disable it.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.