What the heck is it?....Part One

[Doug House]

This gizmo is under the hood of my Criterion, on the driver's side fender in the place where the inverter is usually mounted. It has a piece of very thin black plastic tubing coming out the thin end that appears to be broken off from somewhere (no idea where). The other side has a fitting for thicker tubing, like windshield washer tubing, but nothing attached.

Does anyone have any idea what this gizmo is? Never seen anything like it before.

Thanks!

 

[Paul Steinberg]

Vacuum operated air compressor to operate the rear air shocks. Usually they don't work, and are removed. Some cars had a dial on the dash that you would use to inflate and deflate the rear shocks, and others have a linkage system that would do this automatically as the car was loaded or unloaded. Most times, when the rear air shocks were removed, so was this linkage mechanism. Through the years GM used various incarnations of the air pumps, so I can't say if yours is an original or a replacement. I will say that it is a different style than I have usually seen mounted under the hood.