the vacuum pumps from a diesel powered ford truck are engine driven. you would need to fab a mounting bracket for your engine(not hard). as for seeing one in a musclecar application, not yet, but a few engine builders have experimented with these pumps to draw a vacuum in the crankcase to make more power, and the results were promising to say the least(as much as 25 more hp on some big blocks! ). these pumps are also used for running the various vacuum systems on the trucks including the power brakes.
I read an article in a hot rod magazine last summer about using a vaccume pump to increase horsepower just like rbohm is talking about. I've been curious about it ever since. I havn't ever seen anything on how to hook one up or possible donar parts.
rbohm do you know of any specific year/model ranges that come with these pumps ? Since I use a serpentine setup I could put one where my smog pump use to be =)
gsxrken, I'm wondering how this story ended? I have a similar problem (same symptoms you describe) except I'm pulling 18 inches of vacuum at idle, so I'm not sure where the problem lies.
Jcode- I eventually sorted it out. While it was true that my vacuum gauge would show 10 inches vacuum at idle, and more when RPMS increased, my booster wasn't seeing that much. And the reason for that was that I had my booster getting vacuum off the large port on the rear of my double pumper, which also was where I was going for my PCV valve. Turns out the PCV steals almost all the vacuum in this configuration...
I hope your fix is as easy!