Took my -88 245 (145.000 kms only!) for a trip of nearly 300 km today in snowy Norway. After about one hours steady drive, the car started to misfire especially when I was accellerating in 5th or 4th gear. Had to stop, and tried to fix eventual moisture problem by spraying on distributor and cables (which used to sort things out on a Fiat I had once - BTW, I'll NEVER buy a Fiat again!!). This did not help much, but I started up and puffed towards destination. Had growing suspicion about icing in the carb, as the weather was ideal for that kind of trouble.

On the way back the car was better, but still not OK. It was still snowing, but temp was a little higher outside. Decided to take a short service on the car in the garage at home and purchased oil, filter and a new gasoline filter as well because I thought a clogged filter might give similar symptoms. After having done all that, I noticed that there are a lot of coloured vacuum hoses going from various places around the carb to a round black gizmo close to the coil. I also found a quite big vacuum leak due to a broken T which might be the cause for previous problems. Fixed this temporarily, and now the engine hums nicely again.

Now; does anybody on this forum reckognize this vacuum gizmo which may look like some kind of distributor? What is it and what does it actually do? Some kind of anti-pollution system or what?