A surplus vacuum gauge is about a 5 dollar item. Much cheaper than an exorcism.

Tools are forever. Won't be wasted even if you have to pay a few more bucks to get a gauge sooner. Proper diagnostics are the least expensive and fastest way to a repair.

One thing you need to know about a diesel and cold weather. When they're cold, the blow by, which is largely water vapor, will contaminate the oil. So will unburned fuel, which is abundant because it's being sprayed on cold parts. When it starts warming up, you'll get a lot of vapor from those contaminants breathing out of the warmer oil. When the engine is fully warmed up, it'll act more normal.

If you never let it warm up, your oil will be useless in short order.

 

assuming he did all the steps I listed, he already did that. That would mean he only gets the HVAC box to switch functions by pumping the brake each time he wants to switch. Sounds to me like the vac pump is vary weak and the vac passing the check valve is operating the HVAC dash pot instead of the on demand vac of the pump.

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Thank you all for the help.

My issues have been resolved.

Replacing the booster has fixed the problem.

To clarify, the brakes did not need to be "pumped" for the hvac to start working, they only needed to be depressed. With the brake pedal down, the hvac would work flawlessly until you lifted off the pedal at which point the hvac would cease to function indicating the leak would only happen with the pedal at a resting position. No hiss or noise was detectable either in the cabin or from the engine compartment.

The booster was just over a year old. Apparently, after an inquiry at O'Reillys, my unit had a lifetime warranty. The booster was swapped it out for nothing.

Vacuum pump made 25 in.Hg by itself, 25 in.Hg with brake pedal depressed with 2-3 in.Hg without applying the brakes. I got a new tool out of the deal to boot!

No white gases emerging from the breather tube or the oil filler tube today. It is much warmer today however. I'm assuming what I was seeing was a temperature differential and "normal" but I will continue to monitor the issue.

I will be building the equipment to pressurize my inter cooler/ after cooler system to start tracking down my perceived loss of power. I'm fully prepared to admit its my imagination and at the point I noticed it I could have simply been hypercritical to anything and everything.

I'll return with an update soon as its figured out.

Thank you again all for your help.