Vacuum question 84 318i?????

[h e30]

I am very new to this forum and these cars. I have a question about a part that is located on the firewall towards the passenger side of my car. When I purchased it the part looked just as it does with no vacuum hoses connected. When I bought the car the guy thought it was going to need alot of work because the idle surged really bad from 2000 to 1000 rpm. I found a bad vacuum line going from the distributer to under the intake manifold and amazingly now my idle stays around 1200 and I am thinking this is my problem.
Can anyone help me with telling what the part this is and where the vacuum lines should go from the part?
I have ordered a Bently but will not have it for another week. Below is the pic of the part in question.

Thanks for any help. I have allready learned so much from just playing around on this site but can not seem to find any info even through search.

[hsvturbo]

Welcome to the forum. The solenoid valve (with the red cap) is to connected between the vacuum advance on your distributor and the below port will be plumbed to the manifold.

[h e30]

Thanks for the info. I am going to hook it up and hope it works still. It looks like the previous owner bypassed it and am sure its because it does not work. Either way it is a win, I was able to get the guy to come off his asking price by 600 because of the faulty idle. Repairing the 1.00 vacuum line pretty much solved all the idle/rev problems. Now I just got to get it to sit at 8-900 and I will be good.

Thanks again for the help.

Would anyone happen to have a part number for this? The valve is bad and I would like to replace but everywhere I go they have no clue what this is or can even cross reference. I can not get anything to come up when I enter into google from the numbers off the solenoid valve.