Can you show photos of how you hooked up the vacuum gauge, etc?Update. With freshly rebuilt carbs from Joe Curto and 20 mins of idle mixture adjusting with a vacuum gauge attached to the intake manifold, I ended up with 13-14" at 700 rpm. This seems to be normal for a BJ8 cam. The idle is ridiculously smooth. If I drop it to 500 rpm the alternator light starts to just glow a bit and it really sounds happy at 650-700.
Thanks for posting photo I agree with you that the smaller threaded fitting would also work too.So this is probably the feed for the power brake booster. I got rid of the wretched power brakes so long ago I forget. The tube goes to a Smiths vacuum gauge in My dash. The smaller threaded fitting would probably work.