Hello all! This is the most helpful forum on the web. The knowledge that you all share has saved my family countless dollars and saved me a lot of repair time as well. Thanks to everyone.
I have an '89 inline Econoline van. It had been giving me all kinds of problems with "hunting" for idle, intermittent dying at traffic signals, and hard hot starting. The advice given me ranged everywhere from cleaning/replacing the idle speed control valve to replacing the EGR, PCV, O2 Sensor, etc. I did replace all those elements ( not a big deal because they were all original parts with 100k+ miles on them ) ; however the problems remained. My lucky break came when I found some info about checking for vacuum leaks posted on this site. While I was doing this, I discovered gasoline in the vacuum line leading to the fuel pressure regulator. This gas was getting sucked back into the "throttle body" instead of returning to the tank, causing the car to idle very unevenly/die etc. Since the problem turned out to be a leaky diaphragm in the regulator, I think the pressure loss was the cause of the hot start problems as well. Replacing the regulator solved all the problems and the van is running like new!
The question I have is this: Is there an easier way to change the fuel pressure regulator on this model? It is buried under the upper manifold and I had an extremely difficult time reaching it to perform what otherwise would have been a simple job. Thanks for any info.

 

There is no easy way to replace it, unfortunately. It's easy to get to if you pull the upper intake, but it's debateable whether it's any easier overall. A lot of it depends on how small your hands are and how many upper intakes you've pulled.