I have the e4od and just had it rebuild using the monster in a box kit and added a huge oil cooler...
Good choices for every E4OD as far as I'm concerned.
Vacuum around 15 ... some may not bother with vacuum but being its a pump I want to know im going to have breaks... lol
I had a vacuum gauge fail while driving my Bronco years ago. The brakes worked just fine at a stop sign in one town. Then about 70 miles later, I had to make a bathroom pit stop in a gas station. I was only going about 45, but when I stepped on the brake pedal and it was rock hard, I still missed the driveway off of the gas station. It was a good thing that there's two driveways to that one. I barely made it into the second one while standing on the brake pedal. I think I was still going about 30 when I pulled into that one. For some dumb reason, I didn't learn from that one and it still took me another 7 or 8 years to buy a vacuum gauge. Now that I have one, I don't want to be without one. I feel that it's as essential as an oil pressure gauge or a pyrometer.
600 under throttle NA seems super low. Are you sure your gauge/thermocouple is reading correctly?
I cheaped out and bought a few chinese thermocouples off amazon a while back and none will cause my pyro to read over 900 degrees when it's around 1600. I tried the gauges with a good thermocouple and they read accurately, so the cheap thermocouples are at fault.
I did the same. Mine would read 400-500 driving down the road empty. It got to where it would read about 300 going down the road. Next it started only working whenever it felt like it and I think it's completely dead now. Since I don't know if it's the probe or the gauge itself, I now have a new Auto Meter pyro to put in my truck.