I think I may need some more help. To catch you up, the vacuum leak was coming from the pcv valve boot on the side against the manifold. It made the appearance that smoke was coming from the plenum gasket during the smoke test, but I still would have had to remove the manifold anyway to access it.
After several days of collecting the right tools (adjustable torque wrench for example) and other things, I replaced the pcv valve, boot and tube today along with the plenum gasket and reassembled the manifold.
Now, I don't know what to think. The scanner is now reading high long term fuel trims, but negative short term. After a 10 min ride, the short term trims ranged from about 0 to -5, long terms decreased slightly from +25 to +10 to +15. When the car sits idle, it seems like a cycle where it almost stalls every minute or so, then something clicks and it's ok again. Didn't have this behavior before the change of valve/ gasket.
I tried clearing the data several times with the scanner, but never have disconnected the battery.
These new short term fuel trims have me scratching my head once again, having gone from +25 before the valve was replaced, then starting off at
-18 or so, then 0 to -5 after a 20 min ride with long terms deceasing to about half of what they were.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Could it be as simple as having to drive the car for a while to get the values back to normal? Wishful thinking maybe.
Thanks, Sam