Ok, I spent last night scouring the interwebs and going through the FSM and I found something that may be an issue. I've looked at a couple of pics of 22re's to compare to mine and all of them have this sensor on the valve cover...
...the problem is that mine doesn't. What is this and what does it do? For reference my rig has a build date of 11/84 (1985 model year) and is a california model.
That's the switch that raises the idle when the a/c is turned on. I'm guessing yours doesn't have a/c?
It does sound like a vacuum line is causing the issue. Check the lines on the throttle body all the way to their sources closely they are "ported" vacuum so they are only active with the throttle closed at idle.
I yank all that vacuum crap off other than the a/c idle up on all the rigs I work on and I have yet to have a rig not run better when done. So making sure all that crap is at least on correctly will certainly help.
