Hubs vacuum pipes diagram/photos?

Oh, I will take them off today. I don't think they are engaged all time, previous owner (old guy) used it for city trips mainly for past several years.

Maybe less fuss would be with manual lock hubs.

Manual hubs are a simple, if slightly inelegant and more expensive solution.
Personally I'd buy the hose (it's less than £10) and do a few quick tests, running a length of hose from the hoses under the battery straight to the ports on the hub and see if it makes any noise when going between 2 and 4wd. If you have signs of life then it's a positive inidcation and an hour or so routing the hoses should see you with a fully functioning, fully automatic 4wd system.
If the initial signs are less positive then consider manual hubs. The vacuum system is all simple and fixable and personally I wouldn't be without it, but it does depend how much patience you have and how keen you are to keep it.
 

First I will try what you said, little test if whole system is working at all.

I wonder, how exactly manual hubs works? I mean, not hubs exactly. I seen that you need to plug shut vacuum lines to trick car that 4wd is engaged propperly. So you move lever just as "reminder" that 4x4 is on? What about 4L? Will it work normally by lever?

The lever will still do the same job. in 2wd the front axle isn't driven. Moving the lever to 4h engages the drive to the front axle in the transfer case. This action also pushes a switch inside the transfer case, which is the on/off signal for the vacuum system to connect the hubs. It's the 2 wire connector on the back of the transfer case. If you unplug it vacuum hubs and 4wd light will not function at all.
The moving the lever further back switches to the low ratio gearset in the transfer case.

Sorry to bring up an old thread but I've just bought a Jimny for 4x4 trials and found I'm missing big chunks of vacuum lines as well. The 4wd light illuminates on the dash but unsure if it is actually working yet. there is no 4wd low light illuminated and 4wd low doesn't engage. The lines around the front axle have a break in them but look to be all present. There are three further back down the chassis on the right hand side that are broken and no pipes hanging or anything. Is there a diagram anywhere that I can use to replace or does anybody have any input?

One of my vacuum lines was blocked just before Xmas and I get the steady green light to say it is in 4WD but it isn’t. I messed with the vac lines quite a bit then bought manual hubs (AVM) and just looped the vac tube back on itself to fool the pressure sensor.

I actually quite like the semi-manual system it’s more definitive, but I intend to buy some 4mm vac pipe (in two colours) and replace all of the vac pipe with the T-pieces at the top so I can put it back to standard at some stage, possibly just for the summer. The existing vac pipe has far too many joints and solid/flexible pipes to be reliable.

Robin