Need help troubleshooting 2008 Smart Fortwo

Last Saturday went to run a quick errand in old faithful, a 2008 Smart Fortwo with 165,000 miles on it. This car has always been reliable and never left me or the wife stranded. A few minutes into the drive and it starts to lose power and from a stop blows some smoke from the tailpipe on acceleration. I fire up Torque and notice the vacuum gauge is reading weird and the air fuel ratio is way off. Pull the codes and aside from misfire codes which were expected it is showing a P2279 code for a vacuum leak. Nurse it home and try to troubleshoot it. Oil level is on the low end of where it should be, so I brought it up to normal. Pull the breather hose from the valve cover and it is pulling a strong vacuum from the engine side with virtually nothing on the intake side. I figure it is a PCV valve issue or vacuum hose. For those that haven't had the pleasure a Smart is not the easiest car to work on. Step 1 on replacing the PCV valve is to remove the intake manifold which is not the easiest thing to do.

I start calling around to import shops and finally find a shop which I have not used but has good reviews. Dropped it off on Monday and picked it up today with apparently no resolution despite their assurance that after getting the oil level right and replacing the spark plugs their mechanic found no issues. As soon as I fired the car up it was not right and upon inspection it does not appear that the coil packs have been removed in some time. That will hopefully be resolved by a phone call on Monday but I am still at a loss. After nursing the car home I get back to troubleshooting it and pull the intake hose from the throttle body. There is zero vacuum at the throttle body. I covered it up with cardboard and held it tight to the bore and the engine didn't lose a beat. To me it appears that air is absolutely getting in downstream from the throttle body.

I can visually see the PCV valve through the intake runners and it and the bit of visible hose look fine but I realize that is not a good indicator of functionality. Basically looking for some affirmation of my rudimentary diagnosis and some pointers on which way to go with this. Sorry for the long post.

If I read correctly, you have suction from the valve cover outlet?  Most of the time, that is a ruptured diaphragm in the breather system. Volvo's since about 09 have an assembly on the top of the cam cover that needs to be replaced.  Diagnosis  is that it's really hard to pull the oil cap off while the engine runs, or the dipstick whooshes when you pull it.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

I replaced the valve cover gasket and spark plugs tube seals about a year ago, and don't recall seeing anything like that in the valve cover. What you are suggesting is there is a one way valve of some sort that allows vacuum to be pulled through the breather into the intake tract, but prevents the engine from pulling vacuum back through the breather from the intake?

Looks like I get to drop the engine. Found a YouTube video of someone with the exact problem I am having. Basically the PCV valve has a pin which falls out when it fails and ends up blocking the drain back from the breather system. Fun fun fun...