Identifying 1970 914-6 Distributors

TLDR; Porsche 914-6 built prior to April 1970 would have CDI and a Marelli 911.602.022.00 S112BX distributor.

I guess it should come as no surprise by now that identifying something as common as a distributor is not that straight forward. 914-6 came with models from a couple different manufacturers, and those come in different flavors. The 914 Restorer’s Guide to Authenticity states: The 1970 914-6 was fitted with a Marelli distributor. 1971-1972 cars had Bosch distributors. I have no reason to dispute that. So far so good. The parts manual lists Marelli distributor: 911.602.022.00 as an option. To confuse this a bit, it would appear that the Bosch cut-over happened during 1970. According to the workshop manual, the Bosch distributors came in in April 1970 and prior to that would have been Marelli. Our car having a birth date of February would make it Marelli.

The Marelli distributor appears to have two flavors: S112AX and S112BX. The key difference appears to be the BX models did not have a condenser, as it wasn’t necessary for cars with CDI (Capacitor Discharge Ignition). This appears to apply to both 914-6 and 1969-71 Porsche 911T models.

The Marelli distributor has a bit of a bad rap. Best I can tell, this mostly comes from the lack of replacement parts. Not that it was a particularly bad design. As of 2022, replacement parts are pretty easy to obtain. So we will go the Marelli route since we need to replace our current distributor if the engine is to go back to roughly stock specification.

Currently on the car is Bosch 0231159002. Best I can tell, this distributor was for the 1968 911s, with yellow label variant for 1967 911S?

Luckily, it appears that only one Bosch coil was used regardless of the distributor. Porsche part number 901.602.502.00 (parts manual calls this “ignition transformer for BHKZ”).