[HarveyH]

The most common word is that the 009 distributor was designed for an industrial engine that would be operated under fairly constant speed and load conditions, nothing at all like a car. It is strictly mechanical advance with very limited advance characteristics. I've heard rumors that some variants have a vacuum can on them but I don't really know. It was picked up by the VW Type I people who needed a cheap mechanical advance distributor, and it seems to work fairly well in that role. The 050 distributor is also only mechanical advance, but the curves are much better suited to the Type IV engine. Another option is to use the stock 914 distributor. If your carbs don't have a vacuum port, or you don't want vacuum advance, just don't connect to the vacuum can. There are variances in the advance curves of the various 914 distributors (Dave Darling has a chart of the advance data on one of the other 914 sites, but I don't remember where it is) but any of them are much superior to the 009 for the Type IV. I have a 2055, cam with 40 IDF Webers. The car came from the PO with the 009, but he also gave me the original FI distributor. After reading all of the threads in the various BBS's and lists I decided to try it. My carbs have vacuum ports so I have hooked up the vacuum advance port also, and there is a very noticeable improvement to low and mid range running over the 009.
As for timing, you can either use the stock timing specs for your engine, or try the modified instructions for timing carbed engines from the PelicanParts technical articles.
Good luck,
Harvey