New 914 owner needing help

[NJTom]

Hi I just purchased a 1972 Porsche 914. It has a 1974 1.8 L motor with a single carbourator. I had a 914 years ago but it was FI. The previous owner had a family member do his work. I was able to start to the car but it misses and back fires and seems to lose power when I try to drive it. I've been doing my research and think it's either electrical or maybe in the carbourator. With that being said, and the fact that there was an extra distributor in a box of parts, I've attached a picture of the one in the car. It doesn't have the vacuum advance and I'm not sure it goes with the 1.8 or maybe it was from the old engine. I think they may have done the same thing with the coil. But one step at a time. Hope someone can help! Thanks in advance!

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

All of the stock 914 distributors had vacuum dashpots on them. It is most likely that the distributor on your car is the "009". This is a relatively common one to swap in because it's cheap. Same with the single-carb setup--it's cheap. That is about the only virtue with either of those, in fact.

Backfires may be vacuum leaks in the carb setup or possibly exhaust leaks. Or it could be a really badly set-up carb. It's not easy to tune the single-carb setup to work nicely on a 914 engine, BTW, and using a distributor originally made for a stationary engine that ran at one single RPM (I'm talking about the 009 here) doesn't help matters.

--DD

[NJTom]

Thank you! That was a big BIG help!

[larrym]

your 1.8 oem camshaft and a carburetor are simply not a compatible combo

009's are almost the worst next thing you can do - not enuf mechanical advance curve

the operative word above is "cheap" - as in " cheap fix attempt" by P.O. - and that's why the car was FS

there are hundreds of threads about this on the several 914 and Pelican sites as well as on The Samba