All:

I took apart and old distributor witha a BRS 383 identification plate.

The housing on this distributor does not have provision for a seal [no groove].
After all the paint and rust was removed I found 2 little numbers--posibly one of them is a letter. Looks like 81. Any info to identify year of manufacture would be appreciated.

Also, there are no distributor cap retaining clips with this distributor. I have seen some of these with bailing wire clips and others with clips installed that you see on much later distributors. Which is correct for the number on the distributor housing?
If it is any help, the rivets retaining the identification plate have rounded heads.

In addition there is no identification on the capacitor. It is about 3/4" diameter, has a black wire with a ring termenal and the mounting bracket has a single hole and is permanently attached to the capacitor. This cannot be correct. It surely had a Bosch
capacitor when delivered. With the number 81, what would have been the Bosch identifier for the capacitor. Are these still available?

_________________
Albert Tiedemann, C356C
"The Hermit", Reg #4998

Hi Ab,
The 383 distributors without the sealing o-ring groove are early ones. I am not sure what the transition date was, but around 1950. Could probably track it down on from the early VW folks. The "81" you see is probably B1 which would indicate a January 1946 date. This distributor was used on the 25hp VW motors which would be consistent with that date. This distributor aparently came with both the "bailing wire" type clips as well as the flat metal clips. IMHO the wire clips were far more common and were used on all of the 356 units. Although it seems sort of backwards the flat metal clips were apparently used on the very early 383 distributors.

Alan