I am extremely lucky that this car had most of its original date-coded parts. Many of those are electrical in nature, provided by Delco-Remy.

One part with the incorrect date code was the distributor. It was indeed the correct part number, as far as concours is concerned, but the date code was way off for the build date of the car and compared to the date codes on the other original electrical components.

The engine had the original distributor when I bought the car, but it was "lost". It's a painful story that I won't detail here. An equivalent unit would be fine for any other Corvair but not this one, since it is so close to having all of the numbers match.

In June 2010, I began looking for a P/N 1110329 distributor with a date code beginning with either 5J or 5K, based on the date codes of the other original electrical components. I was very pleased when CORSA member Ray Smith of New Jersey contacted me right away. He was happy to sell me a spare distributor, that he had bought from Larry's Corvair Parts, with the date code 5J29, smack in the middle of the date codes for the other original electrical components.

Duane Wentlandt alerted me that turbo distributors, at least for 1965 and 1966, had a purple inspection or identification mark. And sure enough, I examined a couple of NOS distributors and found the mark on both of them. My local Wesco paint store did a great job matching the color and I painted the stripe (much more neatly than at the factory!), as you can see in the picture.

I started wondering, hmm, I bet Chevy didn't make turbo Corvair distributors all that often, since they were used on a low-production engine. It seemed possible that 5J29 could be the only possible date code within the correct range. CORSA member Tom Rahochik practically confirmed this, because he owns a '66 turbo coupe built the same week as mine (at Willow Run) and it has an original 5J29 distributor. Sweet!