Sorry I missed this thread. Marine q-jets continued to use the early design castings thru the production runs. I have yet to see a later style casting built by the factory as a Marine carburetor. I have seen a few electric choke models, still based on the early castings, instead of divorced choke.
In any case, to date I haven't seen any q-jets, Marine or otherwise with a "9" in that location in the number sequence. I would imagine that it is for a 1990 Marine application, as the last number run was "8" and coverted 1980 and later units. It would make sense that a "9" would be the very next run, covering 1990 and later units.
It would be interesting to know when the last Marine Q-jets were produced. I've worked on a few Mercruiser marine carburetors as early as 1993, and they were the Webber AFB clones, not Quadrajets, so they may have been phased out by then?.......Cliff