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It seems to me a lot of weight is being put on what Carl Beck reported of what someone at a materials lab 35 years ago told him. What if the guys in the materials lab were busy, stuck Carl's bolts in the drawer and fobbed him off when he came back? Why would anyone believe such an anecdote in the face of a document from Nissan at the time saying what they used? Just as OEMs today thoroughly check suppliers work against the spec, I'd be very surprised if Nissan in the 70s accepted cad plating when they'd specified zinc.

Image search shows a couple of social media post pushing the ebay sale. This add was included in one. I've seen it before but it's still funny to me. SilodromeIncredible Barn Find: An Early Datsun 240Z With Just 7,00...This is an early Datsun 240Z that was built in the first year of production - 1969 (1970 model year). According to the seller it has just 7,000 miles from

Then I would guess that with the electronic flasher it makes no difference since it's not load related. And in the case of my all LED bulbs the load (even with all 8 hazard lights blinking) is insignificant.

I wonder why the seller doesn't at least blow the crap off of the car. Looks like the tires are holding air, he could even roll it out the front of the shed/garage. Looks like they're going for the "barn find" mystique. Or hiding the Earl Scheib paint job. Weird stuff.

You wrote it yourself. Up above where you showed that cadmium was used through 1964. Cadmium was commonly used as a plating material in the automotive industry. It was so common that the shortened "cad" was used to describe plated parts. The problem is that the transition away from cadmium has not been clearly communicated. And assumptions have been made, like the claim that cadmium was banned in Japan. No written documentation of that seems to exist, for the time frame of the transition. The transition away from cadmium seems to be more anticipatory, expecting future bans, or limiting future liability. It was a choice, and therefore there was no regulatory reason not to use it. Ran out of zinc-plated stock? Use the old cad stuff. It's legal. Write up a QA exception. (Manufacturing world realities). The open question is about the parts that Carl Beck had tested at Honeywell. Did they come from a 240Z? Were they original to the 240Z? How did they get there? Possibilities have been proposed. Nobody has said that all 240Z's used cadmium-plated parts. Only that cadmium-plated parts were found on a 240Z. Not the same thing. The cadmium question exits on other car forums. Just as entertaining. Lots of misinformation. https://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/164007-metalurgists-educate-me-please.html

Hi! Additional info, our cars naturally have power source for the fog lights in the wiring harness. Kats

But - again I ask - what's the origin of the "It's Cad" narrative relating to the Z? Where is it actually written? I see no source except long-held belief which appears to be built on presumption. Looks like the goalposts are being moved again. The whole point of the N.E.S. Nissan Engineering Standard was to ensure that fasteners could be specified and supplied to a fixed - trusted and repeatable - system. I've already given an example - from a Z-specific factory parts list - of the way an NES part number suffix could denote a particular finish (Zinc electroplating in the example I gave) on a given class of fastener, and it applied over the whole range of Nissan products in the period we are talking about. Nissan would have been using tens of millions of such items in their manufacturing operations, so it was natural for them to have a system to support that and huge manufacturing facilities for pieces to that standard. To imply that there was some sort of back door where Cadmium-plated parts slipped into the supply chain - and specifically on the S30-series Z car's production process - seems desperate to me. And "outsourced"? You remind me of Carl Beck telling us that Nissan Shatai was nothing to do with Nissan and that Nissan had 'outsourced Z production to a different company'. Such musings don't seem to take into account the complex interlinked structures of Japanese Keiretsu. https://nissan-neji.com/

Thanks for noticing the Shakespeare quote and the intention. I think all this really does matter. It's not going to cure cancer or bring world peace, but it is one of the things we have traditionally done here on this forum and drilling down into the details like this helps us to understand the cars better. Well said. Yes, sometimes the exchanges are less than pretty but that is the type of thing that happens when somebody pokes their head above the parapet and questions the status quo. I often remark that such exchanges may give off a fair amount of heat and noise, but also a little light.

cool stuff, was thinking of adding a blue tooth device to my sony stereo. Might check into that. I love the switch, I have driving lights on the front, and the switch is by the rear defrost switch, since the bezel has the light indicator there. Was thinking of an indicator light to go in above the hazard switch..........

The car was so powerful because it didn’t have just normal horsepower…

Ondagrass…

100% agree with Jim. I did install a relay and used LED bulbs for the fog lights.

Hahaha!! I'm hoping it won't come to that! ☺️

I thought I had pics of both flasher units (turn signal and hazards), but I can't find them. Memory says there are markings on the outsides of the cans that indicate how many filaments each one is designed for.

I wasn't there when they designed it, but my assumption would be the difference in the load that the two flasher units see. The turn signals are flashing four filaments (three in the rear and one in the front). While the flashers are seeing twice that (six in the rear and two in the front). The "off time" portion of the flasher unit is predominantly controlled by the load attached to the flasher unit. If that load is too small (like using LEDs), the off-time will be.... forever. If that load is too large, the off-time will be too short and the on-time will also longer than intended. The point is... The flasher needs to be matched accordingly to the load it is being used to control.

thanks for the feedback, Any suggestions in getting to the back of the switch and removing it? It seems like taking the tach out would get you close? Anyone have a good short tail hazard switch around?

Could be a body shop guy but he looks like a long time owner, he'ssmiling. The no color photos added to his mention of patina would be an added PITA in my opinion for selling. Everyone is going to ask for better pics.

The way my insurance policy is with Hagerty's if it catches on fire I'm breaking out the weenies and marshmallows and enjoy the bonfire. But my luck some dumbass would stop and put it out before a total loss.

If you're logged in is it easy to make the pictures bigger? I can only see the small ones unless I open them in a new tab. Facebook is clunky. Looks like a dash cap. Another seller that doesn't know what they're looking at?

Ditto.

And if you decide to pursue auxillary lighting, here is the factory wiring Easter Egg just waiting for that switch in the dash. Remember, if you go this route you will want to install relays and larger gauge wiring to actually power the lights.

Switch for fog lights

From the pics that’s in really nice shape if the rest of the car looks like that.

I was just preemptively trying to avoid a digression. It felt like we were making some progress in the discussion. I'm still curious about the test results that Carl Beck got. Could a supplier have replated cadmium plated hardware? We now know what Nissan specified but is it possible that there is actually cadmium-containing hardware out there? Doesn't look like they said avoid cadmium, they just specified a different finish. I assume that Nissan outsourced that type of work, that they didn't have a plating operation of their own.

I left mine blank, but I don't have driving lights. I did repurpose the slot for the manual throttle next to the choke for the antenna switch when I swapped out the stock radio back in '91 for a Sony cassette player that I've now replaced in 2017 with a RetroSound Bluetooth radio. Our son 3D printed the faceplate for the radio with the raised lettering and the surround of the radio face that I painted white so it has a more stock look.