Nissan Z: 50 Years of Exhilarating Performance

[HS30-H]

More tea, Vicar? ?

Page 12:  "The Z's L24 powerplant was a six-cylinder adaptation of the four-cylinder L16 used in the 510 and would prove to be a bulletproof workhorse."

Ah, that old chestnut. No mention of the L20 six, or indeed the L20A six. Of course not! And "bulletproof"? Not in initial form it wasn't. Crankshaft re-design and re-homologation required...

Page 12:  "While the additional two cylinders required a new, longer block, crank, and overhead camshaft, most of the engine's internal components - pistons, rods, bearings - were the same as within the 510. Displacement grew to 2,393cc and horsepower to 150."

The two engines first lined up for use in the 'Maru Z'/'270KK' project (in mid 1967) were the L16 four and the L20 six. Soon after, a High Performance version of the L20 six (with triple carbs and 160hp output) was added to the plan, but this was dropped when the S20 twin cam was green-lighted for inclusion in the project. The L24 six only came into the picture much later, as an Export spec with extra capacity that would help to mitigate the power-sapping anti-emissions measures necessary in some markets. Six cylinder L-gata engines existed before the L24, so painting the L24 as a direct jump step from the L16, and created solely for the Z, is both inaccurate and misinforming.  

Either he doesn't know about the L20/L20A, or he's ignoring it. 

The above quotes are taken from a section titled 'Z DNA'. Ironic. It would be fun to give the S30-series Z a DNA test. A few people might be surprised to find out that Daddy isn't who they thought he was...

 

 

[Carl Beck]

On 7/4/2020 at 6:11 AM, HS30-H said:

Page 16: "....but in 1911, US-educated Masujiro Hashimoto began the Kwaishinsha Motor Company in Tokyo."

There was never any company called 'Kwaishinsha'. It was 'Kaishinsha'.  

Here's the original Kanji: 快進社

Here is the original Sign on the factory.

 

 

 

[Carl Beck]

11 hours ago, HS30-H said:

More tea, Vicar? ?

Page 12:  "The Z's L24 powerplant was a six-cylinder adaptation of the four-cylinder L16 used in the 510 and would prove to be a bulletproof workhorse."

Ah, that old chestnut. No mention of the L20 six, or indeed the L20A six. Of course not! And "bulletproof"? Not in initial form it wasn't. Crankshaft re-design and re-homologation required...

Page 12:  "While the additional two cylinders required a new, longer block, crank, and overhead camshaft, most of the engine's internal components - pistons, rods, bearings - were the same as within the 510. Displacement grew to 2,393cc and horsepower to 150."

The two engines first lined up for use in the 'Maru Z'/'270KK' project (in mid 1967) were the L16 four and the L20 six. Soon after, a High Performance version of the L20 six (with triple carbs and 160hp output) was added to the plan, but this was dropped when the S20 twin cam was green-lighted for inclusion in the project. The L24 six only came into the picture much later, as an Export spec with extra capacity that would help to mitigate the power-sapping anti-emissions measures necessary in some markets. Six cylinder L-gata engines existed before the L24, so painting the L24 as a direct jump step from the L16, and created solely for the Z, is both inaccurate and misinforming.  

Either he doesn't know about the L20/L20A, or he's ignoring it. 

The above quotes are taken from a section titled 'Z DNA'. Ironic. It would be fun to give the S30-series Z a DNA test. A few people might be surprised to find out that Daddy isn't who they thought he was...

 

 

As Mr. Iida described it - 

"The improvement of L20 continued afterwards. It is because four cylinder series such as L13 and L16 are completed. To share these four cylinder series and the parts, L20 was again designed. L type series of four cylinders was developed over time, and had been rationalized to detailed parts. It was too good to miss these parts. Reduction in costs can be attempted by sharing parts. The engine that shared parts was called a module engine."

"The engine that shared parts was called a module engine."  These engines did not share parts with the original L20. Mr. Iida also tells us that the original L20 came about based on the engine block of a previous 4 cylinder block.     http://zhome.com/DatsunLSeries/L20NH2004AprilTrans.htm  

I think the statement "would prove to be a bulletproof workhorse"  is accurate. 

[Carl Beck]

On 7/4/2020 at 9:54 AM, HS30-H said:

Page 118: "...the Z432. Four valves, three carburettors, two camshafts. Carrying the S20 engine originally installed in the Skyline 2000GT-R (KPGC10), which was built by Prince Motor Company, the automaker Nissan acquired in 1966..." 

The PGC10 Skyline GT-R debuted in February 1969. The PS30 Fairlady Z432 and PS30-SB Fairlady Z432-R debuted in October 1969. The KPGC10 Skyline GT-R debuted in October 1970, a full year after the 432 and 432-R. So, if we want to say that the 432 and 432-R received the Skyline GT-R's S20 engine, we have to cite the four door PGC10 as the 'source', not the two-door KPGC10.

In any case, it's not strictly accurate. By the time the S20 engine was being finalised for production, it was already lined up for use in the S30-series Z chassis as well as the C10-series Skyline, and the cylinder block was engineered to fit both mid-rear sump (Z) and front sump (GT-R) configurations and their corresponding oil pickup/main oil gallery and dipstick locations. In fact, the first batch of 432/432-R engine block castings were made at the same time as the first Skyline GT-R blocks.

And 'built by Prince Motor Company'? The S20 engine was descended from the Prince GR8, but was quite different. In truth the S20 was a Nissan product, designed and made by what used to be Prince before it was subsumed by Nissan... 

Interesting isn’t it? That the sedan was introduced ahead of the Z.  It seems that Nissan’s top management felt that the S20 should be introduced in the Z, so that the Skyline could be advertised/sold as having the most powerful sports car engine - rather than putting a sedan engine in a sports car. That was why the S20 was put in the Z by management direction. (as I currently understand the story). It was a clever trick by the head of the Development Department to get Mr. Matsuo’s Plan A selected for production - as the long nose on plan C based on the previous roadster chassis was ugly)...

[HS30-H]

10 hours ago, Carl Beck said:

 

You're making my point for me Carl, whether you realise it or not...

The whole point - as I tried to make clear on another thread where I criticised Nissan's constant repetition of old mistakes - is that the original Romanisation of the company name as 'Kwaishinsha' was wrong. Yes, they even wrote it in large white letters on the outside of their factory in Toshima-ku, Tokyo.

I don't know who was originally responsible for this - and I have some sympathy for them - but they made the mistake and it has stuck. In plain terms, that letter 'w' in 'Kwaishinsha' is a Japanese linguistic impossibility. Take a peep in a Japanese dictionary and see how many cases you can find where the Romanised version of a Japanese word has a letter 'w' following a letter 'k'. It won't take very long, as 'Ku...' is followed abruptly by 'Ky...'. There will be no 'Kv...', 'Kw...' or 'Kx...'.

Look at the bottom line of the 1921 catalogue. It is written in Kanji. I have highlighted 'Kai Shin Sha' in red:  

So it's right there in black and white. 'Kai Shin Sha'. Rather quaintly - and perhaps a clue to the 'Kwai' mistake - the final two Kanji characters in the above line say 'Kata Roku', a naive form of the English 'Catalogue'. These days it would be written in - phonetic - Katakana characters (カタログ).

The question is, why do Nissan themselves still carry on with this mistake whilst others do not? From many Japanese technical and scientific sources you will see it correctly Romanised as 'Kaishinsha', and - somewhat ironically - Nissan's arch rivals Toyota get it right in their own museum and museum literature. Back in 1994 the Toyota Automobile Museum held a special exhibition for 'Pioneers of Japan's Early Automobiles' in which Masujiro Hashimoto, Kaishinsha and the DAT car were heavily featured. The research and display was better than anything I've ever seen Nissan themselves present. 

Japan's National Science Museum in Ueno, Tokyo has an extensive collection of material relating to early Japanese automobile and motorcycle manufacturing. Mr Kazuyoshi Suzuki, who curates the collection, wrote an excellent book called 'The Japanese Motor Industry in the 20th Century' which I highly recommend. Mr Suzuki fittingly chose his Chapter 23 to be titled 'The Origins of Nissan - Kaishinsha and DAT'. 

 

Anecdote: The location of that original Kaishinsha factory (the 'Dai Ichi Kikai Kojo' in Higashi-Nagasaki, Toshima-ku, Tokyo) is now a large supermarket. 100 years ago it was surrounded by small plots used for agriculture with the occasional private residence dotted around it. Now it has been completely subsumed by urban sprawl. I used to live in the area, and made a pilgrimage.      

 

[HS30-H]

11 hours ago, Carl Beck said:

As Mr. Iida described it - 

"The improvement of L20 continued afterwards. It is because four cylinder series such as L13 and L16 are completed. To share these four cylinder series and the parts, L20 was again designed. L type series of four cylinders was developed over time, and had been rationalized to detailed parts. It was too good to miss these parts. Reduction in costs can be attempted by sharing parts. The engine that shared parts was called a module engine."

"The engine that shared parts was called a module engine."  These engines did not share parts with the original L20. Mr. Iida also tells us that the original L20 came about based on the engine block of a previous 4 cylinder block.     http://zhome.com/DatsunLSeries/L20NH2004AprilTrans.htm  

 

We've been here many times before, haven't we Carl? I'm even slightly nostalgic for the days when you were denying that the first two engines lined up for the Maru Z/270KK project were the L16 four and L20 six. Remember when you were telling us that the prototypes were widened and lengthened to accommodate the L24, which didn't even exist at that point?

Your (rather bowdlerised) translation of Nostalgic Hero magazine's Hiroshi Iida/L-Gata engine story as seen on zhome is still pushing - through you, as that's not what Hiroshi Iida wrote - the idea that L-Gata 'Year Zero' was somehow the L16 (notably ignoring the L13 which was designed alongside it...) even though the whole article makes it clear that this was a story of evolution rather than revolution. Their use of the photo of the 1964/5 L20 six is the most obvious clue to Iida and Nos Hero's linear presentation of the story, but you insist on adding your own L16 Year Zero skew ('Made For USA' confirmation bias) to it.

Iida makes it clear that - when developing the first four-cylinder L-gatas - he and his team had the advantage of being able to do what they had not been able to do during the time-pressed design, development and initial production of the L20 six. They were able to take advantage - significantly - of new tooling and advanced metallurgy now available to Nissan (especially significant was the new pressure diacasting machinery that was coming on line) and were able to incorporate improvements that were simply not feasible beforehand. It was perfectly natural for the L20 six to evolve into the L20A and L23, and - later - the L24, utilising the advantages of the modular system which could share components and tooling across both six and four cylinder variants of several capacities and beyond. Drawing an arbitrary line between the L16 and everything that came before it is not something that Iida did, and it is not what you should be doing either. But you do, and you will won't you? 

It's no wonder that Mr Evanow writes about the L24 as though the L20 and L20A did not exist, and paints a direct jump from L16 to L24. Evanow namechecks Zhome.com several times in his new book in just the same way he did with his previous book 15 years ago, so it should be no surprise that he swallows that stuff whole. This time he namechecks Hitoshi Uemura and his book, although he doesn't seem to have read the parts of the Uemura book which make the L16, L20 and S20 plans for the Maru Z/270KK project clear.  Not 'On Message' enough, perhaps?

11 hours ago, Carl Beck said:

I think the statement "would prove to be a bulletproof workhorse"  is accurate.

"Bulletproof" enough to hold up production and require a crankshaft re-design? Something that wasn't necessary on the L20 or L20A. Guess they just got lucky, huh?          

Edited July 12, 2020 by HS30-H

[RIP260Z]

Thanks Alan for the kind words, and to reinforce, this about the CSP311 is just un-researched waffle. Just more lazy "research", done in a few minutes.

It took me months and months of transcribing kanji and translating, and cross referencing, (as well as what was written in English) to put the Silvia history together. Why didn't they get in touch....?

[HS30-H]

2 minutes ago, RIP260Z said:

Thanks Alan for the kind words, and to reinforce, this about the CSP311 is just un-researched waffle. Just more lazy "research", done in a few minutes.

It took me months and months of transcribing kanji and translating, and cross referencing, (as well as what was written in English) to put the Silvia history together. Why didn't they get in touch....?

I presume (hope!) you haven't bought the book, Ian. I don't recommend it for CSP311 scholars, as it might be a health hazard. For example:

 

Page 121: Talking about the CSP311 Silvia: "The car also fostered some characteristics similar to the Chevrolet Corvair".

 

Wow. Just....wow. Let that sink in for a moment. Had he mislaid his spectacles? 

 

[RIP260Z]

3 minutes ago, HS30-H said:

Page 121: Talking about the CSP311 Silvia: "The car also fostered some characteristics similar to the Chevrolet Corvair".

More waffle (being polite here). I have seen this before, probably know the source of this  pile of s... Its like saying the Chevolet Covair fostered some characteristics similar to the Ford Model T. And the Model T fostered similar characteristics from a horse and cart.

Thankfully I haven't brought the book, wasted my money.

[HS30-H]

11 hours ago, Carl Beck said:

Interesting isn’t it? That the sedan was introduced ahead of the Z.  It seems that Nissan’s top management felt that the S20 should be introduced in the Z, so that the Skyline could be advertised/sold as having the most powerful sports car engine - rather than putting a sedan engine in a sports car. That was why the S20 was put in the Z by management direction. (as I currently understand the story). It was a clever trick by the head of the Development Department to get Mr. Matsuo’s Plan A selected for production - as the long nose on plan C based on the previous roadster chassis was ugly)...

You're doing it again. The G8B 'S20' was already lined up and well into the planning stages for the C10-series Skyline in 1966, just before the enforced Prince-Nissan merger. I don't think you're a scholar of Skyline history are you Carl? The ex-Prince staff at Murayama were very protective of what they saw as 'their' IP and there was no way they were going to let their blue-blooded engine debut in the Nissan Maru Z/270KK. 

The real story here is that Nissan couldn't have a Nissan-branded sedan out-engining and out-performing its new Sports/GT car, hence the planned Hi-Po triple carbed L20(A) version which was part of the plan before the S20 was pinched (somewhat to the Murayama team's dismay). It is notable that the very astute Teiichi Hara used the G8B/S20 as ammunition to help the Maru Z/270KK project styling along. No L24 at this point, and not much Katayama either, but the S20-equipped PGC10 still debuted a good 8 months before the 432/432-R.

You seem content that Mr Evanow states that the 432/432-R's S20 came from the 'KPGC10', which actually hit the market a whole year later than the 432/432-R? It's just poor research, isn't it?  

 

[HS30-H]

On 7/11/2020 at 12:07 PM, HS30-H said:

Page 12:  "The Z's L24 powerplant was a six-cylinder adaptation of the four-cylinder L16 used in the 510 and would prove to be a bulletproof workhorse."

Page 12:  "While the additional two cylinders required a new, longer block, crank, and overhead camshaft, most of the engine's internal components - pistons, rods, bearings - were the same as within the 510. Displacement grew to 2,393cc and horsepower to 150."

 

With regard to the idea that the L24 sprang directly from the L16 (like some kind of Immaculate Conception), here's Nissan's take on matters...

Care worn - well used - L13, L16 & L20 engine service manual. Nissan grouping these engines together as part of a series. Related, of course, but the L20 senior and not yet having the benefit of the new tooling, new metallurgy and new oil-sealing technology that the L4s were able to enjoy due to being drawn up later. In due course - of course, of course - the L20 six would be able to undergo updates and join the modular L-gata lineup for a more streamlined range, and Nissan would give it the 'A' suffix to denote the difference between 'Original' L20 and 'New' L20:

     

 

Context for the L24's 'Immaculate Conception' style upscaling from L16 (a la Mr Evanow): Japanese market H130 model Nissan Cedric debuted with the new L20(A) six in September 1969, and Japanese market GC10 model Skyline 2000GT debuted with the L20(A) six in October 1969. But - of course! - we shall ignore them and paint the L24 as THE prime mover in this story of fours being transformed into sixes. 'Made For The USA', remember...? 

So, Zhome.com/Evanow take: L16 (not L13, we'll ignore that) begets L24 as part of Export-focused 'Revolution' centered around 510 and 240Z. Forget anything made before the L16 as it doesn't count. Year Zero, OK?

Nissan's take: L13 and L16 are part of the natural evolution of the original L20, which begets L20(A) and beyond. We call it a 'Series': 'L-Gata'.

My take: If you really want to understand this, go back to the source. Don't ignore Nissan's single biggest market (yes, that's Japan...), and try to stop yourself from looking at Japanese industrial history through the lens of the USA.  

[HS30-H]

On 7/4/2020 at 11:11 AM, HS30-H said:

Page 16: "....but in 1911, US-educated Masujiro Hashimoto began the Kwaishinsha Motor Company in Tokyo."

There was never any company called 'Kwaishinsha'. It was 'Kaishinsha'.  

Here's the original Kanji: 快進社

An example of How This Stuff Happens:

In 2014 Mr Hitoshi Uemura - former chief of Nissan's Third Vehicle Design Section and lead engineer during the design and development of the 'Maru Z'/'270KK' project S30-series Z - published a book titled 'Fairlady Z Kaihatsu No Kiroku' (tr: 'Fairlady Z Development Chronicle'). Recommended reading for anyone interested in how the S30-series Z came about.

On page 28 Mr Uemura mentions 'Kaishinsha', and writes it correctly in Kanji.

In 2017 Uemura's friend and former colleague Mr Yuichiro Motomura collaborated with Mr Carl Beck on an English language 'translation' of the book, 'tuned' (ahem...) to an American audience. They chose to title the book 'Datsun 240Z Engineering Development: The Journey From Concept To Reality' (note the difference in titles...).

On page 8 Motomura/Beck 'translate' Mr Uemura's Kanji 'Kaishinsha' (快進社) as "Kwaishinsha".

 

So, there it is. That's an example of how the ball keeps rolling...
[cue end title music: Billy Joel, 'We Didn't Start The Fire'.]