HS30-H

Hi WanganKid, 15 views and no posts is nothing! Welcome to the site and congratulations on your new purchase. One of the best investments you will ever make in relation to your car is technical literature. Tools are also an investment. In fact, you might like to think of technical literature and tools as one and the same thing.......... One of the most economical and educational sources of technical literature is the Microfiche CD rom offered by this website. It will give you the part number that you need. Its a CD version of the official Nissan microfiches, and it will give you hours of fun. Find out about it here:Microfiche CD rom Good luck,:classic: Alan T.

Hi Chris, Yes, I guess it could be worse. I must be out of touch with the modern world; I still find it shocking to find a pic of my car, parked outside my private garage, on somebody else's website. It feels like they stole my car! I want to go to the garage and check that its still there:ermm: I'm afraid I don't have any pics at all of that blue & white car. I remember it being in the For Sale ads in the back of Autosport magazine at one point, and wasn't it actually listed in the For Sale section of this site some time ago too? I'm not sure if it actually changed owners or not, but I believe its still active here in the UK. Cheers, Alan T.

Auto Active are using one of my pictures of my car without asking, and without my permission. They must have grabbed it off the net. Probably from here before we had watermarking on the Gallery photos. Bloody cheek! Makes it look like I'm one of their customers or something...:tapemouth :classic: :stupid: Alan T.

Ah, I see. Sometimes it looks to me as though the rear finisher would not fit over the outside ( larger ) rear light units. I thought the trim-ring might fit over the edge of the finisher and help to hold it in place. Now I understand. Makes it a little bit easier to make a GT-R replica then? Apart from the cost of the lights and emblems that is.......:classic: Cheers, Alan T.

Hi Lachlan, Does that rear finisher panel fit OVER the rear lights, or do those ribbed trims fit onto the lights after the finisher panel is fitted? I'm wondering too if there are any common rear-end parts between the GT-R and the other models. The rear bumper looks the same as the higher-specs of non GT-R C110 models, but the rear finisher looks subtly different. Is it just the emblems and badging that was different? Here's that red 110 GT-R that belongs to Nissan for comparison:

Second page:

Scans of the Factory Engine Manual:

Hi prince, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing pictures of you car. I hope that you can work out how to post them. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing a picture of the VIN prefix stamped into the body of your car.:classic: If you have an S20 engine then I suggest that you re-unite it with the car forthwith! If you are short of parts then please tell me what you need, as I have a fair few spares for the S20. What's missing? I'm slightly confused by the description of your car. Is it a Japanese-market model that was imported privately to your country, or is it an official Nissan export version for your country? I have heard of Nissan cars from that late Sixties / early Seventies era being "re-assigned" on the production line - but this was usually due to an error on single bodies rather than a policy decision to change the spec of a whole batch of cars. When this occurred, the VIN stamp on the body was usually altered to suit the model that it was re-assigned as. I have seen a couple of officially-altered VIN stampings, and its usually VERY easy to see the alteration. I have NEVER heard of Nissan officially releasing a car with the 'wrong' VIN code. That would not make sense. I still can't believe that your car has a "KPGC110" VIN prefix. If it DOES have that prefix, then I would bet that it did indeed leave the factory with an S20 twin cam and it was a GT-R. If that is the case, then you would be well advised to replace the S20 and all the other GT-R specific parts and sell it back to Japan. Even the nasty ones are selling for BIG money out there at the moment. Top notch 110 GT-R prices are knocking 5 to 6 million Yen at the moment, and some cars have been advertised for sale at over 8 million. Looking forward to seeing a pic of your VIN prefix. Best regards, Alan T.

Good to hear that you are using the car properly Guus.:classic: On a road rally like this under your local rules, do they classify finishers by class / category, or just overall? What was your finish position? Don't be shy! Is there anything that you can do to change the car or its components that you think would make you faster or more competitive? Maybe an LSD ( have you got one? ) or a different diff ratio? Maybe different brakes? I'm interested to know what you think would make a difference on your car for this kind of event. Thanks for the report.:classic: Alan T.

Hi prince, If it is a GT-X, it would not have had an S20 in it. Correct VIN prefix for a C110-series Skyline GT-X is "KGC110". C10 and C110-series GT-X's came with the L20 2-litre 6 cylinder engine in twin-carb guise. Welcome to the site. Alan T. (PS - I have all of your albums. 'For You' is still a big fave of mine :classic: )

Hi daddz, You have gone and done exactly what I was afraid of. You have mixed the stories about the two cars up........ It was his yellow car ( "OMT" - the non-Works car ) that was being used by a farmer's wife to run errands before Kevin bought it. After Kevin bought it he started a complete rebuild of the car, and started a relationship with the car that still continues to bear fruit. The ex-Works car ( which used to have the Japanese carnet registration "TKS 33 SA 3640" ) was the one that was in storage for many years, and before being put into storage was being used as a privateer rally car. That was when it lost its original exhaust system and had a few layers of paint added on top of the original Works paint scheme. A few other items were lost too, but the car was largely complete ( although in a rather shocking state ). Kevin's efforts to save every last nut and bolt - wherever possible - deserve a medal. You'll be able to see this when the car is finally finished. He really has done a fantastic job. All the best, Alan T.

Hi Lee, Just to make it clear for other readers, Kevin has two cars: One of them is his very successful ( and important in its own right, as its done so many events ) yellow car ( nicknamed "OMT" after the first three letters of its registration number ), which he has campaigned on Historic rallies in the UK - and occasionally Belgium - for some years. This car was built up from a standard production road car in the mid-Seventies, and has been a rally car almost all its life. It was originally prepared with the help of the staff of Old Woking Service Station, and used quite a few parts that were either ex-Works or supplied from Nissan Japan's Sports Option lists. Kevin has developed the car still further, and really knows how to drive it. Kevin is currently 'resting' from the UK historic rally championship, but takes the car out on selected events, and the occasional track day. Its a great car, with loads of character and patina. Kevin's other car is something rather more special. Its a genuine Works-built rally 240Z, which was originally issued with the carnet registration number "TKS 33 SA 3640" and was first entered in the 1971 RAC Rally, crewed by Edgar Herrmann and Hans Schuller. That year's RAC was a bit of a disaster for the Works team, and the event itself was hugely disrupted by heavy snow which forced the closure of some of the stages. Although the car finished the rally, it was well down in the results. Nissan UK used the car for some promotion work after the rally, but it was soon sold into private hands and given a UK registration number. The next owner did a few relatively minor UK club rally events with it, but apparently had some trouble looking after it properly. On one event for example he ripped off the original Works exhaust system and was forced to cobble up his own replacement. Parts seem to have been something of a problem for him. After passing through other hands, the car ended up being put away in a farm building and left there for the best part of 25 years. It suffered the ravages of time, damp, mice and even a fire ( from which it was rescued just in the nick of time ) but thankfully remained largely intact and unmessed with. Kevin bought the car some years ago and started collating information on the car, and indeed on other Works cars. After a lot of very skilled surgery, the body of the car is now repaired and painted. Kevin has saved what many others would have declared a dead car. Many of the most important Works components of the car were still attached, and of course "Part Number One" ( the actual bodyshell ) was still the Works-prepared original. The car is now awaiting an engine rebuild and further assembly. I don't think it will be finished this year, but there is a good chance that it will be up and running next year if Kevin gets a little more free time to spend on it. Hopefully it will get a few magazine articles dedicated to it when it is finished............ All the best, Alan T.

Hi daddz, Sorry if I did not make that clear. The modification was performed in Japan in Nissan's "Works" team workshops at Oppama, whilst the cars were being built. It was done really beautifully. They even moulded some special consoles from FRP to complete the job. The bodyshells on these cars were rather special. They had some pressing and panel details that were different from a standard production shell, and they also had a LOT of work performed on them during build. In many ways they had all the characteristics of the 432R ( "PZR" ) bodyshell from the firewall back, and the 240ZR from the firewall forward. Bodyshells were put through the standard manufacturing processes in small batches - with the shells receiving 'in series' VIN numbers - but special pressings and detail changes were added along the way. Then the bare bodyshells were transported to the competitions department workshops at Oppama for the remaining work to be done. Some final fettling and driver / navigator preference changes were performed when the cars arrived in Europe or Africa, but in most respects the cars arrived from Japan as fully-formed rally cars. From then on, they were serviced / repaired / set up by the team mechanics at the chosen bases near to the race in question. One of the main centres of operations outside Japan was the "Old Woking Service Station" just south west of London here in the UK. That's one of the reasons why some of us here in the UK know a fair bit about the cars. Hope that helps? Best regards, Alan T.

First of all, the B/W pictures of the car during the event are just that; during the event. During a rally, the car could be totally destroyed on the next corner......... "TKS 33 SA 4150" only ever competed in the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally. After that it went back to Japan. The B/W picture of the award ceremony shows the car as it appeared at the end of the rally - but you will notice that the mechanics have tidied it up, washed it, and put fresh wheels and studded tyres on. The crew have had a bit of a brush up too. I think the awards ceremony took place the day after the last stage in Monaco. You can however see that there are no corner rubbers on the front bumper.... The "Monte Carlo" bumper ( sometimes called the "drop" bumper ) was a newly homologated part for the 1972 Monte, and it solved the problems of having the spot lamps stuck out in front of the bonnet, which was always vulnerable on the snow-banked corners of the Monte. The bumper that is on the car now may well have been 'beautified' over the last 30 years in Japan. I can't say for sure whether the bumper is the one that the car finished the rally with, or whether it is a substitute. I rather suspect that the rubbers are a later addition by some well-meaning but not entirely historically-minded staff member. The car went on display at the Japanese Motor Show after its return, and anything could have happened. With the Works rally cars, there are many instances of parts being 'borrowed' from one car and put onto another and some parts were in constant rotation. In fact, the original engine and transmission of "TKS 33 SA 4150" was taken out of the car when it went back to Japan, and a 'dummy' engine ( in fact, an L20 with a Y70 head! ) was installed in its place. The ancillaries are correct, but the current engine and transmission are not....... The Works rally effort for the 240Z and 260Z was always stretched to the limit financially, and they tried to waste as little as possible. Being based so far from 'home' was also a problem. They could airfreight parts out of Japan when needed in an emergency, but the lines of communication were never so easy as they are today. These were the days before luxuries like FedEx next-day deliveries and e-mail communications. They had to rely on the new fangled Telex system..... Nobody should be surprised that some items have gone missing from the three Works cars that now reside at Zama. They have pretty much been pushed from pillar to post over the last 30 or so years - with no permanent museum slot or display plan. I know many people who have ( like me ) been able to sit in the car, and in fact crawl all over it . Some of these people have taken some 'souvenirs' ( which is bad karma if you ask me ), and I know one gentleman who made a tracing of ALL the stickers, brackets, holes and signwriting on the car! He has giant pieces of paper rolled up like a Turin Shroud!...... In the case of "TKS 33 SA 4150" I know that some areas of paint have been touched up to conceal surface rust, and you can see on close physical inspection that some of the letters on the signwriting have been overpainted to replace flaking paint. I wish they had not done this, but that's what happens when the car is the property of a fairly directionless company that seemed to have no strong idea about how to demonstrate or display its own history and lifeblood. This will apparently soon change, as some sort of museum facility is being planned. You can nitpick and say this and that are not original, or such and such is missing, but essentially the car is very complete in body, fittings and ancillaries. Main 'missing' items are the original engine block assembly and head. "Part Number One" for a Works 240Z or 260Z" rally car is its original bodyshell. I could wax lyrical for thousands of words telling you all about the differences between a standard production bodyshell and that of the genuine Works cars, but you will have to make do with me telling you that they were QUITE different. The 1971 and 1973 Safari winning cars are even more original than the 1972 Monte car. When I inspected the 73 car for the first time, I found an Ostrich feather inside the passenger door ( between the inner and outer sheetmetal ). The car had hit a couple of them on the rally ( which caused some pretty impressive damage to the car, let alone the Ostrich ) and here was some evidence of the encounter. Needless to say, I put it back. I took some photos of it in place too. I also found some other evidence of the human side of the story in the navigator's door pouch; a small and very sticky plastic bottle of 'Optone' eyewash and some British Caledonian ballpoint pens............. I could go on and on about the three cars that belong to Nissan, but it would never be enough to convince any doubters. Suffice to say that for these three cars we know their original VIN numbers, their Works identification ( 'Kanri' ) numbers and the original carnet 'foreign use' Japanese registration plate numbers. Their identity or provenance is NOT in doubt. I find it ironic that the identity of the REAL "TKS 33 SA 4150" is being thrown into some doubt over small differences in photos that are 30 years apart, when this thread started out by pointing at the HUGE gaffe / fraud ( take your pick ) of a car that is 100% NOT what it is supposed to be. Alan T.

No Stephen, let's get this straight. The car that was issued with the carnet registration number "TKS 33 SA 4150" ( the car that Aaltonen & Todt crewed to a 3rd place finish on the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally ) was LHD. It had an "HLS30" VIN prefix.

Faded and shrunken by sunlight and age, one of the official Monte stickers on the roof of the car:

Detail from the car as it is now. One of the faded 'Controle Technique' stickers:

A special stage, at a tight hairpin so typical of the Monte:

On a road 'passage' stage, between special stages ( drivers are not wearing helmets, but Todt is wearing his Russian cossack hat):

I thought some of us might like to compare the Italian car with pics of the real car, in period:

Gav, They have been informed on this occasion and many times in the past. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink........ The first thing these journalists do is to get the old books out ( which are full of the old mistakes ) and use them as source material. If its written in a book, it must be right - right? The mistakes are set in stone now, just like the bad data and nonsense in this Vintage Racecar Journal article. :disappoin Alan T.

Hi Hayden, Actually, Glen Waddington ( the staff journalist of Classic Cars magazine who wrote the article ) fessed up to it: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- e-mail from Glen Waddington: "Guilty! You've caught us red-handed. That cover car is a ringer, but not quite in the way you probably imagine. In the magazine, you'll have seen the studio photography of Nissan UK's gorgeous, freshly restored yellow 240Z. We did an action shoot with that same car for the cover, but we were nervous of using it because the previous issue had a yellow Ferrari 275GTB/4 on the cover. To the untrained eye, from a distance, they look very similar indeed... So we 'resprayed' our yellow Z using a dash of computer magic. To try to avoid confusion, we changed its registration (again by manipulating the photographic image) to that of a Datsun press car that was lent out for road tests back when it was new. I'm glad to hear it's still very much alive and well, and that it's been rescued from its life as a drag racer. Well done for spotting it - and I'm going to send a pat on the back to our art department for altering the image so seamlessly. Thanks for getting in touch. I hope I've set your mind at rest about the identity of the cover car - even it it has meant me passing on a few trade secrets. With best regards, Glen Glen Waddington Features Editor, Classic Cars magazine." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personally speaking, I'd have thought that it was slightly dangerous to use a registration number from a car that might still exist. Here in the UK, the registration number tends to stay with the car for its life ( its a National rather than county based system ) unless an owner decides to pay extra and choose to transfer a personalised number onto it. In which case you might think that they would have checked before using it....... :cheeky: Luckily for the magazine, the current owner appears not to have kicked up too much fuss about it. All the best, Alan T.

Don't worry Christopher, I think I've been quite civil to them in my e-mail. I too have provided some background information - and photos - to illustrate the difference between the real car and the Italian car. I have also told them that I have a great interest in the subject and a pretty good archive of material relating to it. I asked them to remember this if they need any help to set the record straight on this particular car, or on a future article. However, having said all that, the fact still remains that they have made a huge faux pas. As the staff of a magazine dedicated to old race cars, they should make themselves familiar with the subject that they are writing about. The dates and events quoted were all over the place, which is plain sloppy. They say that they 'asked Nissan', but that Nissan were no help. One wonders if they made enough effort. It seems obvious to point it out, but these cars were made in Japan. If you want the FULL story, you ask Japan. I'm sorry but I can't see how the 'wrath' of Nissan Italia could have any implications for a US-based magazine dedicated to the subject of vintage racecars. In my opinion, the Italian gentlemen have made VINTAGE RACECAR Magazine look stupid and inept - so it is they who should be considered the party at major fault. In all other respects, I think the article is just silly. Sad, but silly. Anybody who knows anything about the genuine Works cars would have no problem spotting the fact that this car started life as a standard road car, and has not deviated very far from that spec. Christopher, I am going to scan the article and e-mail it to you. Unless you see the whole thing you can't really imagine quite what a gaffe has been made..... Alan T.