HS30-H

mmagnus, If your car was made in 1970 then BOTH of the headlamp buckets ( "Sugar Scoops" ) should be made of plastic. The metal one was probably put on later? Alan T.

260z has got the cigar I think? The owner is obviously trying to hide it ( I can see the scrape marks where it got pushed under the shelf! ). I can imagine that all that anti-smog equipment must really strangle it. Poor thing. Keep 'em coming Steve - a few of us here love these little conundrums. Alan T.

Hi Tanny, Crikey - 6500 feet! I'd need Oxygen to just walk around up there. In that case, you probably WOULD find the Starter Devices useful. I should imagine that kind of altitude would make your car quite difficult for set-up choice too ( ? ). When I drove my car over the Alps from France into Italy, it behaved REALLY badly at the high altitudes. The setup for the jetting etc. was done at roughly sea level ( or a little bit above ) and the big change in barometric pressure up in the mountains seemed to throw it all out of the window. Was fine once I got down to the lower levels again. I would have thought this would force you into making a decision as to WHERE you chose your setup to work at. Either down at the lower levels or some kind of compromise? Good luck with it, anyway! Cheers, Alan T.

Alfadog, is yours actually badged as a "240K GL"? I'm still not sure what you have got ( you said is had a "KGC110" VIN prefix - but I thought that made it a GT? ). So far I've found two-door models with minor-change variations by the following names: *HT1800 GL *HT1600 GL *HT1600 Dx *HT2000 GT-X *HT2000 GT *HT2000 GT-X - E.S and of course the HT2000 GT-R. All of the above are the Japanese domestic model names. There are even more ( more confusing! ) models of the four-doors and a couple of wagons too. Chuck in a few special models for the government / armed forces and it makes a really diverse range. So what the hell have you got? It must have had a special name / variation for the Australian market. Looks like Japan did not have a HT2000 GL like you got. Also looks like they made minor changes to trim and brightwork every six months. Yikes. I just had a sniff around in a few books and now I remember what's different between the GT-R and the GT-X ( which I think is the Japanese model equivalent to what they called the "240K" for the few export markets they sent them to? ). Its the rear three quarter. The wheelarch on the GT-R is much higher and more rounded ( obviously to help them in homologating them for racing - which never happened ). Once the Overfender is put on top, it makes it look quite different anyway - so it maybe disguises the fact that the wheelarch extends right up into that swage line and cuts it in half. The GT-X still has the swage line complete................. So, Alfadog - if you want to make a GT-R replica you are going to have to break out the tinsnips! ( please don't! ). Looks like Ben has a much better idea about all this than me, and I would agree that yours is very likely to have a relatively poor performance in comparison to your Z. That's just the nature of the beast. nixcars, I looked up the dimensions for the GT-R ( yes it WAS technically a four-seater ) and you are right; there really is not that much difference: Overall length: 4460mm ( the same ) Overall width: 1695mm ( includes Overfenders ) Height: 1380mm ( a bit lower ) Wheelbase: 2610mm ( the same ) So it must be that radiused rear wheelarch that makes the car look so different. Interesting. Alan T.

Halz, The production figures of the USA / North American market version of the "HLS30" hugely outweighed those of ALL production of the equivalent RHD cars of the same period. That fact is not in doubt. I'd have to get a few cross-references together to give you even a ballpark figure on the RHD car production figures ( a lot more difficult to pin down than the numbers for the American "HLS30" cars ), but you can bet that its nothing like the numbers for LHD cars. The numbers ARE significant though ( its not like they just punted out a few hundred right hookers ) and the RHD cars cannot be written off as an afterthought, even though it would appear that some people think this is the case. I would certainly agree that the Japanese "Home" market cars are the publicity underdogs, and they tend to get a few lines of mention if at all in most English language magazine articles / books / internet sites. Most of the prejudice seems to be based on the belief that the 2-litre engines that the Japanese market got until late 1971 made the cars in some way inferior to the L24 engined versions. I don't think that's necessarily true. I certainly don't think that higher production figures make a certain variant more of a "winner" than any other variant. In fact, I'm not trying to prove that any particular variant is some kind of victor over all the others ( even though you could argue the case that some of them are more complete packages than others ). What bugs me is that the Japanese home market cars get hardly any coverage at all in the English language. That's why I'll stick up for them. Alan T.

Whoa! Hold up Alfadog - don't quote me on that! I just might be confused as to what model variant of C110 Skyline you have got hold of............... I think there were at least a couple of different bodyshapes on the two-door C110. I believe that there was a GT and a GT-X model ( both had the L-series sixes ) as well as the GT-R. Maybe it was the wheelbase that was different or something like that. I just remember ( faintly - as I'm "old enough to be your father" and the old brain cells are going ) seeing the different models on the road in Japan and being confused / interested at that time. Suffice to say, the C110 is not my strong subject! I can't believe you're the proud owner of both the "240K" and your Z. You lucky sod. What kind of pocket money are you being given?! Gav, don't talk up my "library of knowledge" for God's sake! I know a few bits and pieces about what interests me, but the rest is all a mystery to me........... Glad you share my enthusiasm for the Prince and Nissan "R" series sports racers. I have yet to see one of these mentioned in any depth in any of the English language mags / books. As far as I know they DID in fact take them for a few races abroad ( guess where? - Australia would you believe, as well as south America ). How do you like that? With the Brabham connection, it all ties in very nicely with Australia. Maybe you might be able to find out a bit about them racing over there. I must dig out some photos of them and start a thread about them. It would be nice for people to see what other exotica Nissan and Prince were putting together around that time. Alan T.

I just wrote a long reply to that, Bambikiller - but then scrubbed it out. I think I would be just adding more rope to the noose around my neck. I don't think anyone takes kindly to me having a little dig every now and then at zhome for its lack of Japanese home-market car coverage. Seems the jabs are not taken in the spirit that they are given. To cut a long story short, I've had correspondence with Carl Beck in the past. I thought I could be of some help to him and his site with regard to the RHD cars and the Japanese home market cars in particular. He pleasantly rebuffed my opinions, and seems to be happy to believe that he has the story of the Z pretty much sorted out now. For my part, I'll always try to champion the underdog in this story; the Japanese home-market cars. There's no way that I will ever go along with the idea that the USA / North American market cars were some kind of "definitive" version that was designed as a priority above all others. Alan T.

Good point from 2ManyZs there about the VIN number situation. Too many times people will tend to think that the number on a particular car means it was the "xxxth" built - when the truth is somewhat more complicated than that. I really hope that somebody buys it and DOES restore it to running condition. The poor thing deserves to survive. Actually, if that car was up for sale here in the UK I for one would be bidding on it. Like St. Stephen and Gav240z, we are usually forced to revive cars in worse condition than this over here in rainy and cold Great Britain............. As long as the price was not so high ( who knows how high it will go? ebay is a bit of a strange environment ) it could be a worthwhile "project" for somebody with access to a bodyshop and a good chassis jig. Would be an awful lot of work though. This vendor might be "talking it up" a little bit ( I guess that's forgiveable seeing as he is trying to sell it ) but all in all I think it really is a fairly rare and low VIN number. There can't be all that many 1969-build cars that are going to surface "unknown" to the Z community like this one seems to be. Mind you, once all those panels were put on, there probably would not be very much of it left that was made in 1969.............. I'll be offering prayers for this car. Alan T.

They ( it? He? ) can take it, don't you think? I'm sure that a faint voice from over here in the little old UK will not worry Zhome too much. Anyway, if you look deeper you might find that my little digs are kind of "affectionate punches"........... There's a whole lot of good stuff over there, and Carl has been quite heroic in championing the cause of Yoshihiko Matsuo and putting down the "Goertz Myth". That's admirable. Personally, I don't agree with some of the things that Carl writes with regard to the design of the S30-series Z being "for" America. I think one of the articles on his site says something along the lines of the Z being "....the first American car designed and built in Japan...." - which I find a very odd thing to say. Sorry if I made you feel ill Michael, but you always have the option of ignoring my posts or perhaps not taking them so seriously. Alan T.

Alfadog, congratulations on your new acquisition. Nissan never raced the C110 series Skylines ( although a mock-up of a race car was made for publicity purposes - see nixcar's previous post ). They pulled the plug on the race programme at the time of what they called the "Oil Shock" in Japan; the worldwide petrol crisis...................... The KPGC110 Skyline GT-R is the rarest of all the early GT-R Skylines; the factory only made a couple of hundred of them ( much less than the four-door PGC10 - the "original" GT-R - and the two-door KPGC10 ). The C10-series GT-R used to be one of the most sought-after and pricey Japanese "classics" - but the KPGC10 GT-R "Ken & Mary" is now coming into its own due to its rarity. I've seen minters advertised at more than 8,000,000 Yen recently ( and heard first-hand reports of excellent cars actually changing hands at 6,000,000 and more ). That's much more than even the best KPGC10's. Sadly, they are rather less well catered for in regard to spares than the C10 series cars. This has to be mainly down to their lower numbers, and the fact that for many years the 110 was seen as a bit of a "Bosozoku" chariot. In the late Seventies to mid Eighties period the C110 series two-doors were one of the Japanese street-race gangs cars of choice. They did terrible things to them ( really silly chop-ups and sci-fi "aero" parts ) - not pretty and not very clever! It has to be pointed out that the C110 series cars suffered a reputation in Japan for being of lower quality than the C10 series in relation to their fit and finish. The trim and brightwork were always said to be of noticeably lower quality than previous models. Mind you, I think that was probably true for almost all car manufacturers at that time. Zedrally - in answer to your question, the basic model series of the car was the "C110" Skyline. Gav240z - that "original" GT-R was the four-door "PGC10" and two-door "KPGC10". That's the previous model to the one that Alfadog has just got. That Prince Grand Prix car ( actually a Sports racer ) was the Prince R380, which used the GR8 engine. The S20 twin-cam was developed from the GR8 engine, and the Factory always linked the original GT-R and the 432 with the R380 Sports Racer. Interestingly, the ORIGINAL chassis / body of the Prince R380 was a Brabham sports racing car that Prince bought in. They installed the GR8 engine and went Toyota chasing with it. They subsequently made their own versions of the chassis / body / monocoque. The R380 / R380-ll / R381 / R382 & R383 were a very interesting and successful series of race cars, and little known outside Japan. Turning this car into a GT or GT-R replica might be a double-edged sword; surely the car would warrant preservation if its pretty good. And isn't the rear quarter of the GT and GT-R a different panel completely? Maybe a subtle lowering job and "period" set of wheels would be enough to make it look pretty darn good. By the way, the S54-series Prince Skyline was ( I think ) the first Skyline to have the round tail-lights. They were divided into three rather like the ones on the MK1 Ford Cortina. Prince used the S54 tail-lights on the R380 Sports racer - hence making a link with the road car that they could exploit in their advertising. The much bigger round tail-lamps of the C110-series were also heavily featured in their advertising, and came to be known as one of the trade-marks of the Skyline range ( right up to the R34 ). Lachlan, have you still got your Z? I hope this is an addition to your stable rather than a substitute! Alan T.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUOTE: BTW, it is generally aknowleged that Japan didn't think Americans gave a flying hoot about a sports car anyway, so we didn't get the FIA stuff like Europe and Japan did, and the racers in the states had a bear of a time gettin any support from Nissan for a long time (so I've read), because they just thought we were ignorant fat slobs and didn't care about real racing, plus many within Nissan didn't care about racing, and only had a few real supporters from within.UNQUOTE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whew, thats a bit strong Mudge. I think its true to say that the USA-market spec. S30-series cars were a slightly less "sporty" specification than the rest of the world got, but please don't think it was ever easy to get the Sports Option / race parts from Japan over here in Europe either. The only place it was all really easily available was in Japan. The USA market model "HLS30" had only the four-speed trans and rather low ratio rear end ( with no other choices offered ) and no rear anti-roll / sway bar. You can probably blame this on Yutaka Katayama; as it was ultimately his decision to make the USA / North American market cars to this specification. I honestly would not imagine that anyone at Nissan really DID think that Americans were "ignorant fat slobs" - so I think its probably not fair to attribute this kind of comment to them.............. Its a strange dichotomy that Katayama was one of the main forces within the USA arm of Nissan who was promoting the support of private race teams in the USA and Canada, while at the same time he decided that the USA / North American market cars would be arguably less sophisticated than the cars that the rest of the world got access to. In the end, he was probably right to do this. Nissan had supported American racers with parts and parts development ( a two way street ) since the mid Sixties, and no other countries apart from Japan got a setup like Datsun Competition in the USA. Compared to the rest of the world ( outside Japan ), the USA actually had a rather good slice of support from Nissan in relation to motorsports . Did you know that the prices for the Datsun Competition parts sold in the USA were deliberately priced DOWN for the local market? If you wanted to buy those same parts in Japan ( where most of them were made ) they would cost proportionately MORE. In my book, that's what I call good support. If the USA / North American market bore any similarity to other markets ( I'm particularly thinking about the UK market here ) then it was probably down to the ignorance / apathy of individual dealerships that could not be bothered to help racers or sports-minded drivers of Nissan product. The parts were out there if the dealers could be bothered to get them in. How many times have you heard stories of people asking Nissan dealers for sports option or competition-related parts, only to be told that the Factory "does not make them" or that they cannot get them? This obstructiveness has got to be blamed on individual dealerships, not the Factory in Japan. In truth stuff like LSD units, brake upgrades, all sorts of transmission upgrades and engine performance increasing parts were ALWAYS available from Datsun Competition in the USA. Clutchdust is looking for an LSD unit for an R180 diff. - which Nissan still sell, but he might find prohibitively expensive. This is why so many people go looking for interchange parts that they can get a lot cheaper ( and naturally so ). My point here is that Nissan DOES make the parts, and they are available from other companies in the aftermarket too. Its just a question of price ( ouch! ), and a little bit of proactive thinking. A brand new LSD for just about any non-American car is the USA is going to be expensive in comparison to domestic product. Unfortunately, its quite often the Japanese parts that are the most expensive. Its just an economic fact. I've been through several R180 LSD-equipped diffs. over the years ( even used a 4.875 on the street for a while, which was quite funny around town but pretty tedious on long-haul journeys ). I'm now using R200's that I bring in from Japan, and are already equipped with LSD units and nice gear ratios ( 3.9, 4.1, 4.375 and 4.6 are still quite common over there ). They are quite expensive, and its a long way to transport them - but you do get a great condition unit, and they are stronger, cheaper and more common than the equivalent R180. I can't understand why more people don't take the option of getting them from Japan ( and surely they have to be cheaper to transport to the USA than to the UK? ). I suppose that if no company is already doing this, it must mean that the market in the USA is not willing to pay what they would cost? In Japan, Nissan has always been seen as THE company that supported racing and sports driving. They were head and shoulders above all the other Japanese car producers in this respect. This has only changed very recently, and it is a very sad fact that Nissan has virtually stopped race-proving its product on the world stage. Compare this situation to the one at Toyota. It seems that Nissan are now happy to let the aftermarket produce parts for the sporty / race driver. Its probably a sign of the times. Regards, Alan T.

No big mystery, The E30 head was fitted to most of the early Japanese-market 2-litre ( L20E ) engined S30's. As Z Kid pointed out, they were also fitted to C10 and C110 series Skylines and a whole host of other Japanese-market-only models. Actually, they are not bad heads at all - but they need a fair bit of modification to make them work well on an engine bigger than the one they were designed to fit on ( nice compression ratio increase though ). I'm not surprised that you didn't find much about them on ZHome.com. Seems to be a bit of a black hole when it comes to the Japanese-market cars ( and there was me thinking that the "Home" of the Z was Japan.................... ). Alan T.

Nigel, When I started pulling up that rear floor insulation on my 1970 project car I was horrified to find that it revealed quite a lot of surface rust..................... To be honest, the insulation was a bit scruffy - but I had NO IDEA that it was going rusty underneath. The idea of stripping it all out was part of my "432R Replica" theme ( they had no insulation in them whatsoever ) so I was trying to replicate that. What with the 1970 body being "pre-storage bin" ( just stamped holes in the floor ) there was actually quite a lot more of the insulation than on the later cars. This has now all been stripped off, blasted and painted. Makes me feel double satisfied to think that I have removed some really sneaky hiding rust and replicated the 432R at the same time. I should put some before and after photos up in the Member Galleries. Yours might not be as rusty as mine was, though.......... Alan T.

Bleachzee, Please be careful not to mis-describe your engine when ordering gaskets. You mentioned "L20b" above - which is a four-cylinder engine................ Gaskets and ALL parts for the L20 are still available from Nissan Japan, and there are hundreds of thousands of cars running around in Japan which are still using the L20 six. Just make sure that your parts supplier orders the parts for the right engine. Block height is the same as the twin-carbed L24 / L26 / L28 engines - so all gaskets other than the head gasket will interchange. Good luck, Alan T.

www.bestmotoring.jp = Main Japanese page. www.bestmotoringvideo.com = Main English language page. The Japanese pages have more downloads and are more up to date than the English language pages, as it takes them a little while to dub / edit the new titles with English. Alan T.

trs, thanks for understanding what I am trying to get across. I completely understand your enthusiasm for this kind of thing ( which I share ), and like you I would like more people to see and understand what's going on in Japan S30-wise and with old cars in general. I think you and I are probably both on the same side as far as that goes. I worked with 2 & 4 on several occasions, but all of them were in connection with the Japanese car magazine that I work for on a freelance basis ( ENGINE Magazine ). They were tie-ups with the Japanese Lotus importers, and in particular we worked on the Lotus one-make race series here in the UK ( now defunct ) that used the Motorsport Elise ( the road version of which was called the Exige ). We worked with Keiichi Tsuchiya three times, and once with Naoki Hattori ( who some people may remember as an ex-Champ Car driver ). Tsuchiya was great fun to work with, and impressed everybody at Lotus with a really good time at the Lotus test track at Hethel. He always had bad luck in the races, and had to make do with a bit of a dog of a race car that was made up from a crashed chassis. Hattori matched him when they raced at Oulton Park, and I can say that both of them are very impressive drivers who make a lot of very intersting observations about the cars they test on the videos. I'm sorry to say that I can't remember which videos these exploits ended up on ( I think one of the races was in the BM Special Vol.46, and at least one other report was on a Lotus special video ). 2 & 4 always excel at their in-car cameras and split-screen displays, and the cars always have to carry a lot of equipment. I was always hugely impressed with how quickly they installed all of this in the car and got it to work so well. The end product is absolutely fascinating. Their Video Special Vol.56 is a tie-in with the release of the Z33, and features some interesting cars from the whole Z range. The "Caster" is Mr Haruto Yanagida ( boss of "Central 20", and one of the S30-series Z car's most successful Privateer and Works race car drivers ) along with his son, who has been testing the Z33 race car in Japan. As far as 260Z's idea to show a clip / promo on this site - I think it would surely be a lot of work to get this ironed out. They have their own website, and surely if this site were to have any promotion for them it would mean money changing hands? I can't see 2 & 4 doing this unless they do it for a lot of other makes first ( such a small amount of their product is Z-related ). I could always ask them, but I think I can imagine what the answer might be. I honestly think only a very few of the people who look at this site will be interested enough to order one of these videos or DVDs, and if they ARE eager enough then they would surely be looking at the Best Motoring site already?................ And 260Z, I should imagine that I have partaken in "piracy" of one form or another in the past, as most of us probably have. However, as I said in my original post, this company's products feel very close to home for me. Maybe that's why I feel so strongly about it in this case. Alan T.

Mike, Can I point something out here? I don't want to be a killjoy, but this talk of putting some of the video up on this site rather shocked me. Please stop and have a think about it for moment. I remember some months back you were concerned that somebody seemed to be copying and selling the microfiche CD that you had made and marketed. There was a big debate about piracy and how to stop it from happening. So what's changed? If you put this file up on the web and allow everyone to have access to it, then I see no real difference apart from the fact that no money is changing hands. I have to declare an interest that makes this particular case all the more important to me; I have worked with "2 & 4 Motoring Co. Ltd." ( the makers of the Best Motoring / Hot Version videos, who are owned by the Kodansha publishing group ) in Japan and here in the UK, and I am quite friendly with Tohru Yamamoto - essentially the boss of the company. Being this close to them makes me feel potentially all the more guilty at the thought of you putting anything that they have created up on the site for all to see. At the end of each of the Video / DVD realeases from this company, there is a piracy warning ( just like anywhere else ). For the Japanese-market releases its written in Japanese, but in the Export market versions ( only a select few titles at this time ) it is of course written in English. Just because its Japanese does not make it fair game to copy / pirate / distribute. 2 & 4 make these videos as a business. It costs them a lot of money to make them ( if anyone sees one of them they might realise how much goes into it ) and only the fact that they can sell and distribute them carefully allows them to make more. We are not talking about a huge company here, like Sony or EMI - where Napster and similar ideas were seen as Robin Hoods robbing the rich and giving to the poor. 2 & 4 has a core staff of less than 20 people, and they market their product mainly through their website. The new releases usually make it into Japanese bookshops ( in the motoring section ) but the core of their business is through mail order. What I am trying to say is that they are not a multi-million dollar outfit that can afford to take a hit from a little bit of piracy. Sorry to sound so dramatic, but this strikes very close to home for me. I have earned money from working with 2 & 4 on three of the Best Motoring titles, and it feels to me as though I have to defend them. Most of us at some time have copied a video / CD / Software / magazine article / picture for a friend or acquaintance - or been in receipt of something that has been copied ( I am no different ). I guess that this is in fact technically illegal, as almost all products / publications have to guard against it ( even this site? ). It will, however, always go on. The main thing is that we should all try to be conscious about what we are doing and try to be sensible about it. Copying for a friend to see is quite different from sticking something up on the web for the whole world to download..................... One could argue that a clip on this site would be "free publicity" or some kind of promotion for the company that makes it - but I think we can agree that it would more likely lead to a wildfire duplication of the file and free distribution around the globe. I doubt that this would lead to more business for them, unless they try to make more English-language versions. I have given the link to the Best Motoring website here before: www.bestmotoring.jp - and it is possible for people to make International orders with them. I believe that they even have a USA distributor. They have downloadable clips on their site, and I think all in all the videos and DVDs that they sell are very good value for money. The point is that I don't think that they are so enormously expensive / overpriced that they would "deserve" to be pirated. Like I say, I don't want to be a killjoy ( hell - I would LOVE people to see what good cars / parts are around in Japan, and I have bought a fair bit of stuff from SPIRIT GARAGE myself ) but this case strikes rather close to home for me. I have very mixed sentiments, as like "trs" I would love to spread the word about the Japanese Z scene and cars like this. I can't stop you trying to put the clip up on the site, but I'd prefer you to stop and think about what you are doing. Just because its a Japanese product does not make it fair game for us to do what we want with it. Hope that you will understand my sentiments. Faithfully, Alan T.