HS30-H

Indeed. Bill Reagan (bless his heart) made some pretty silly claims about "World Record" prices which made me think of 'World Series' baseball, and now somebody is defending it as though it is indisputable fact and/or impudent and insolent to question it in any way, shape or form. Strange hill to die on. Texas World Record, maybe?

Here's what NOT to do. This car belongs to well-known "Serious Collector" and Bring-A-Trailer star 'Lstepp4re'. The Overfender is mounted too low on the body, and is also 'clocked'. All sorts of wrong:

Once you've got the Overfenders mounted in the correct positions, THEN you can see how much it allows you to cut and clearance the rear arch sheetmetal. You can get very close to the Overfender mounting points, and this allows you more clearance than you are ever likely to need. Once you are cutting you might as well go all the way. To sum up, the correct Overfender position dictates where you cut, not the other way around.

So you should have the swage line to work to, and the Overfender will pretty much find its own position once you find the reference points. Two of the fixing points (Nissan riveted the Overfenders onto the body, but you might want to use another fixing method) are almost ON the swage line, or are just below it. The Overfender overlaps the swage line at the uppermost peak of its curve. At the ends of the Overfender, the forward-facing end positions just above the dogleg and the rear-facing end drops down way below the bumper. Hopefully this photo will help. It is a genuine HS30-H model Fairlady 240ZG and the mounting position is the factory one. The owner chose to insert some black welting between the Overfender and the body - which the factory never did - but hopefully you can still clearly see the body swage line as it runs along the body, the overlap of the Overfender and the two uppermost fixing points which are your reference for the height of the Overfender on the body:

They are probably the most accurate reproductions on the market, so they *should* find their own mounting positions when you get the ends close to where they need to be. The main pitfall is mounting them on the wrong side of the car (seen a few cars like that...) but if you have the correct piece on the correct side of the car it shouldn't be too difficult to get them within a few mm of spot-on. How's the sheetmetal on the car? No bondo/filler? Paint thickness?

The factory 'Overfenders' were shaped so that their attachment points were pretty much self-evident. The rears had a little kink in the mating face that matched up with the swage line in the factory metal. Generic copies-of-copies and their derivatives may not have such subtleties.

Strong possibility, to say the least. 😉 Amazing how quickly he has built up a loyal fan club in (what he calls) 'The Z Collector Community'. A lot of people seem to hang on his every word. Maybe they are oblivious to the past shenanigans?

Some nice comments by Volvoamazon. Very apt user name. 😁

I know right? Who judges the judges? I guess they do their best in the circumstances, but... Oh, and you downgraded me. I'm not an HS Standard, I'm an HS Deluxe Grande Nose... 😉

Indeed. One of the people big-upping and sucking up to 'The Guild' (LOL) on the current BAT '69 HLS30U auction owns a car which has a bodyshell made out of at least three different cars welded together, but which - inexplicably - seems to have been given an award at ZCon 2021 Colorado. You've heard of the Rumble In The Jungle, but here's the Con At The Con...

Plenty of Z34-based race cars have been built and used in anger. They even had a Spec Series for them.

They are right. European mainland countries including Germany, France, NL, Belgium and Portugal, then UK, Australia, NZ and others still had carburettors on their S30-series Z models through 1978. They had choke knobs.

I was thinking more of the big letter 'Z' in the middle of it... i.e. Not 'Datsun'. My theory is that the designers were probably not looking at '75 and '76 year steering wheels for detail inspiration. Same goes for the quarter emblems. The press and the talking heads are babbling about "the 240Z" references in the styling details, but the new car's quarter emblems seem to me to be referencing the original Japanese market 'Z' quarter emblems.

Not the case. S30-S and S30-D, Fairlady Z and Fairlady Z-L started the ball rolling for the S30-series and the tradition was carried through subsequent generations. The '240Z' name was an afterthought. How about 1969:

In the presentation, Mr Ashwani Gupta (Nissan's 'Chief Operating Officer', no less) repeats the lie that the Z's debut was on 22nd October 1969 at the Pierre Hotel in New York, with the 'Datsun 240Z'. The people writing the scripts for these sock puppets appear to have Googled Zhome.com...

Here's a great shot - by pro photographer Dan Redrup - at the same event. Kevin is a past British Historic Rally Championship winner in this car:

Here's an example of the simplest - non-Works - solution, on my good friend Kevin Bristow's historic 'OMT 868K' car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed Forest Rally Stage back in 2011. The bumper is cut into three and the centre section 'dropped' via the addition of vertical brackets. Fairly easy to do, and this style was used by privateers in period so there's an historic link which satisfies certain regulations when necessary:

Yes, the way to do it is to cut an original bumper into three pieces and 'drop' the centre section by welding on some flat stock and/or (preferably) finding some nice period over-riders from a suitable sedan and using them as the vertical elements. Yes again. The design allowed the bonnet to pivot open normally on stock hinges, with the front edge swinging over the lamp units. Again, easier to illustrate than to describe:

Here's an example of a self-built replica 'Drop Bumper' and lights, on one of the VZ Program cars which went to Japan. I've seen the car in person and it is very well done:

As part of the homologation process, the 'Drop Bumper' was in fact given a factory part number and made available to the general public. Part number was 62650-E8700. In Works rally team use there was a fairly complex arrangement of braces and supports for the lamp units themselves; the lamp mounting brackets were braced to the front valance as well as the centre part of the bumper, and the whole affair was linked to the sump guard and the sump guard mounts. Little of that would be relevant to, or necessary on, a road car but care in bracing the lamps is quite important in order to avoid 'beam shake'/flicker, as well as stress fractures. You'd struggle (to put it mildly) to find an original E8700 bumper in live captivity, but you could make your own version and this has been done quite successfully by others. Photos save a thousand words:

Don't worry about Kats, he's fine. I'm in regular contact with him. Lots of disruption in his industry (air travel) at present, as you might imagine.

Certainly something we've discussed several times in the past on this forum, usually with heavy input and guidance from Kats. Damned if I can find the specific threads though, sorry...

Manufacturing date QC stamps.

Which posts are yours then?

Handbrake/E-brake positioning on the S30-series Z is defaulted to RHD configuration. Making both RHD and (re-sited) LHD configurations was deemed too expensive, so they went with the ideal RHD positioning for both. The only S30-series Zs to get a re-sited handbrake lever were the LHD Nissan Works rally cars. I think they certainly *did* think about the seat runners/rails, and that's evident in their handing and part identification. Another example of attention to detail that runs deeper than we might often give credit for. Perhaps a good example of that generation of Japanese engineers, who took pride in even the most humble componentry.