HS30-H

Jay Leno continues to display his lack of knowledge about the S30-series Z and Japanese cars in general. Another airing for the Katayama/Fairlady naming story thrown in for good measure. Utter nonsense. And apparently an RB26DETT engine has a capacity of three litres. Tricky stuff this Metric business.

The original E41 design WAS a two-part system. Just look in the factory parts manuals. The spongey rubber part was the 'Weatherstrip' and the U-shaped 'Welt' clipped over one side of it, sandwiching it onto the body seam. Most people don't notice because they can weld themselves together fairly well over time. The two component parts are also on different pages in the factory literature. Many think that the 76801-E4100 RH and 76802-E4100 LH show a one-piece system, but they are missing that the 76920-E4101 Welt A and 76921-E4101 Welt B parts are shown in a separate diagram for the body side. With all of the proprietary off-the-shelf/universal seals the main problem in my experience is that the Weatherstrip part is the wrong shape and/or made from a material which does not compress anywhere near as easily as the original. In my experience this is worst at the front vertical edge of the door where the seal is being asked to compress more than anywhere else, and with nowhere to go. The original Weatherstrip is also a 'flap' cross-section rather than a 'bulb'. The new S30 World versions are the closest to the originals I have seen.

I saw production samples on a car at S30 World's museum/exhibition space/gallery in the Netherlands back in June, and was very impressed. They are the best reproductions of the OEM two-piece door seals that I have seen. Great attention to form and - especially - function. Looking forward to getting some for my own cars. Recommended.

In fact seats came in two specs from the beginning of production. We might call them 'Deluxe' and 'Standard'. 'Standard' seats had no quick recliner/flip forward lever, but 'Deluxe' seats did. North American market cars received the 'Standard' seats until they were superseded (12/71?).

Yes, I agree yours is an original. I have an original too, purchased many years ago. Mainly because it has Works rally car '988' on the front cover...

Great collection! Some of them are frighteningly valuable these days. The white-bordered 'Fairlady Z' booklet brochure was the first full Japanese market brochure (as opposed to a fold-out/flyer) and there was a reduced-size reprint in the 1990s. You appear to have the original yellow paper insert with Nissan Works racing team driver Tatsu Yokoyama's notes on driving the Fairlady Z intact. Good! The red bonnet/hood fronted 'Your Dreams Come True' campaign flyer with the fold-out poster was handed out at the 1969 Tokyo Motor Show. There's more than one version and the differences are in the rear cover (Fairlady Z432-R photo vs Fairlady Z432-R text box) and one of the interior photos. I believe you have the earlier version with the text box and that is the more sought-after version. Here's the other one:

S130 diff cooler:

Diplomatic and pragmatic. However I've got a hunch that a stickler like yourself would have a nice set of JIS screwdrivers in a secret compartment in his toolbox. Your secret's safe with me... I've known Len for something over 25 years at least. You'll be pleased to hear he's in fine form but still getting used to the peculiarities in character of his recently restored HLS30U, which he says were something of a shock to the senses after 40+ years of S30-series Zs with their steering wheel on the right side... 🙂

JIS, please.

Good! Glad to hear the retainer rings were present after all. You're on top of it now, but just for posterity I pulled out some old used calipers and parts to take some photos of the component parts. Hopefully they are fairly self-explanatory. Raw caliper casting (dirty!), showing the internal groove for the main fluid seal and the small counterbore which the dust seal retainer ring fits into: And here's a (typically rusty...) retainer ring roughly sitting in the counterbore in the caliper casting: And here is the rubber dust seal, roughly installed on the lip of the retainer ring and with the piston in situ: The four component parts: Piston, rubber dust seal, steel dust seal retaining ring and rubber fluid seal: Note that the inner lip of the rubber dust seal slots into the groove in the piston, so it is fixed to both the caliper casting (via the steel retainer ring) and the piston, making a firm seal which still allows the piston to move: Hope that helps somewhat...

Yes, you're quie right. Well spotted. Looking at the diagram again, it seems that they have NOT illustrated the dust seal retaining rings and that Part No.4 are indeed the fluid seals which slot into the groove inside the caliper casting. Odd that they don't show the retaining rings on their own, but I wonder if this is a legacy of the old rebuild kits which used to come with the dust seals already fitted with their retaining rings inside them? Unfortunately they don't come like that anymore. Anyway, as mentioned, the retaining rings are essential otherwise the dust seals won't work properly. Jeff Berk definitely needs a set.

YJ auction vendor 'velo1955z' is VintageCraft e-za, the manufacturer of the stainless steel MK63 seal retainer rings and one of those classic one-man-band Japanese craftsmen. Great guy and a fellow member of Club S30 Japan. He makes all sorts of other interesting stuff too. https://www.vintagecraft-e-za.com/ I'm not aware of any other people who make the retainer rings in stainless steel. They are a boon as they don't rust and can survive multiple re-use, unlike the originals.

Part No.4 on the diagram are the steel rings which retain the rubber dust seals (Part No.5) in the caliper halves. The rings are a tight push fit in the caliper casting, leaving a lip around which the dust seals grip. In this way the dust seals remain fixed in one place and the pistons are free to move past them. Wire spring clips retaining the dust seals do not sound like original parts and may in fact be the work of a previous owner? The original steel retaining rings tend to rust over time and - in some cases - can all too easily get damaged/deformed when being removed. A previous rebuild/seal replacement may have forced some improvisation? In any case, you do need the correct seal retainer rings as without them the seals are going to move away from the caliper casting as the pistons operate, uncovering the gap between the pistons and the caliper castings. They won't last long like that...

Before you go to that trouble, check out your national suppliers of old Jaguar parts (mossmotors.com for one) and investigate caliper bleed screws for the Girling-Dunlop brakes used on 50s and 60s models such as the MK.1 through Mk.10, XK150 and early E-Type. The Sumitomo MK63 licensed a number of Girling-Dunlop patent designs which also used the ball-bearing type bleed screw system. Larger bored master cylinders are not required. I have used both solid rotor and vented rotor type MK63 calipers on many of my cars over the years (still use them on four current cars) and I always use the stock 7/8" master cylinder. I even use the 7/8" bore on my 432-R replica with its Master Vac delete (pedal motion ratio is modified) and they work well. Nissan's own recommendation was to use stock MC. A friend over here fitted a Wilwood 1" MC on his rally 240Z with vented rotor type MK63s and found that it gave a high and firm pedal feel but was hard to use. Switched back to a stock 7/8" MC which I supplied to him and he was MUCH happier.

LOL. A somewhat inevitable LIKE for a comment in support of a thread that has required too many corrections to count. I very much doubt that our friend 268Z has any idea just how badly misconceived, ill-informed and just plain wrong the original post was, let alone how much it has been quietly edited to cover much of that up. If there was any patience, poise or level-headedness in this thread it certainly wasn't in the first post...

Maybe your market is the "different market" concerned...?

Here's the pad data. You have the NON-VENTED (solid rotor, narrow caliper) type with the cutaway shape. I have a vague recollection that there's a Ford pad (Capri?) which is very close and only requires a little trimming around the edges to fit and work safely. Worth asking your brake supplier if they can come up with something that has these dimensions. I'll include the VENTED rotor type data for completeness, but the pads are not interchangeable.

That's his Tinder profile sorted. The corrections, clarifications and context are free. Your servant, Sir! More accurately, an LR24 riding in a PS30-SB's body whilst also using 95% of its drivetrain. Nissan's Works race team "won that day".

You mentioned a damaged bleeder thread in your first post. I think it might be wise to establish whether there's an issue with the corresponding thread in the caliper casting or not before they can be assessed for value.

Very likely - if not certain - to have been purchased from Datsun Competition USA as an aftermarket street tuning upgrade. Elsewhere in the world they were available - in both solid (stock) rotor and vented rotor form - via Nissan Sports from 1969 and, after 1984, NISMO. MK63 calipers were the period FIA and JAF homologated race and rally option for 'our' cars. Nissan used them on their Works competition cars.

I concur Ian. Jeff has a pair of solid rotor type (narrow) Sumitomo MK63 4-pot calipers, complete with the correct mounting kit - identifiable via the alloy plumbing elbows and flexi pipes. Your early Sumitomo MK63s use the Dunlop style ball-bearing bleed nipples (the bleed nipple 'squashes' a small BB against a small hole in the caliper to seal it) and there's a reverse dome on the end of the nipple to assist this. Swapping in an ordinary M10 1.0 valve won't do.

Hitoshi Uemura told me that the vented quarter panel design update saved both manufacturing time and parts costs, deleting the complex vents & drains in the tailgate which were made up of many individual components and which took time to assemble. The vented quarters function was pretty much achieved at the metal stamping and spotwelding stage, with just a push-on vent/emblem on the outside (popped on after paint) and simple holes in the hard plastic interior trim. A neat solution.

With all due respect to you, I think the main question here starts from a mistaken premise. The whole 'Series One', 'Series Two' ('Series 1.5' LOL) thing implies hard change points onto which have been hung big assumptions. People have tended to believe that the big production change points (EG vented tailgate to vented quarter) also included a raft of other content/spec changes. But if you look at the wider story of the whole S30-series Z family, you can observe changes being made all the way through production. The Japanese market variants in particular were going through a constant process of evolution in specs and componentry. So much so that it is hard to track them all. Yes, some of the major changes coincided and were obviously planned to happen at points when updates to new regulations were being complied with, but evolution was going on all the way through production and for many different reasons. As an example, here in the UK I have often heard people talking and writing about early production UK market RS30 '260Z' models as being made with many "left over" HS30 '240Z' parts. It's as though they imagined Nissan having warehouses full of '240Z' parts which somehow needed to be "used up" before the switch over to 'real 260Z' parts. This is - of course - a simple and innocent misapprehension. In trying to make sense of what they observed on the cars as-delivered they came up with an imaginary scenario which did not reflect the wider reality. All they were observing was ongoing evolution in componentry either side of a major update (the switch from HS30 '240Z' to RS30 '260Z'). The expectation was that the 'new model' switch should indicate all new content. Some of it was, but a lot of it wasn't. So, for example, we hear about early 260Zs with '240Z' doors and '240Z' struts etc as though old parts are being used up before the switchover to newer specs. You'd kind of hope that Nissan had a better grip on their parts production than that, no? I'd be surprised if a lot of this doesn't come from expectations based on the activities of the major American manufacturers, and that being applied - mistakenly - to a Japanese manufacturer. Perhaps American and Canadian car buyers had got so used to the 'Model Year' updates of their domestic manufacturers that they expected Nissan to behave in the same way? The fact is that in some ways they did, but in others they did not. Hence the confusion?

I think some of us find it strained rather than offensive. It attempts to put somewhat square pegs in neat, round holes. Yes, I can see how it came about and yes, I can see that some kind of lines in the sand would be useful (I tend to think along the lines of 'solid pillar/vented pillar' and then 'A-trans/B-trans' and so on) but trying to define spec/content - and that's exactly when it gets used - by citing a fairly arbitrary idea of 'Series' is soon going to get tripped up. And yes, it does get used as though it is a hard and fast rule/absolute (see post #2637 of this thread...!) and reinforced by people who are often cited as authorities on the cars. Self-certification.

Presumably it will be explained away with the usual goalpost moving and assigned some fraction between 1 and 2 ('Series 1.25'/'Series 1.5'/'Series 1.75'). Solito Negotium. I'm sorry but all this 'using up of stock parts until depleted' narrative is a combination of supposition, underestimation of Nissan as a company and lack of knowledge about what was actually going on. It implies that Nissan's component manufacturing - both in-house and with sub-contractors - was somehow disconnected with the sections of the company engaged in planning model updates and supersessions of said components. The idea that Nissan would find themselves with crates full of suddenly obsolescent parts which somehow needed to be "used up" before the introduction of their successors is for the birds. This is Cargo Cult-level nonsense. Jungle tribes trying to make sense of refrigerators dropping out of the sky. Much like the retrospectively-applied vernacular 'Series' appellations, indeed. Pundits need to do better. Have to laugh at the list of de-merits for this car cited as reasons why it won't be bid as high as last time. Those 'faults' (hey, it's had a life, who knew?) were on the car last time it was bid sky high too. The car hasn't changed, the zeitgeist has.