9 minutes ago, Gav240z said:

My guess is that as Alan stated someone in South Africa had a good working relationship with Nissan Japan and was able to make a special order request. That's the suspicion anyway.

The man with the clout was Mr Ewold van Bergen of Nissan-Datsun South Africa. Very influential and much respected in Japan.

17 minutes ago, HS30-H said:

The man with the clout was Mr Ewold van Bergen of Nissan-Datsun South Africa. Very influential and much respected in Japan.

Looks like his Grand son is the blogger behind the blog here.

https://dattosankureiji.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/the-one-year-anniversary-post/

It looks like he was a successful rally driver, will need to read more into this.

Hi everyone, today I show this , early bumpers.

The earliest bumpers are unique, for example, the front bumper has only one stud bolt per each side. And the associated brackets are very thin . 

These are the same for all the early S30 series cars.

But I do not know when it bacame to two bolts per side.

Once I was told by a 1970 Z432 -R owner , he told me that he thought his car has very thin bumper brackets because of his car is Z432-R .

And the rear bumper,  it does not have a recess near the side mount bracket for each side. This is true for at least up to 1973 model , including Fairlady 240ZG which has gun grey painted bumper. 

Some of you noticed already,  my Z432 has later ones. They are  genuine stock bumpers from Nissan , but they all were purchased around 2005-2007 .  

We all were happy that Nissan still providing these old parts , but we were little bit unhappy about its quality about chrome. The finsh of surface was not so good . You can tell from the pictures , about front and rear bumper’s imperfection. The original old bumpers has  much better chrome I think .

Today I show my re-chromed early bumpers , one bolt version on a front and non recess version on a back . 

Safari Motors ( remember ? They are taking care of Nissan’s historic racing cars ) did a wonderful job for it , but expensive!!

Kats

Edited July 4, 20186 yr by kats

Prince and Nissan R380s at Nissan Yokohama HQ gallery . They are restored recently, Safari motors is supporting this activity.

Kats

Edited July 4, 20186 yr by kats

Update of my blue 240Z ,

I replaced an water pump, it went bad after a few months I reported here last  time when I installed the metal fan . Anyway this previous pump was old enough to be going wrong. Also a thermostat, a radiator cap , and installed a fan shroud .

Kats

Edited July 4, 20186 yr by kats

Hi Kats,

I noticed that you still have a mechanical fuel pump and stock fan.  Maybe it never gets very hot where you are so you must not have trouble with vapor locking problems.  Here in central Texas I must use a flex fan (very LOUD) and electric fuel pump only and I still get a jumpy ride after sitting at traffic light for a while.

don

Hi Don , thank you for the joining here ,

Yes I still use the mechanical fuel pump and the cooling fan , I do not want to change those things because I love Stock .

I have had a trouble once or twice about fuel during my ownership since 2000 , that was overflowing from the SU carb fuel chambers .

I opened the chambers and checked the fuel floats, they seemed twisted sideways and sticking to the wall , then fuel valves were stuck open. If I drive my Z in a traffic jam under such a hot day , I will have the same trouble again . 

Oh , when I brought my 240Z for Las Vegas ZCON 2000, I had a vapor locking . I parked my car under the strong sunshine , after returning from the drugstore , the engine hesitated to fire up . I tried to start several times , then finally I made it . 

Nowadays Japan’s summer is extremely hot , tomorrow will be 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) , when I was a kid , max was like 30 C ( 86 F ) . 

We can see this in the first service manuals ( Nov 1969 ) , a section Engine shows SU fuel mixture diagram. The diagram has a scale only up to 30 C or so .

This is my biggest question,  people in hot area like you Don , did they have a vapor lock trouble back in 1970s ? Was it not hot that high back in those days ? 

Kats

 

 

The Fairlady Z manual says , 

Z432 has a fuel pump ( electrical ) which is located under the floor near the diff . This prevents vapor locking  . The reason why Z432 does not have a fuel return system is , no need to concern vapor locking .

I did not know that , is this true ?

Kats

Edited July 14, 20186 yr by kats

2 hours ago, kats said:

Hi Don , thank you for the joining here ,

Yes I still use the mechanical fuel pump and the cooling fan , I do not want to change those things because I love Stock .

I have had a trouble once or twice about fuel during my ownership since 2000 , that was overflowing from the SU carb fuel chambers .

I opened the chambers and checked the fuel floats, they seemed twisted sideways and sticking to the wall , then fuel valves were stuck open. If I drive my Z in a traffic jam under such a hot day , I will have the same trouble again . 

Oh , when I brought my 240Z for Las Vegas ZCON 2000, I had a vapor locking . I parked my car under the strong sunshine , after returning from the drugstore , the engine hesitated to fire up . I tried to start several times , then finally I made it . 

Nowadays Japan’s summer is extremely hot , tomorrow will be 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) , when I was a kid , max was like 30 C ( 86 F ) . 

We can see this in the first service manuals ( Nov 1969 ) , a section Engine shows SU fuel mixture diagram. The diagram has a scale only up to 30 C or so .

This is my biggest question,  people in hot area like you Don , did they have a vapor lock trouble back in 1970s ? Was it not hot that high back in those days ? 

Kats

 

 

Hi Kats, thanks for your response.  I understand that you are desiring to maintain stock as much as possible for aesthetic value.  Sometimes I don't pay enough attention to that. 

I should mention that I really enjoyed looking at those photos, your cars are  simply beautiful and they have  inspired me to do better on mine.

Anyway, to answer your question yes, when I bought the car in '76 it was mostly ok, it had already had the 73 carbs replaced by 71's.    On hot days it had the problems you described.  I was only 26 then, a fresh electrical engineer  and didn't do much mechanic work before  so I didn't know what it was.  Apparently, over time all the other car manufacturers  checked for this condition and made redesign if needed long ago  I know it happened a long time ago  on some cars but I never experienced it  on other cars before.  The Z  would buck and pitch like a horse that didn't want to go.  So one time I popped open the hood and I could hear something bubbling.  I put my hand on many hot things and then I discovered I could feel the fuel bubbling in the fuel pump.  I began talking to people and I discovered that an electric fuel pump was added in the back but I also discovered that it never came on.  So it must have never been checked.  I decided to make the electric  pump run all the time.  I added a switch to the oil pressure gauge so that if I lost oil pressure the fuel pump would shut off.  I did this in case I had a wreck and the key stayed on so  that it would not continue pumping fuel.  I did more testing and discovered that the electric pump was plenty strong so I just bypassed the mechanical and eventually totally removed it.   That helped a lot but still there were problems on Texas hot days with AC on.  So next I installed a flex fan and that improved it a lot.  Still some problems happened.  I feel that there is a fundamental flaw in the design with those SU type carbs hanging over the exhaust manifold.   At the moment my engine is totally removed so I am going to try some shadetree mechanic solutions like sheet metal shields containing foam insulation like a sandwich and insulation around  the carb bowls  and that small fuel line at the bottom that goes to the jets.  Finally, I have a rust bucket 81ZX and I could take those fans and mount them to blow air from the other side of the engine like what was done on the FI on the 81ZX.  After that I'm going to try electric fans on the radiator/ac condenser.  That flex fan steels HP and is very LOUD.  I did not mention it but of course I have rebuilt the carbs and adjusted the float settings but that made no difference, they were ok.  40 years later I now have more time to tinker with it.  My daily driver is a duramax diesel pickup that sadly is much faster than the Z.

Your fan should not be loud.  Is the fan clutch working properly?

the reason its loud is that I replaced the  fan clutch with a totally different flex fan assembly.  As it speeds up it flattens out but at low rpm it pushes lots of air which helps the vapor lock situation.  Its not terrible but it makes it unpleasant to hit 6k.  As I go forward with schemes to reduce the vapor locking I'm hoping to use an electric fan.

On 7/13/2018 at 8:11 AM, kats said:

The Fairlady Z manual says , 

Z432 has a fuel pump ( electrical ) which is located under the floor near the diff . This prevents vapor locking  . The reason why Z432 does not have a fuel return system is , no need to concern vapor locking .

I did not know that , is this true ?

Kats

Here is the interesting thing.  The Z's don't experience vapor locking until the temperature get's over 95.  So if the temp never gets higher than that no problem.  My feeling is that the problem happens in the fuel bowls on the carburetors  and in that small hose going to the jets, however, if the fuel is recirculated back to the tank then the fuel that goes to the carbs  is cooler so it improves the margin.  The other thing is that the Z432A may have ceramic coated exhaust pipes and a very good shield over the exhaust header.  That would be a much better design although more costly for the mass market that the 240z aimed at.