Is there an E30 head?

[Zvoiture]

Saw one on a Z. Can't seem to find Zgarage tonight, but don't remember ever reading about an e-30 head. Am I having a brain-fart?

steve77/86

[Bambikiller240]

I checked Zhome.com ; couldn't find a mention of an E30 head there. Was it on a US 240Z or maybe a imported 2.0L Fairlady Z?

Now I'm curious. I thought the 2.4L US Z's only came with E31 or two variations of E88 heads. Let us know if you find out anything more on this mystery!

Carl

[Z Kid]

Over here, the E30 head came out on the 240K cars, not sure about the usefullness, and have heard conflicting stories as to wether its any good or not.

[HS30-H]

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.

[HS30-H]

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.

[Zvoiture]

OK, that makes sense......the first thng I noticed about the motor was the valve cover, which had giant NISSAN in huge relief (like 1/2 inch high, 2" tall letters). The owner said the valve cover was "really rare". Steve Landoni at Z's Unlimited said in not-too-distant history, (the strange valve covers) came on all the re-manufactured engines from Japan and he has "thrown away hundreds of them". So, mystery solved. "Slap'em together and send them over to those Americains!"

Thanks alot.

steve77/86

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by HS30-H

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.

major snip by carl)

I wonder, has anyone approached Mr. Beck with a request to include, or an offer of information regarding the RHD "Home market" Z's; that could be included on his website? He's not an ogre or anything like that. Maybe he would be glad to add more knowledge about Z's designed for other parts of the world.

Another of my $.02

[Royce]

Sure Bambikiller240, you Carl guys stick together!!! ;-) Actually, I agree to your statement exactly. Carl Beck worked in a US Datsun dealership and has a great amount of US Z knowledge. But like anyone his comments may be a little biased to his own experiences. Most of the information on Zhome was contributed by Z folks from around the world. I am certain he would be very happy to have more information on the different Z markets!

HS30-H,

Thanks for the info on the E30 head. I had heard it is not necessarily a good choice for the L24 - L28 because it has smaller valves than even the early L24 heads. Of course vavle sizes can always be changed, and often are.

Sure Carl Beck or zhome.com can take your affectionate punches. He enjoy's talking Z as much as anyone and I am sure if he has argured with you about anything Z it was in the interested of learning more and challenging you to the point of disproving some other information he was convinced by another was fact! I post things on this site and other Z forums that I think are ture. I certainly don't want to send anyone down the wrong directions and apprieciate it when I am corrected! Go for it, challenge him, them, it, us!

Take care!

[HS30-H]

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.

[halz]

It might be interesting to hear the country by country delivery numbers for 240Z and variants (fairlady Z etc).

I thought the total U.S. number was in the 60-70,000 units range for the '69-'73 period. How many were sold in the home market Alan?

If the number is more than the U.S. figure then your 'underdogs' might just be the 'winning' side! If that is the case then the Japanses cars could probably be considered the 'publicity underdogs' in our brand new internet age..!

[HS30-H]

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.

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by HS30-H

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.

Hi Alan:

I understand a bit about you feeling people don't appreciate the spirit of some of your "jabs". Sometimes after posting, I start to feel that my twisted sense of humor doesn't come across well when others read my posts. :disappoin

I hope you don't feel that I was adding rope to your neck. If so, I apologise. Most of my knowlege of Z's has come from my USA variant experiences, reading Brian Long's Fairlady to 280Z book, and reading a large part of the ZHome site. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to learn about the other variants of this car that I really enjoy driving and working on.

If Mr. Beck isn't interested in adding RHD "Home Market" Z information to his site, maybe Moderator Mike could set aside an area for this information to be made available. I know he mentioned something in another thread about not wanting to step on Carl B's turf regarding a register of Z cars, but if the information isn't wanted at ZHome, making (or allowing) a place for it here could hardly be considered infringing on ZHome's turf IMHO.

What do the rest of the members think? Isn't this something that would benefit the Z community as a whole?

Regards,

Carl S

Knowledge is Power!