1970 240Z Works Rally - the road to restoration

[HS30-H]

17 minutes ago, datsun-man said:

this car was sold by marcel roks consultants bvba belgium i have photos of this car taken in september 2013

No, it wasn't.

Marcel Roks tried to get involved as a broker, but the car was bought direct from the owner in the Netherlands.

I've known of the car since around 2005 and in 2006 I travelled to Holland to inspect and authenticate it at the invitation of the then-owner. 

[HS30-H]

9 hours ago, xs10shl said:

I'll let other folks keep finding the Works pieces (apart from Alan, who can rattle them all off before anyone else gets a turn, LOL!) There are several more items in the dash picture which are not stock, but are common to most/all Works rally cars.  Hint: there's one going right down the center of the picture, which can even be seen from a distance.

No takers yet?

Don't want to spoil the fun, but I'd be in my element (ahem...) if I tried to answer. 😉

[psdenno]

Windscreen electric heater?

[SpeedRoo]

Windscreen electric heater element. Not sure how much of the screen it would clear though...probably more use as a sight line to for positioning the car. On aircraft we have sight lines on the "A" posts for positioning in reference to the horizon. Also the lovely rally clock and special 8,000 RPM tachometer.

Edited June 16, 2022 by SpeedRoo

[HS30-H]

45 minutes ago, SpeedRoo said:

Windscreen electric heater element. Not sure how much of the screen it would clear though...probably more use as a sight line to for positioning the car.

The silver vertical is only one part of the heated screen system. There are zig-zagging horizontal elements embedded in the glass (just like a modern heated 'screen) which cover at least 90% of the glass. They are very effective.   

[SpeedRoo]

@xs10shlAre the twin exhaust cutouts on the rear under the bumper to the sides original or added later? 

[SpeedRoo]

Were the approximately 20 PZR lightweight rally cars in addition to the approx 35 PZR lightweight Z432R built? 

[xs10shl]

2 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

Are the twin exhaust cutouts on the rear under the bumper to the sides original or added later?

The left-side cut-out is part of the original rear stamping, but wasn't used. I have personally not seen any period Works pictures where this cut-out was deleted, so I'd venture to say that Nissan did not have a special panel template with it removed.   The straight pipes were mounted right under the gas tank, affixed to the tank straps, with additional wire loops affixed to the rear panel. Some Works cars had rubber doughnuts to aid in support. 

As to my car: it came with only bits and pieces of an exhaust system: a rusty (but thankfully otherwise intact) Works exhaust header, and a few feet of rusted-out custom exhaust, that was not installed on the car.  The right-side cut-out was done to the car at some point after the 1971 season by a privateer.  I can only presume it was done to accommodate a custom dual exhaust system which went to either side of the fuel tank, instead of under it.  There were some old rusty brackets in both side locations that corroborated that theory.   They ware almost certainly non-Works, and have since been removed.

At this point I should add that although I have photos of all of these features and many more, they are not always necessarily my photos to re-post.  Apologies in advance. Shown here is a close-up from the 1972 Monte-Carlo car.

Edited June 16, 2022 by xs10shl

[HS30-H]

28 minutes ago, xs10shl said:

At this point I should add that although I have photos of all of these features and many more, they are not always necessarily my photos to re-post.  Apologies in advance.

May I?

Here's an excerpt from an original contact sheet of photos taken by Neill Bruce at Old Woking Service Station here in England, prior to the 1971 RAC Rally. I purchased all Neill's Works rally-related negatives and he signed the copyright over to me.

Rob Janssen brought the car over from Holland in November and had Old Woking Service Station prep it for the event. They added a thick rubber fuel tank shield to give some extra protection and also a pair of rudimentary silencers to the original Works twin exhaust in an effort to cut down on noise. Not for the general public or the event scrutineers, but for the occupants...

Also visible in the photos: The rear garnish cut-arounds for the quick-change rear lamp units, the mudflaps, the 100 litre tank, the auxiliary reversing lamp, the Dutch registration/license plate and - most importantly of all from a provenance perspective - the factory 'Kanri'/maintenance code number '8D-424' on the bottom RH side of the rear valance.

 

[xs10shl]

4 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

Were the approximately 20 PZR lightweight rally cars in addition to the approx 35 PZR lightweight Z432R built?

Ohh, boy ... not 24 hours has gone by, and you unwittingly fire one right between the eyes, LOL. 😄

Let me start by saying this: we could devote an entire thread of many multiple pages of discussion to just this topic.  And I'd venture to say that, in the end, we could only conclude that "No one knows for sure".  I'll start off with some things that I understand to be true, and then I'll probably have to pass the baton for more input. In an attempt to provide a short summary:

Some things that I believe to be true: Nissan made 40 +/- Works Rally cars utilizing, for a lack of a better description, a PZR chassis (Nissan parts-manual-speak for "Z432-R" chassis). My best understanding is that, although Nissan continued to make Works rally cars for the 1972 season and beyond using the same PZR chassis forms, none of these later Works cars were "Lightweight Spec", due to the FIA rules changes for the 1972 season which prohibited thin-gauge panel use, and other lightweight materials, in construction.

Some things I just don't know for sure: Of those 40 +/- Works Rally cars, I GUESS is that at-most 20 were "Lightweight Spec".  I get to this number by counting the known Works prototypes, known pre-1972 Rally cars, and adding one or two more phantom cars that perhaps no one (including me) knows about. I don't think there's a likelihood that there could be more than 20.  If pressed, I'd say there's probably slightly fewer.  This count of ~20 is IN ADDITION TO any Z432-Rs (which may or may not be lightweight- see below), which were production cars.

But wait, it gets more complicated.  What does "Lightweight Spec" really mean?  I'm using it in this case to describe a car that was produced, at least in-part, with SOME lightweight panels, and also with some combination of acrylic glass, along with fiberglass doors, hood, and hatch.  The reality is more difficult to parse, because it's my understanding that each batch of Works Rally cars were built to a purpose. Even though within each batch of 3 to 4 cars the construction was probably roughly identical, cars built for other races possibly used different panel thicknesses on different parts of the car. 

Other things I just don't know for sure: I just don't know exactly how many Z432-R's were "Lightweight-Spec" (using my definition above). Certainly several/many of them are.  Were they ALL lightweight?  This question is a grey area for me, as I've heard different stories. Did they continue making them lightweight after 1971?  I'd venture to say they certainly could have, and would have reason to do so; adding to the "lightweight" complication is the fact that Nissan Works was also producing track cars at the time, which is a whole other tangent to the Works program that I know almost nothing about.  Ergo, to potentially increase the running-total "Lightweight Spec" count, we'd have to consider the Works race cars in the mix.

Certainly more information, corrections, and thoughts to come on this topic.

Edited June 16, 2022 by xs10shl

[HS30-H]

5 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

Were the approximately 20 PZR lightweight rally cars in addition to the approx 35 PZR lightweight Z432R built? 

This question starts out with a somewhat false premise.

According to Nissan, a 'PZR' is very specifically a PS30-SB model Fairlady Z432-R. The Works rally car we are discussing here is a hybrid HLS30-prefixed 'Datsun 240Z' which utilised many of the PZR-specific thinner-gauge body pressings, ancillary parts and Nissan Race/Sports Option lightweight components. The terminology is tricky. We are trying to describe what are effectively PZR bodies, but with L-gata engines and HS30 and HLS30 chassis numbers.

I have sympathy with @xs10shl because he is clearly using the 'PZR' term in an attempt to get across the specific and really very special nature of the early 'Lightweight' bodied Works rally cars. I myself find it difficult to get across to people the true nature of these beasts and how different they were from the '72-up 'Full Fat' Works cars (I sometimes call these 'Steel and Glass' cars, as opposed to the '70 and '71 'FRP and Acrylic' cars). The truth is that these early Works cars existed in a rather interesting grey area where the manufacturer was - shall we say - bending the rules somewhat. The cars were running in international events sanctioned by the FIA and were supposed to be conforming to the production-based Group 3 and Group 4 regulations according to the FIA 3023 homologation papers. But PZRs were Group 5 'Prototype' cars (due to their low build quantity), so the early lightweight Works 240Z rally cars were running with what could be seen as 'Prototype' class bodyshells in a Production-based championship. A competing team could easily have accused them of cheating, if they had known. 

PZR build quantities? Good luck with that. Nissan have always been vague about it, for good reason. We know how many roadgoing PZRs they sold - we even know their chassis numbers - but how many Works competition PZRs did they build for their own use? Some of them didn't even have chassis numbers. And what do you do about counting a factory PZR race car that has had an L24R engine put into it and the chassis tag altered to suit? You end up dancing on the head of a pin.

We can't expect to be furnished with the full story, or even expect that such a thing exists. And that - for me at least - is part of the fascination. 

[SpeedRoo]

8 hours ago, HS30-H said:

Also visible in the photos: The rear garnish cut-arounds for the quick-change rear lamp units, the mudflaps, the 100 litre tank, the auxiliary reversing lamp, the Dutch registration/license plate and - most importantly of all from a provenance perspective - the factory 'Kanri'/maintenance code number '8D-424' on the bottom RH side of the rear valance.

 

In the more recent photos the "Kanri" code is also visible but not on the rear valence. Anyone care to hazard a guess where it can be found?

Edited June 17, 2022 by SpeedRoo