1970 240Z Works Rally - the road to restoration

[kats]

4 hours ago, xs10shl said:

This point about Nissan's efforts in WRC and IMC is IMHO very much on topic, and I'm happy to contribute.  In my research for my exhibit this past weekend, it was quite interesting to see exactly how large an effort Nissan put into competing at the EAS specifically.  Barely a decade after the Mobilgas Trial, Nissan showed up to the EAS with a veritable fleet of P510s, and took 6 out of the top 13 spots.  They then won it in 1970, 71,  73, 79, 80, 81, and 82, with the last few years arguably being Nissan's most successful rallying years ever.

As is indicative from the enormous capital resources Nissan must have poured into the Works teams, they clearly coveted winning specific FIA rallies. Now, I myself am not in a position to say whether that was a smart or poor use of marketing Yen from an economic standpoint, but I'm very glad they made the effort!

I made up some rudimentary overview slides for the exhibit, highlighting 8 rally cars and their achievements, which can be downloaded from my site for any who are interested in that sort of thing.  Here's what the exhibit looked like, with pictures attached.

I'll add at this point that I'm absolutely 100% certain, based on the receipts in my possession and the sleepless nights over the past few days, additionally factoring in the mental toll I endured and cash outlay I spent in getting this exhibit ready, including hotel and travel costs, opportunity costs at work, and family time at home- that producing this exhibit was a certifiably INSANELY POOR DECISION from an economic and mental health standpoint.  But hey, I had an absolute blast at the show - it was probably a unique opportunity in my lifetime to do something like this -  so the marginal utility was sky-high!

 

Great exhibition! I am sure your efforts will be rewarded . It is a wonderful thing that people don’t need to visit Nissan gallery in Japan to see a real Works rally car with historic displays. 
I have two old films , 1958 Australian rally, and 1970 Safari rally. I wish I have them digitalized so I can show you. 
I am so sorry they are not about 240Z , but may help to understand what Nissan did for international rally.

Kats

[xs10shl]

Wow @kats if you ever get those digitized, I'd love to watch it!  I also am smitten with @HS30-H's  idea of a Rallye Monte-Carlo exhibit with real fake snow.  I'd have to find a set of studded snow tires to go along with it.  I'll be a challenge to pull it off at JCCS, where temps reached 100 of Friday afternoon, not least because there would be a mad rush by show-goers for some ice cubes in an effort to cool down!

[HS30-H]

9 hours ago, xs10shl said:

If I may be selfish for the moment and bring the topic away from crankshafts, I'd like to point out that this is actually #70 - if one looks closely, one can see the "6" in the carnet plate, where there should have been a "5" for car #62.

That's why I posted it!

[Namerow]

8 hours ago, kats said:

I have two old films , 1958 Australian rally, and 1970 Safari rally. I wish I have them digitalized so I can show you. 

Perhaps a letter to the manager of the new (?) Nissan Heritage Zone -- listed as a part of the Global Headquarters Gallery in Yokohama -- might find them willing to support the cost of digitizing the two reels of historic film.  The NHZ includes a small reference library and would seem a logical curator for films such as these.

[kats]

3 minutes ago, Namerow said:

Perhaps a letter to the manager of the new (?) Nissan Heritage Zone -- listed as a part of the Global Headquarters Gallery in Yokohama -- might find them willing to support the cost of digitizing the two reels of historic film.  The NHZ includes a small reference library and would seem a logical curator for films such as these.

Thanks Namerow, one thing I am worried about is how I can protect these if Nissan says ‘ they are not belonging  to you ! Get them back to Nissan ‘ .

 I will start a new thread for this when I succeed to digitize.

Kats

[HS30-H]

14 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

So Nissan provides the early 240Z to race teams in the USA expecting them to go racing with them.

More specifically, NMC USA - either officially or semi-officially ("come and take this damaged car away...") - provided a handful of HLS30Us to race teams in the USA. Bob Sharp's first car appears to have been a personal deal between Kawazoe san, via Usami san, and Sharp. A damaged show car, no less. 

15 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

The engines are prepared for race use and high-rpm use and Nissan doesn't tell them the crankshaft is not fit for the purpose.

You're projecting quite a lot here. Your "...not fit for the purpose" is doing a lot of heavy lifting (some understatement here...). Says who? The cars in question were not provided or sold as race cars. You might as well point out that the fuel tanks, suspension, brakes, transmissions, differentials, wheels, tyres and cigarette lighters were also "...not fit for purpose" in race cars. These were road cars and they required preparation even for production-class racing. The other cars they were competing with often had their own weak spots and requirements for evolutionary parts, even the Porsches.

15 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

The cars race, the crankshaft breaks yet you want us to think it's not Nissan's fault.

As far as I understand it, the crankshafts suffered from a harmonic (something very common in straight sixes) which caused damage to flywheel bolts, flywheels and clutches under prolonged high rpm use. The crankshafts themselves did not "break" and they were - clearly - being expected to perform far beyond their original design parameters. So, yes. Hardly Nissan Japan's fault. 

Without knowing what was going on between NMC USA and NMC Japan - remembering that we are constantly told that the L24 was specified "for the USA" in a car that was "designed for the USA" and that the engine was the personal choice of Yutaka Katayama, which is of course nonsense - I'd say it is jumping to conclusions to blame the engineers back in Japan. 

15 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

Realising there is a problem they then change the crankshaft and fit it to all cars going forward rather than using the one you state has "fitness for expected use". Sorry not buying that explanation whatsoever.

That's a fairly simplistic - if not bowdlerised - version of events. Plenty of details on these cars were subject to evolution, improvement and supersession. Mr Brock and his followers may well believe that his employees 'discovered' a design fault and were part of the cure, but Nissan were already on the case - just as they were with many other details on the cars.

If you follow the part numbers, the homologations and supersessions they give a good picture of what was going on crankshaft-wise, particularly when you look at homologated crankshaft weights. You seem to want to paint the early L24 crankshafts as some kind of mistake, but I believe you need to take other factors - not least production costings, late specification of a sedan engine for a sports car due to the need to mitigate power-sapping anti-pollution devices and the whole question of who was in charge/responsible for the specifications in the first place. Apparently NMC USA and their president get to collect plaudits for success but dodge any finger of blame for perceived problems?  

Meanwhile, those same engineers at Nissan were planning and developing their Works race and rally LR24 engines...

15 hours ago, SpeedRoo said:

Wonder which crankshaft the rally 240Z were fitted with?

E3141 8-bolt crankshafts with sufficient counterweighting for competition use, made from higher strength steel (NCM45) than the stock L24 crankshafts:

     

[Carl Beck]

On 9/11/2022 at 6:30 PM, xs10shl said:

If I may be selfish for the moment and bring the topic away from crankshafts, I'd like to point out that this is actually #70 - if one looks closely, one can see the "6" in the carnet plate, where there should have been a "5" for car #62.

Just an FYI, in case you didn’t see them in the Datsun Showroom at the time:

 

That image and another was printed on one half of a Showroom Poster - each image was about 3w’x2h’. So the total size of the Poster was about 3’ wide by 4’ high. The images were printed head to head,  or top to top. The Poster was then folded in half - and hung over a support wire that ran wall to wall across the center of the showroom.

 

There were two or maybe three different Posters - that featured the EAS Rally 240Z’s and the Monte Carlo 240Z's. 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Carl Beck

[xs10shl]

14 hours ago, Carl Beck said:

Just an FYI, in case you didn’t see them in the Datsun Showroom at the time:

 

That image and another was printed on one half of a Showroom Poster - each image was about 3w’x2h’. So the total size of the Poster was about 3’ wide by 4’ high. The images were printed head to head,  or top to top. The Poster was then folded in half - and hung over a support wire that ran wall to wall across the center of the showroom.

 

There were two or maybe three different Posters - that featured the EAS Rally 240Z’s and the Monte Carlo 240Z's. 

Thanks Carl for sharing that information.  Unfortunately I was just a toddler, so I missed out! it would be something special to have that poster collection now.

Laughing a little bit to myself here about the display you describe, because there were probably very few US customers who even understood what rallying entailed. Most probably asked themselves why on Earth would they ever want to off-road their brand new Z, ha!  Times have changed- today, everyone wants an SUV.

[xs10shl]

@Tweeds had a question about the mud flaps, so here is a little info on the evolution of the Works mud flaps.  I've only included the early configurations that I know a little something about - I'd imagine there are other setups as well I'm not as familiar with.  These are also not the greatest pictures, but they'll give some idea about the various styles the early cars employed.

The first picture is 8D-420, an early test vehicle.  Was this dual setup used in competition? it appears to be designed for serious gravel roads. 

The second picture is the early setup used through 1970 and 1971, which consisted of two outer metal straps, approximately 5/8" wide, bolted together and thru-bolted onto the car.  These were accompanied by an inner, thicker metal bracket, which roughly held the mud flap in place, and could likely carry the weight by itself. I say "roughly", because there are several period photos showing the flaps having been moved backwards from their standard position during a rally stage. My guess is that the Works team were probably concerned about the mud flaps catching on something while driving, so they implemented a kind of outer "spring" system, that would give way, allowing the flap to move rearward, should it become entangled on a branch or rock.

The third picture is from the 1972 Monte-Carlo car #5, and represents a later flap system employed for 1972, where the flap was more firmly fixed in place to the lower panel using a bracket.

Edited October 5, 2022 by xs10shl

[xs10shl]

986 used the early-style mud flap system.  I received a set of period-correct mud flaps with the car in 2014, but no mounting hardware. So I set about scouring period photos for some details on how they were assembled. The setup I went with was my best guess, given the information at hand. 

Thankfully, the job was made easier by the simple fact that the mounting holes were clearly visible, making locating the flaps a breeze.  I chose 5/8" galvanized strap material for my outer brackets.  This strap appeared to be roughly the right thickness - it was wide enough to drill a 7mm hole through, which was a ballpark guess as to the approximate size of hardware used.   For the inner bracket, I chose a 1/8" thick steel bracket from Ace Hardware, which I bent into shape, making sure to leave the "Ace" stamp outward, for all to see!  These materials were clearly not original, as I'd expect the real brackets to be made out of metric stock, but it served it's purpose for showing the car with the mud flaps in their approximate positions.  I'll likely go over the choice of materials again during restoration, as I think I made the rear outer "spring-strap" slightly too short, giving it a "too straight" appearance.

Also note that the right-side photo appears to have an extra hole by the bumper mount - my early assessment is that this is potentially just a random bumper mounting hole (or otherwise a hole used for other purposes, given it's size relative to the other bracket holes), as there is no corresponding hole on the left side. So I did not use it to mount the outer bracket.  Instead, I hung the outer brackets by drilling a larger diameter hole in the strap, and affixed it between the bumper and body using the existing bumper bolt.  I'm not yet 100% certain that this is the correct method, but it was close enough to make the flaps hang properly, so I went with it for the time being. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by xs10shl

[HS30-H]

People might wonder why such effort was made with regard to mudflaps, and the answer is that many events mandated their use - for safety reasons as much as anything else. In events such as the Monte Carlo Rallye, where studded tyres would be used on the mountain stages, there was a very real risk to following vehicles.

There were often penalties for cars which finished with damaged or missing equipment, so some teams added extra sets of mudflaps which were rolled up out of the way and could be deployed as replacements. If not, great efforts were made by the team to jury-rig a repair in the field. The old faithful of baling wire doing its stuff:

Edited October 12, 2022 by HS30-H
typo

[xs10shl]

@HS30-H great picture.  Folks also can see the clever later exhaust routing, which added considerable ground clearance.  In addition, something I had not noticed before on the earlier cars - a rear c-chaped bracket, which I assume is for one of those mobile jackstands?  A device like that would only be possible with the re-routing of the exhaust.  It's clearly very bent out of position,  to the point where it's likely not usable, but it's mere presence may have saved the fuel tank from whatever the car backed into.