1970 240Z Works Rally - the road to restoration

[HS30-H]

2 hours ago, kats said:

I add this from a magazine, I see a red helmet on the table, is that for Aaltonen? 

Great 'behind-the-scenes' photos there Kats. I have not seen those before. Excellent!

 

Yes! Rauno Aaltonen was often seen wearing a red crash helmet around that time. In later years I have seen photos of him using a white one too.

Aaltonen had a reputation for being fastidious and meticulous about his preparation, and whenever I see photos of him before rallies and at servicing that does seem to come across. He liked to put a '12 O'Clock' stripe on his steering wheels and he also preferred the blue WILLANS brand safety belts, which he would swap with the factory Works team's Takata belts. 

Here are a couple of colour shots from the '70 RAC and '71 Monte: 

[kats]

Beautiful pictures Alan!

”Aaltonen, he never overlooks every tiny detail. He keeps on doing it until he is satisfied”

That is what the text is saying about Aaltonen working on his helmet.

Kats

[Captain Obvious]

On 3/23/2023 at 3:09 PM, xs10shl said:

Keep it coming @Captain Obvious!

Well without spending real time on it, that's about all I have from a distance. Have you found a shop willing to take on the work?

In my experience with such devices, the amount of time/expense required to diagnose and fix something like that is very rarely worth the dollars. In this instance, it's a piece of history that is irreplaceable which makes the value indeterminate. And one of the problems is certainly going to be obsolete and unavailable parts. I already looked around on the interwebs for the output transistors (the four big ones bolted to the aluminum plate) and they are (not surprisingly) unavailable.

PNP germanium in a TO-3 case. Riiiiiight.  Haha!

Send me a PM if you're still looking for a shop and want to chat. I could use some vapor blasting. Or some $$. Or a some of both.   

[HS30-H]

On 3/23/2023 at 1:20 AM, xs10shl said:

I believe mine to be original hardware, as I have a detailed picture of it installed in the car from the 71 Monte Carlo (last picture below), and another from October 1971. It is a very compact 12V device, made by Teikoku Dempa Co. LTD, using 1/4" headphone jacks to a pair of mono headsets with microphones. Teikoku Dempa has been in business since the 1940s, making radios under the Clarion brand name. It's not clear to me whether this device was stock, a special order by the Works team, or potentially even a modified over-the-counter item.

I've dug out some photos of 'TKS 33 SA 7924', an LHD car originally built as part of a batch for the 1972 RAC Rally (driven by Rauno Aaltonen and navigated by Paul Easter, running number 6, finishing 11th overall and 3rd in the Group 4 class) which went on to win the 1973 East African Safari Rally, driven by Shekhar Mehta and navigated by 'Lofty' Drews running number 1. 

It has a later evolution of the 'Teikoku Dempa' intercom with external headphone jack units (which would appear to give more freedom of movement and less stress on the jack plugs) but it still gives a Model No. of 'Y-4009' and with a Serial No. of '066'. Volume control appears to be conventional 'pot' type dial knob rather than the rotary (I don't know what to call it?!) dial on your Serial No. '014' unit. Interesting that there is a 52 unit difference between serial numbers for a roughly two year production gap.    

It was powered by a battery pack mounted behind the RH rollover bar mounting bracket, carrying two batteries (one connected, one spare) and press-on old battery radio style blue vinyl-covered connectors:

[HS30-H]

Hopefully not too much of a digression, but here's a photo of another iteration of the Teikoku Dempa/Clarion intercom/interphone box.

This is an original period photo from a small hand-made booklet of data and advice put together by Nissan's Works competitions department at Oppama, and sent to the de-facto competitions department here in the UK in May 1974 (by then based at Nissan UK's Worthing HQ) with the intention of informing the UK competitions staff about details of the new P710 'Violet' Works rally cars which were - at that point - being shipped to them.

The intercom/interphone unit is very similar to the one seen on '7924', which was built in mid 1972. It has the same volume control (interestingly, for a 'new' and supposedly unused car, the control knob appears to be missing as it is on '7924', which makes me wonder if they were prone to falling off, or just not fitted...?) and it also has the external 'floating' jack boxes, but with some extra belt-and-braces suspension for them.

So, an indication that the Works team carried on with the same basic design well into 1974. I guess that Teikoku Dempa must have made a fair few of them?  

 

 

[xs10shl]

Great info, @HS30-H.  Entirely plausible these units contained the same internals, even if the exterior differed slightly.  All the mods I can see make sense.  Moving the power-transistors aids in cooling, and for assembly. Part of me wants to think that the possible market  for the intercom was also small plane use, but the caveat is that most plane intercoms that I've seen use a 2-plug system - one for mic, and one for speakers.

Just looking at the evolution of these models is interesting: The original systems had too much stress on the jacks, so they added extensions and jack boxes. Then the wires of the boxes got stressed from dangling, so they added cables as stress-relief for the wires -  that all feels a bit like the evolution of a custom modification, rather than from Teikoku Dempa.  It would be something to find this box in another application, which would answer some questions.

 

[xs10shl]

S30 Works Rally Struts - this is a lengthy post because there's so much to unpack here, that I hardly know where to begin.  For starters, it's worth noting that the Works team was constantly developing and improving their suspension technology, and what was employed for use on my car was a very early system in comparison to the later adjustable and (likely) more maintainable systems used on later cars.  The system on my car was not ride height adjustable in the way later cars were, apart from swapping out entire systems for struts with different components.

A preamble before I dive into the actual struts on my car - for the sake of simplicity, I've postulated in the past that there were probably at least three established ride heights for the early rally cars, which I've internally labelled "Tarmac, Forest, and Safari".  Please note, this is just a visual way I've used to convey "Low, medium, and High", and are not in any way official designations.  I can imagine that it's also possible that there may have been more gradients denoting other characteristics, like firmness, travel, etc., but this is outside my own knowledge-base, and I personally don't possess any evidence to support this line of thinking.

Using the same terminology as above, here's a little flash-back to 1971, to gain some color: my car originally ran the 71 Monte Carlo using a Tarmac setup (picture 1, credit Nissan Global Media), thereby lowering the chassis by several inches.  After it was sold to Janssen (along with 3 other Works cars), he ran it the 71 Paasraces (picture 2, unknown source) with the what looked to be the same Tarmac setup.  What happened after that race is pure speculation by me, based on clues I've loosely pieced together. I can surmise he stripped the car of it's sump guard and a few other off-road parts, presumably with the intent on using it primarily for road use (something he was quoted as planning on doing in a 1971 AutoVisie article).  Later in the season, when he rolled his OTHER off-road s30 in the 71 TAP rally (picture 3, unknown source - please note, this is a picture of the crunched SISTER car to my car, inserted here for narrative purposes only), my car was likely pressed back into off-road service for the upcoming 1971 RAC.  The off-road rallying parts were re-fitted, along with the sump guard, additional protection for the fuel tank, and Forest struts.  He ran an unsuccessful RAC, with a retirement (picture 4, unknown credit). Some time after the RAC (picture 5, unknown credit) he sold the car on to an enthusiast.

Back to today, and the struts I have on the car - just about the only thing I can confidently say is that these struts on my car are Works parts - perhaps possibly the Forest struts used in the 71 RAC, given the car's use history -  but almost certainly not the correct setup for Monte Carlo, as they make the car to sit too high (picture 6). What I'll need to do in the coming year is to determine if it's possible to easily alter the Forest struts to be used as Tarmac struts, hopefully by just swapping out some of the internals.

More on the actual Works strut tower construction (picture 7) in an upcoming post.

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by xs10shl

[Patcon]

Did the drivers walk away from that roll over? It looks pretty flat...

[xs10shl]

6 hours ago, Patcon said:

Did the drivers walk away from that roll over? It looks pretty flat...

They banged out the roof, chucked the windshield, and he drove it home, apparently (don't know about the navigator). I can't tell whether this photo was staged, but if the story is at all true, then that is a rock star move. (photo credit unknown)

Edited April 17, 2023 by xs10shl

[HS30-H]

12 hours ago, xs10shl said:

...my car was likely pressed back into off-road service for the upcoming 1971 RAC.  The off-road rallying parts were re-fitted, along with the sump guard, additional protection for the fuel tank, and Forrest struts.  He ran an unsuccessful RAC, with a retirement (picture 4, unknown credit). Some time after the RAC (picture 5, unknown credit) he sold the car on to an enthusiast.

Back to today, and the struts I have on the car - just about the only thing I can confidently say is that these struts on my car are Works parts - perhaps possibly the Forest struts used in the 71 RAC, given the car's use history -  but almost certainly not the correct setup for Monte Carlo, as they make the car to sit too high (picture 6).

Something we have discussed before, but is it not a possibility that OWSS simply supplied and fitted a set of the taller RAC type springs to use on the same Monte struts originally fitted to the car? I would think, what with Works parts being in short supply in-field (I am in possession of much period correspondence where OWSS, Datsun UK and various privateers were all trying to get hold of Works-specific spares in order to use Works cars that they had care of) that could have been a possibility. 

Have you got any intact part number alloy tags or painted numbers on the springs? Any legible Dymo tags on the rear strut tubes?   

[HS30-H]

1 hour ago, xs10shl said:

They banged out the roof, chucked the windshield, and he drove it home, apparently (don't know about the navigator). I can't tell whether this photo was staged, but if the story is at all true, then that is a rock star move. (photo credit unknown)

That series of photos was taken by Rob Janssen's friend and navigator Jaap Dik, who carried a camera with him on the events they took part in.

For sure a rock star move, but they had little to no option. No private jet home for them whilst others swept up the mess. Heroic privateers on a shoestring budget!  

[xs10shl]

Part two of the Works Rally Struts show-and-tell: Front Struts

@HS30-H requested a few specifics about the parts, which are shown below, for discussion.  For starters, the RH/LH part numbers are Y9821-54302 and Y9821-54303, with a spring part number of Y9821-54010-1.  There does not appear to be a part number on the strut shock absorber.  All this seems to potentially coincide with a later parts-manual listing for competition rally parts 54302-E7220, 54303-E7220, and 54010-E7220.  [edit: just for reference, stock strut components also have the 54302, 54303, and 54010 prefixes]

Some observations: The strut housing and strut itself appears more substantial than a standard strut, although I don't have the parts in front of me to give accurate measurements - everything is out for analysis and rebuilding, so it might be awhile before I can have exact dimensions to share. One thing we did capture is the front spring height, which is 266mm.  This matches the listed height of the competition rally spring 54010-E7220. 

That being said, the competition parts manual only lists a single ride height for the East African, Monte Carlo, and Press On rallies, instead of multiple ride heights. I'd venture to say that I've got what will likely become a "future-standard" rally ride height setup on the car presently, which I already have discerned is not the correct ride height for period Tarmac use (see above post for my thoughts on that). Also, I cant say whether the strut design I have is identical to the listed competition parts, but there is very likely an overlap.

Another tidbit that keen observers may have spotted from the first photo is the rally odometer cable attachment point, located at the wheel hub.  This served as the attachment point for the twin Halda Tripmasters (one per wheel), which I'll go over in more detail at a later time. 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by xs10shl