1970 240Z Works Rally - the road to restoration

[HS30-H]

9 hours ago, kats said:

And they said “when cars need to across the river, mostly a few seconds, cars have to have ability to go through”.

 It makes me think the huge duralumin under cover would help the cars float a few seconds over the water, wouldn’t it? 

At speed, it would act something like a surfboard. I think there's a skill to driving through deep standing water where you create a sort of 'bow wave' effect which pushes the water out in front of the car at the right speed to stop it coming over the top of the car?

Some of the later cars had big rubber flaps attached to the corners of the front bumper to help with this.

[xs10shl]

On 7/28/2022 at 12:07 PM, SpeedRoo said:

Thanks Thomas @xs10shl appreciate the update. Someone went to a fair bit of effort to make up that Kanri number badge, great to have the background story. 

A little sidetrack on this dashboard number badge.  It may have originally been produced by the Works team as a key tag, to help keep track of all the keys to the rally cars, but for now, I can only speculate as to it's true origin.

My thought process on this badge - comprised of one part deductive reasoning, and one part wishful thinking - originates from a picture taken of the dashboard in one of the Works cars, downloaded from the Nissan Global Media site. I can't say for certain that the tag pictured is an identical style, but it does look similar to my badge I had on the dashboard covering the hole made by the pen holder (since removed, when I reinstalled the pen holder- see here for more info).  Regrettably, no amount of "AI picture enhancement" - a-la Blade-Runner-style - has been able to sharpen the digits to allow me to accurately read the number.  I'd probably need someone at Nissan to provide a better source picture.  Irrespective of what the key tag actually reads, it would still seem to be similar enough in it's style to indicate that my badge was made in the same fashion.  Any inputs as to what you all think the number on the key tag reads?  (credits: Nissan Global Media)

Also to add- I’ve yet to see a period photo of any Works dashboard where the Kanri number is prominently displayed. My own reasoning is that the badge was placed there by the enthusiast-owner in period, simply as a means of covering the slot for the pen holder.  It made a bit of sense to further reason that he got the key tags with the keys when he bought the car, and later refashioned one for use on the dashboard.  

Edited February 25 by xs10shl

[Patcon]

The tag on the keys looks to be the same number. Having had exceptionally bad vision earlier in life I have gotten pretty good at reading letters that are badly out of focus...

[HS30-H]

20 hours ago, xs10shl said:

Also to add- I’ve yet to see a period photo of any Works dashboard where the Kanri number is prominently displayed. My own reasoning is that the badge was placed there by the enthusiast-owner in period, simply as a means of covering the slot for the pen holder.  It made a bit of sense to further reason that he got the key tags with the keys when he bought the car, and later refashioned one for use on the dashboard.  

I believe the long-term previous owner of your car was an amateur aviator? My impression was that he stuck the Works key tag Kanri number on the car's dash in the way that a civil aircraft's registration ID is often seen on its dash:

 

Using it to cover the hole left by the Grayston pen holder would kill two birds with one stone.

Here's a photo of one of the Works cars from the 1971 RAC Rally of GB. Key fob tag just about visible under there, and with rounded corners like yours:

 

Works 'Kanri' (maintenance) numbers are a tricky topic by their nature. These were Nissan's internal ID codes for the individual Works cars, not for us to use or necessarily to understand. Even the service barges had them, but sometimes they did not appear on the cars.

Here's a photo I took of the Kanri number on the '71 East African Safari winner, before the car was 'refreshed' a few years ago (in my opinion it didn't need half of what they did to it, but there you go...). The number is on a clear oblong sticker with the letters and numbers in a kind of golden reflective material:

 

     

 

[xs10shl]

21 hours ago, Patcon said:

The tag on the keys looks to be the same number. Having had exceptionally bad vision earlier in life I have gotten pretty good at reading letters that are badly out of focus...

I'd go so far as to say that there's nothing in the blurred text that rules out "8D-424" as an option, mostly based on what appears to my eye to be two "4"s. This is the "wishful thinking" component of my reasoning.  I can only hope to retrieve a clearer photo at some point in the future. 

[HS30-H]

Lancashire Automobile Club have uploaded another of navigator Mike Wood's films to YouTube.

This episode covers Mike's participation in the 1971 Monte Carlo Rallye with driver Tony Fall in Nissan Works 240Z rally car 'TKS 33 SA 986'. 

This very car... 

 

[xs10shl]

57 minutes ago, HS30-H said:

Lancashire Automobile Club have uploaded another of navigator Mike Wood's films to YouTube.

This episode covers Mike's participation in the 1971 Monte Carlo Rallye with driver Tony Fall in Nissan Works 240Z rally car 'TKS 33 SA 986'. 

This very car... 

 

Unbelievable - what a treasure trove. Thanks to Mike Wood and his trusty 8mm camera!

[DC871F]

I've watched so many videos, over and over I might add of these races on YT. They drove these cars with such precision. I especially like the one in Scotland where they flagged down a passerby to "borrow" the transaxle on the side of the road. 

[xs10shl]

The next video in the Mike Wood rallying days is available - this one from the 1971 East African Safari.  Although Mike was with the Lancia team for this event, there is a great deal of fabulous 240Z footage, both pre and post race.   Keen eyes will spot several well known Datsun drivers from the Works days. TKS33-SA-1223, 1224, and 1228 are all featured.

 

 

[Zpenman]

Great video, thanks! And the Z's took both 1st and 2nd.

[xs10shl]

Time flies, and it's been a while since my last update.  Fear not -  much has been happening in the background!  The shell is nearing the point where panels are being welded back on, and I'll post an update when that process is a little further down the line. 

Today I'll give a preliminary update on my efforts to memorialize some unique Works pieces.  I've begun the process of scanning in some unique or hard-to-find parts. 

in some cases, this will be the only way I'll be able to rebuild the car "as original", because the original piece is so far gone that it's unusable.  Such is the case of the bespoke Works exhaust header, which is a rusted metal hulk (picture 1). Thankfully, it retains almost all of its original shape, so recreating it will hopefully be a fairly straightforward process.  My plan is to have the custom pieces 3D printed out of metal (such as the expansion chambers and collectors), have the flanges cut at a metal cutter, and then use relatively standard piping to recreate a near-exact look of the piece.  The whole thing is likely to be made out of stainless, which I can then ceramic coat to provide a more matte period-looking finish. Stay tuned.

In other cases, I'm scanning in some parts which have limited value for anyone who doesn't happen to have a 1970 MY Works car- the pieces in this category are fairly unique to the early cars, and my interest in scanning them are primarily to teach myself about the state of parts reproduction, and be able to refer to them should something go amiss, and I lose or damage the original piece.  An example of this is the side jack points (picture 2).

In still other cases, there are some pieces I am scanning that are actually stock Nissan Competition parts. The oil catch (picture 3) falls into this category.  Although the function of this part is easily reproduced by other modern replacement parts, creating a few samples that look original might be of interest to the larger community, as even authentic competition oil catches are quite rare and expensive.

Then there are the most difficult cases, free-hand creation of parts which just don't exist in the market.  A good example of this are the spotlights.  These Koito housings are just not obtainable- let alone trying to obtain the four required for each car-  it's to the point where I openly wonder if they were ever sold to the general public at all, or perhaps just some special-order pieces supplied by a trusted vendor.  Thanks to friends we all know, I have a fairly good notion of what they look like, and I've assembled a series of parts which I think I'll be able to fashion into a reasonably correct-looking "tribute" spotlight compete with "Koito" glass lens (picture 4), but without the special protective covers, which I don't think anyone has an example of.  To make these tribute lights look reasonably accurate, they will require the 3-D printing of a special front bezel, which has a unique flat-face design, to replace the more conventional rounded bezels more typically seen on spotlights of the day.

 

[xs10shl]

Things are moving quicker on the body front, so I've turned my attention to long-pull items which need to be ready in time for the shell's return.  Tops on the list is the wiring harness, which I typically install first when a car is rebuilt.  The harness itself thankfully needs limited work - it was in decent shape coming out of the car, although I suspect there are a few breaks I need to trace and take care of.  I'm also planning on replacing all the connectors, as they tend to get corroded through exposure.  I wont go into that process, as it's is fairly well understood by the community. 

The fuse boxes require a bit of TLC, however (picture 1). On my car, they are comprised of a pair of modified Niles 8-position boxes, possibly hand-made from a Niles FB87A box (or similar). Pigtail wires were soldered in place, terminating in a connector to the main harness.  Some of these connectors show signs of maintenance over the many years. The lids are also showing signs of age (picture 2), so I'll put them on the 3D scan list as well.  It's worth noting that someone took the time to scribe the lids with appropriate fuse sizes, which is likely unique to only a handful of early rally cars.

On close examination of the boxes themselves, I found that each of the fuse locations had a pre-wired axial 12v bulb bridging the fuse terminals from the back (picture 3).  Much like how a dead short blows a fuse, this outrageous modification really blew my mind - the Works team had considered the potential difficulty in tracing blown circuits and identifying shorts in dark foot wells in the dead of night.   So they designed a novel solution: a blown fuse allows current to instead flow through the bulb, causing the specific fuse location to glow (picture 4). I can't speak to how well it worked in competition, but it probably only needed to work a single time during a race for the modification to be worth doing!