Rear hatch vents?

[toecutter]

Ok another silly question. (too much time on my hands. I'm sure I'm spending more time at work on this site than actually working. Zed mania!!!).

When I put the foot down hard in my 260 I can occasionally smell some fumes coming into the car. I think I have tracked the source down and it will be sorted soon.

I have noticed that on the early z hatches there are two vents, so the question is that if the aerodynamics of the early zeds are that fumes are "sucked" towards the car, how would this affect those vented holes and where do they breath to or are they just cosmetic? And whilst we are on the topic of vents; what are the side pillar vents for appart from the fact that they look pretty cool?

[McZ]

On the first Zs, (Series I, Most are 70's, some 69's or 71's depending when they were sold), the vents in the hatch were for fresh air outlets from in side the car. After that, the vents were moved to the sides with the Z emblems serving as the vents. I think I've read that if you smell fumes in the car it could be from bad weather stripping around the hatch.

[26th-Z]

Datsun boasted an engineered interior vent system when they were marketing in the early years. At the time, interior venting, or flow-thru air ventilation with the windows up was not a common feature in either foriegn or American cars. Remember the little hoods sold for VW windows so you could roll the window down just a scoach and keep the rain out? Internal venting was a big feature from Datsun and it does work pretty well.

The first Zeds came with vents in the rear hatch. The interior panel is sealed with rubber flaps and the hatch has plastic ducting to the horizontal vents out the back. The trouble with all this and any internal venting system is that it relies on a sealed cabin. The venting design assumes positive cabin pressure, and in the case of the rear hatch vents, a negative or sucking air pressure behind the car. Break the cabin seal, lose the positive air pressure, and the whole thing breaks down. Datsun also figured out that the hatch sealing design didn't work very well and found better results by relocating the outlets to the side wings out of the exhaust back draft. Yes, the exhaust gasses actually swirl behind the car.

Smelling exhaust gasses in early Zeds is inherent and can only be stopped by a thorough seal to the hatch and venting system.

The one thing that I should also mention is that an inspection of your exhaust system is in order whenever you smell gasses. Just make sure you don't have an exhaust leak.

[nutxo]

I also read somewhere to check your tail light gaskets :stupid: