HS30-H

I own the ex-Masami KUWASHIMA Fairlady 240ZG, which he imported to the UK from Japan as his personal transport when he was competing in European F3 and F2 in the early 1970s.

(My bolded highlights) A couple of questions: Who was/is calling that 432R a "lightened 240Z"? The car was entered as an HS30 '240Z' because that was the only way it could qualify for the GTS-II class rules. Putting a different engine in a PS30-prefixed body would have bumped the car up into the R-III class (where they didn't want to be) so they called it an HS30 and stayed in GTS-II. You write: "The L24 had no competition". Had you mentioned any of the other competitors in the race, this might statement might start to look a little more tenuous. Yes they won the race, and that's what the Works team set out to do. However, there's some extra context here if you take into account the fact that pole position was taken by TOHIRA and TERANISHI in the #32 432-R (almost two seconds faster than TAKAHASHI and KUROSAWA in the L24-engined #31 hybrid, who took 5th fastest in qualifying) and they crashed out of the race early after being involved in somebody else's accident. The winning car was run close to the finish by the #54 PGC10 4-door Skyline GT-R of SUNAKO and HASEMI running in the TS-III class, who incidentally turned in a quicker fastest race lap than the winning car, which they had also outqualified. No competition...? I think it's also worth pointing out that framing this event as being one L24-engined car vs six S20-engined 432-Rs is to take it hugely out of context, but that those six 432-Rs were not even equal amongst themselves. The two 'hot' Works-entered 432-Rs were the #32 car of TOHIRA and TERANISHI (which took pole, but was taken out by a non-fault crash) and the #30 car of TOSHIMORI and HOSHINO (which had taken second on the grid but ran into trouble during the race, which cost it a couple of laps). The other 432s and 432-Rs in the race were all privateer efforts in cars nowhere near the development/parts level of the Works cars. The KUWASHIMA / TAKAHASHI 432 was even running steel wheels! "As an epilogue to the race, there was great disappointment for the S20 engine". Huh?! Says who? In July 1970 - the date of the race you cite - Nissan's Murayama works team were already well on the way to record-breaking run of domination in the Japanese touring car championship, and in the middle of taking 40+ consecutive victories. They ended up with 50+ victories with S20-powered PGC10 and KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs. Your statement is - in this context - complete nonsense and has the whiff of a pre-conceived agenda about it. I find it interesting that you would frame the victory for the L24 (it was an 'L24R' actually...) powered 432-R as some kind of disappointment? Why is that? Nissan's Oppama works team certainly didn't find it a disappointment. Why would they? It was - after all - their car and their engine... Anybody who is seriously interested in the topic of Japanese racing during this period would be well advised to dig a little more deeply than one issue of Auto Sport Japan's '200 Great Races' series for the full story. Big topic.

There are so many driver names that require correction, I'd better list them up: Family name in capitals: *"Kitano Yuan" = Moto KITANO *"Masahiro Hasayami" = Masahiro HASEMI *"Kenji Tsubairi" = Kenji TOHIRA *"Teranishi Teranishi" = Takatoshi TERANISHI *"Takahashi Kokoh" = Takahashi KUNIMITSU *"Saburo Koumuma" = "Saburo KOINUMA *"Ishii Kazuo" = Kazuo ISHII *"Sakurai Ichi" = Hajime SAKURAI

And Blue, what's the true purpose of this thread? You've titled it "L24 Battles Six S20s. Guess who wins?", but why? You seem to be framing it as a simplistic L24 vs S20 fight, but it wasn't actually anything as simplistic as that. What's your real agenda here? The answer to the question posed by the thread title is, in fact, the latest Works car, with the 'ace' Works drivers behind the wheel... . You might like to remind yourself that the car in question was still in fact a 432R, running all the 432R-specific homologated parts and having the benefit of all the factory team development carried out up to that point. The L24 being installed in that chassis was far (far!) from stock, with special Works-developed crank, rods, pistons, head and many other details, and was running at a displacement of over 2500cc (yes, 25% greater than the S20) allowed by the GTS-II class rules. You can hardly frame it as L24 = great, S20 = $^!#, can you? Not only that, but I don't see any mention of one of the key points; The intra-company politics regarding the S20 engine and the fact that the very recently ex-Prince faction at Murayama regarded the S20 as 'their' engine and had effectively blocked the Nissan Works faction at Oppama from the better developments, updates and trick parts that the Murayama based team were using on their Skyline GT-R race cars. Murayama were not involved in racing the L6, so there was no potential for a reciprocal arrangement. Discussing the race career of the 432R without taking into account any of the Murayama/Oppama politics is to miss much of the point. And with regards specifically to the 1970 Fuji 1000kn race, you missed the elephant in the room for the whole event. Is that because you chose not to mention it, or because you didn't know about it? The big clue is what that particular event was supposed to be, and what cars were supposed to be taking part in it but for a recent tragedy. It had a huge impact on the race, and who/what won it.... It really ought to be taken into account.

Christ, what a mess. That's Motoharu KUROSAWA on the left, and Kunimitsu TAKAHASHI on the right. This thread is going to be a real car crash. There are just so many mistakes and misunderstandings. Some really golden WTF moments.

Predicition: Values of diamond rings and oil paintings will most likely not drop through the floor just because somebody delivered a message telling you what you already should have known. :rimshot:

Blue, There are a great number of mistakes in your posts on this topic. Have you simply transcribed all this from another site, and have you used machine translations for Japanese names? Or is this 'All Your Own Work'...?

I was referring specifically to your Japanese gasoline stand post. You are - indeed - late to the party, and you appear to have completely missed the point. What does your photo bring to the discussion? Does anybody think there wasn't a wide variety of gasoline stand layouts in Japan during that period and now? I was recalling a particular type of pump which did - and still does - exist: The point you appear to have missed is that the whole thing is a MacGuffin anyway. Carl Beck was trying to link the fuel tank filler location on the S30-series Z to LHD-specific requirements, but the punchline is that it is - yet another - example of Design Concession. The fuel tank filler is offset to the right side of the car, and the fuel filler is on the right side of the car, because it is leaving space for the exhaust system. The exhaust system is on the left side of the engine, and exits on the left side of the car. The L-gata engine was not designed specifically for the USA market...

Single handedly? Of course not. This is just the usual Katayama cult-of-personality type hyperbole that gets thrown around, and it is nonsense. Katayama was a great man, but there were plenty of other people within Nissan who clearly understood what was needed and were actively working towards achieving it. Anecdotes such as Usami san's (regarding batteries, Hokkaido and blankets) should not be swallowed whole. Anybody living in Hokkaido in the period concerned (and as they do today) would have received their Nissan product with a Winter Pack spec, which included a much beefier battery. Putting a blanket over a bonnet/hood or engine would not be much help, and removing a frozen blanket (after getting rid of half a metre of snow) would not be much fun. What the Datsunforums article claims the USA was demanding (and, rather chauvinistically, what "...Japan was not yet ready for") was what pretty much the whole of the developed world was hoping for at the time. Viewing Nissan's history solely through the prism of the USA market - and as Katayama's personal odyssey - is a mistake.

So you find one example through a photo on the 'net, and this proves what exactly? As is so often the case, you turn up late to a discussion and apparently misunderstand the point(s) being made... I think the 'translation' of the title of that graph says it all, really. The original 'Car Graphic' magazine title reads: "Shodai Fairlady Z (S30) design kaihatsu no ikisatsu"/"History of design development process of original Fairlady Z (S30)"] says it all, really. The 'translation' to 'Datsun 240Z' is plain old fashioned bowdlerisation. Hey Blue, if you're looking for ammunition, do me a favour and pop back up to post #102 in this thread and see if you can find anything that's *plain wrong*?

And by the way, your choice of illustration is another example of not looking at the bigger picture. Sure the (F)MVSS regulations were a key consideration when designing a vehicle that would be sold in North America, but so were the regulations outlined by Working Party 29. Your chosen illustration shows the work-in-progress Plan A clay sporting the flush headlamp covers that were technically illegal under those very (F)MVSS regulations...

I see you joined here quite recently. Have you introduced yourself anywhere? Did I miss it? What's your name, and where do you live? Who are you?

But you haven't adressed the (rhetorical) question. You get the point? Nissan's S20 engine was specified for the S30 chassis before the L24 even existed. It wasn't specified for the Export market (for more than one reason) but it was a key consideration for the 270KK/'Maru Z' project team and Teiichi HARA even went so far as to point out that the 'Maru Z' project was helped along in the course of its gestation by the simple fact that Nissan had it available to use, and would look daft not to. All the more so when it was being lined up for installation, homologation and sales in the 4-door C10-series Skyline. Why would Nissan want a hot-rodded salaryman's car pinching the performance package crown from its nascent halo model Sports/GT? It actually makes the whole "designed for the USA" thing look even more like tunnel vision rather than the opposite.

I agree. I think 'numbers sold' is by definition after-the-fact data that doesn't necessarily prove much about design and engineering. Were The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five and The Rolling Stones "designed for the USA"? That's where they sold the most product, so... I've pointed out the example of The Austin A90 Atlantic on this forum in the past, and it seems appropriate to cite it again now. Austin - like many other British companies - found itself in a situation of 'Export or Die' in the immediate post-war years. Indeed, if they could not export a reasonable amount of vehicles they would not even be allowed access to the restricted steel market to make product at all. They came up with a great wheeze: A car that the valuable USA market would be falling over itself to buy, a sports car designed and engineered expressly for the USA Export market. Heard that one before? Guess what? It laid an egg. Export sales were pitiful. If you looked just at numbers sold, you'd have to extrapolate that it was not "designed for the USA", but it was... The point is that there's a whole lot more to it than numbers...

How does this extrapolate as "...indicating Z was for US market"...? The Mizma Gikoh blog is a one-man operation, and we've discussed it on this forum several times in the past. Quoting one excerpt - out of context - is not really a good idea. Some of it is good, some of it is a little out of date. Nissan's 270KK/Maru Z/S30-series Z was conceived, designed, styled, engineered and produced as a family of variants intended to satisfy the demands of several different markets. The biggest single *potential* market was the United States of America, as indeed it was for any number of Sports/GT cars from other manufacturers including MG, Triumph, Austin-Healey, Jaguar, Porsche and even exotica from Lamborghini, Maserati and Ferrari, but it's not very often you'll hear anybody saying that those European cars were conceived, designed and engineered "for the US market", is it?

Have you considered applying a similar by-the-numbers analysis to products from the likes of Triumph, Austin Healey, Jaguar, Porsche, ALFA Romeo, FIAT et al? I think you'll find that all of them - without exception - found the biggest market for their Sports/GT models was in North America, and the USA in particular. Would you say that their products were "designed for the USA" too? How about applying the same analysis to other Nissan products sold alongside the S30-series Z in the USA, such as the SP/SR Fairlady Roadsters, various small pickup trucks and 'economy' cars and - perhaps more specifically - the 510-series Bluebird? Were they too "designed for the USA"...? You're kind of late to the party on this one (around 13 years or so...) but still... Have you had a close look at many contemporary (late 60s/early 70s) Nissan products in comparison? What is your reaction to the fact that many Nissans of the same period - including those that had little to no intention to be exported outside Japan - share similar ergonomic features? Can you clarify the above statement please? It does not seem to relate to what we can see when we compare LHD and RHD S30-series Zs. Certainly not a GR8 (as that was specifically a Prince race engine ) but you may be thinking of the 'GR8-S', or S20. The answer is revealed in the post crash-test photos from that sequence, which some of us have.... ;-) Rhetorical question: Would proof that Nissan tested the S20 engine in LHD S30-series Z layout (a nascent 'PLS30'?) prove or disprove your "made for the USA" line of thinking?

This means what, exactly?

Hello Kats, Excellent detective work! I was looking in the earlier parts lists, so I didn't see the number there. Clearly they missed a few things out from the first versions and included them in the later editions. I feel happier about bending my horn mount brackets to clear the PZR oil cooler now... Was great to see you at Oppama on Saturday, and then again yesterday at the Club S30 20-year meeting. Always so fun and interesting to talk with you, and so happy to see your car again. I hope you got home OK after that long drive. Best wishes, Alan T.

They have Triumph TR5/6 versions which are very similar. Rimmer Bros. have the Stag kit: http://www.rimmerbros.co.uk/Item--i-RS2004

These are very hard to come by, Mike. It took me a few years to find the one in my photos... Your best bet would be Yahoo Japan auctions, but they usually change hands for $$$$. If strict originality is not important then you might be able to find a similar setup (slightly different mounting bracket) on a full size sedan of a similar age, like a 130-series Cedric for example. A slightly left-field suggestion would be to look at the setup on a Triumph Stag (no, really...). A fairly similar bottle with a mounting bracket that can be modified to make it bolt into the same pre-drilled holes on the front of the radiator core support that the PS30/PS30-SB overflow bottle fits. Still available new from the major British car parts suppliers like Moss Motors. Just don't tell anyone where it came from...

If there was an extra bolt-in part that formed a mount or base for the eyeball lamp, then it would have a part number and it would be in the factory parts list. So what's the part number and where is it hiding in the relevant factory parts list? I don't see it. He also mentions that this supposed mount bolts into the rearview mirror location, but what then happens with the rearview mirror? Does it then mount somewhere else, or on the same mount? If so, how? There's also mention of "self-tapping screws". The parts shown in the factory parts list are fine-threaded machine screws. Sorry, but I think he's guessing. And guessing wrongly. My money's on the late Japan market 'Z-T' models having a pre-installed mount spotwelded to the windscreen header rail and extending back under the headlining. It may simply not be present on Export models.

Kats, I firmly believe that the illustrations of the rear mount and spacers in the Nissan parts manuals are wrong, and that your car - as currently assembled - is correct. I came across this when I was assembling my S20-spec FS5C71A rear mount, and it seemed to me that the Spacer shim (11335-E4700) acts as a load-spreader for the two 'Distance Pieces' (11336-E4200), protecting the cast aluminium transmission case from localised loading where the two Distance Pieces touch it. On the L-gata version, the mount simply bolts direct to the transmission rear case and the load is spread across the full shape of the mount. This is most closely replicated If you bolt the Spacer shim between the Distance Pieces and the transmission rear case - as your car is now. If you bolt the Spacer shim between the Distance Pieces and the mount (steel to steel), then what does it do? It seems to me that it does nothing useful... I'm not keen on contradicting Nissan technical illustrations, but to me it seems that this detail was wrongly illustrated, or at least illustrated from an incorrect assembly. What does Kawashima san think about it?

I believe you are right. As far as I'm aware, the two screws thread into captive nuts hidden behind the headliner. It related only to the mid/late '76-up S31 and GS31 'Fairlady ZT' models, and - you never know - those captive nuts might well be ready and waiting on your late '280Z' too. Hopefully that will be the case...

From the factory parts manual:

It's from the tenth Nissan 'Service Shuho' booklet for the Japanese market S30-series Z. It covers the S31 and GS31 models. I've seen one in a car (of course), but it's also depicted in the sales catalogues for the S31 model range: