Carl Beck

Hi Alan (everyone): I guess that is one of the answers I was hoping to get defined. The Euro Spec. Springs could be ordered through the Datsun Parts Dept.. at any Datsun Dealer here in the US from the 70's forward. However there were two options, Euro Spec. Stage I and Euro Spec. Stage II. I have found no clear definition of which, if any, Countries got the Euro. Spec. Stage II springs. I believe that the Left Hand Drive and Right Hand Drive models would have used the same springs, only the Right and Left Front Springs would have been swaped depending. (Yes/No?). No, I thought that if everyone sent the data we could sort out which countries got what. We would also know what is or is not interchangeable What We Have Listed Here In The US Parts Catalogs: Part Numbers and Spring Rates - Euro Spec. Stage I Springs 54010-E4107 240Z Spring/RF (101 lbs/in) 54010-E4106 240Z Spring/LF (101 lbs/in) 55020-E4201 240Z Spring/R (112 lbs/in) Part Numbers and Spring Rates - Euro Spec. Stage II Springs (as you listed) 54010-E8100 240Z Spring/LF (122 lbs/in) 54010-E8101 240Z Spring/RF (122 lbs/in) 55020-E8100 240Z Spring/R (140 lbs/in). (although Courtesy's Listing would seem to have the R and L front spring Parts Numbers reversed - or was this done intentionally for application to Left Hand Drive cars here?????). I was most specifically looking for the specifications for the Euro Spec. Stage I springs. The Euro Spec. Stage II springs require a different spring perch height on the front struts, than that which is standard on the US Spec. Cars. In other words to use the Stage II springs on the US Spec. cars the spring perch height has to be raised 1" to maintain full shock travel; or new optional struts were required: 54302-E8127 240Z OPT Strut /RF 54303-E8127 240Z OPT Strut/ LF We hope to have the US Spec. and Euro Spec. Stage I springs reproduced, as they are NLA everywhere here in the US now. However the manufacturer requires the complete set of spring specifications. The OEM springs removed from 71/72 240Z's here, are testing out to be about 70% to 80% of their specified rates. Many people do not want to use the performance springs presently available in the after-market, because they all result in lowered ride height, or springs that are way too stiff for GT use. Any information you can supply will be greatly appreciated, especially the complete spec.'s for the Euro Spec. Stage I springs (which is what I believe were OEM on the GB models. Kind regards, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Would someone with a Factory Service Manual for the Euro Spec. DATSUN 240-Z's please Post the specifications for the OEM springs. The Factory Service Manual should list in the Service Data and Specifications at the end of the Front/Rear Suspension Sections: Wire Diameter Coil Diameter Coil Turns Coil Effective Turns Free Length Installed height/load Spring Constant

Carl S. Thanks for the link to George's Mirror Repair Page... great idea... ZSaint wrote: .....""You say they fit into the stock holes in the driver door? ".... As I recall, either the front or rear screw on the Racing Mirror utilizes the original hole for the stock mirror. Then you have to drill one additional hole for the Racing Mirror. Nonetheless, the Racing Mirror covers both original holes in the drivers door. On the Right Door, you have to drill two holes for the Racing Mirror of course. FWIW, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Carl S. You left out the one statement that actually is wrong.. "Approximately only 50 cars were finished by Nissan." Everyone knows is was approximately 40 that were finished. ;-) FWIW, Carl B.

And another view from the Z Car Home Page <a href=http://zhome.com/History/240ZRacingMirrors.htm TARGET=New>http://zhome.com/History/240ZRacingMirrors.htm></a>

Here is a picture of them on my Blue 72. I was lucky, when I worked for the Datsun Dealer, I put a few sets of the Racing Mirrors away... Over the years I used them on several cars... Now I'm down to only one spare set left. See: <a href=http://www.becksystems.com/72BeachMed.jpg>http://www.becksystems.com/72BeachMed.jpg</a> I will say that these were cheap mirror sets to begin with.. as I recall they sold for something like $17.99 a set in 72. As such, they have a steel ball that rotates in an aluminum housing, and tension is supplied by a steel strap across the ball. Over the years the aluminum sockets wear.. and the mirror housing can get pretty floppy. I've now resorted to epoxy to set them in place... ;-(... Carl S. ... you said; "...sold by the Dealers and many other sources".... I've never found a supplier other than the original Datsun Dealers that supplied these exact mirrors. I've seen lots close to the design and close to the size.. but still not the same as these. Did you find a exact match in the aftermarket? thanks, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Sure... see: <a href=http://zhome.com/History/Images/72Broc2.jpg>http://zhome.com/History/Images/72Broc2.jpg</a>

At a Buy it Now of $20,000.00 it should sell quickly! By todays market it's a give away price... Wonder if it's going to Sweden?... FWIW, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Hi Dave (everyone): In this case, the problem with those non-stock mirrors is... If you have the stock mirror on the driver's side... now you have fill the holes in the door and repaint the door... then you have this problem with matching the color again... Great mirrors if you think ahead and plan to to use them ... before you have your paint and body work done. One alternative.. if you can find them... is to use the "Racing Mirrors" that the Datsun Dealers sold and which were included in the Datsun Rear Window Shade Kit. They fit the OEM mirror hole on the drivers door, then you have to drill matching holes in passengers door... but they look good, fit the period and you don't have paint matching problems... Of course finding a set is the hard part in that case... If it ain't one thing... it's another... Just my perspective... Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Check your Yellow Pages... Air Conditioning Supply or Automotive Hoses In almost any town in America you will find a speciality company that will take your old fittings and make you a new hose. If you want, they will supply new fittings as well, but they may differ in appearance. If you tell them you want the look and diameter of the old hose duplicated, they will most likely be able to do that. FWIW, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

BMW M series in-line six. 3.2L 320HP... taken out of the Z3 series BMW... and dropped right into your 240-Z.. transmission and all... All it takes is MONEY! If you love in--line six's you have to love this engine! BTW the GM 4.2L In-line six... 270HP stock... in racing form at Baja..650HP+. Tons of design and development went into this engine.. designed for low end torque, heavy pulling duty.. ran without water through Death Valley in the summer months.. cooled by its oil capacity only.. Almost bought a new XJ-R in 96... Impressive, wonderful driving car...$65K ... by 1999 with 20K miles there was one For Sale on another Dealers Lot... $29K asking price... depreciating $36,000.00 in three years.. Sure made my Z hobby look inexpensive!. FWIW, Carl B. Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

ENGLAND... Mirror RH Door EUROPE is 96301-P9100 FWIW... I seriously doubt that they are still available from Nissan anywhere in the world. Just too few of them to begin with, and most likely not much demand for stock when they were available... so most likely NLA Carl B.

Mirror RH Door mount 96301-P7200 Left Hand Assy-Back Mirror Door Outside 96301-E4600 FWIW, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

zhead240 Hard to tell from the picture.. but ...That looks like a small amount of rust bubbling up around the area to me. Better to stop it now, than let it go until it becomes a large amount of rust. The rear deck lid threshold plate is an area with several common rust/corrosion problems on all the First Generation Z's. 1. There are factory spot welds where the rear quarter panel is welded to the rear tail light panel. The spot welding, burns the primer off the metal and melts the seam sealer leaving bare metal and that invites rust. 2. Dirt builds up in that crevices where the two panels over-lap, that dirt holds moisture against the metal.. a promotes rust. That is what looks likely to be the case here. 3. Exhaust gases from the tail pipe, work their way up under that threshold plate on the left side, and the acid from the fumes starts to eat away at the metal as well. I would remove the tail light finisher panels, so I could get a look at the threshold plate from the under-side (be careful pushing the centers out of the plastic rivets to make sure you recover them all). Then I'd sand the area that is bubbling up, to get rid of as much surface rusts a possible. Treat the area with some "Ospho".. . Ospho is a mild phosphoric acid solution, it will chemically convert iron oxide (rust) into iron phosphate. In effect killing the rust. Then spray a little zinc rich primer on the spot and last a little color touch up.. The repair area right now will wind up being about the size of a half dollar... by the time you feather the edges out... and even if you don't have a perfect color match... you'll have a chance to inspect the entire threshold plate from underneath and stop any problems there before they have a chance to get bigger... FWIW, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Hi Chris: Which two are we missing on the Vintage Z Register at this point? http://zhome.com/IZCC/ZRegisters/VintageZ.htm thanks, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Nothing seems to move on EBay until the last 30 seconds of the auction. Today... yes, if the car has been well taken care of... it will bring $30K if the right buyer finds it. FWIW, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA Now 15 of the original 39 Listed on the Vintage Z Register http://zhome.com/IZCC/ZRegisters/VintageZ.htm

Hi Alan (everyone) Per your offer to contribute the JDM Pace Car information and images to the Z Car Home Page; I've attempted to extract them from this thread, and created a first DRAFT of the article. Now it's your turn... Review the "DRAFT" and send edits directly to me at my e-mail address: beck@becksystems.com (I'll cut/paste the plain text into the html). The draft is not yet linked to the main index on "the Z Car Home" page... so the direct url is <a href=http://ZHome.com/Racing/JapanPace/FairladyZPace.htm>http://ZHome.com/Racing/JapanPace/FairladyZPace.htm</a> thanks, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Hi Alan (everyone): Per your offer to contribute the JDM Pace Car information and images to the Z Car Home Page; I've attempted to extract them from this thread, and created a first DRAFT of the article. Now it's your turn... Review the "DRAFT" and send edits directly to me at my e-mail address: beck@becksystems.com (I'll cut/paste the plain text into the html). Secondly: g72s20 aka "Jim" provided another image to the thread.. I've put it there as well - Jim if you will, please e-mail me a full name to credit for the image, I'll add that to the article. The draft is not yet linked to the main index on "the Z Car Home" page... so the direct url is <a href=http://ZHome.com/Racing/JapanPace/FairladyZPace.htm>http://ZHome.com/Racing/JapanPace/FairladyZPace.htm</a> thanks, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Yea Gad.... I don't know which amazes me more... Feedback to a thread that started seven months ago, or the fact that the "BRASSO" brand name seems to have been lost to a generation of Americans. ;-) OK - do they still sell Pepsi in 16oz returnable glass bottles where anyone lives? Now that's something I'd like to find for the garage... How about a bar of Bon-Ami glass cleaner? Can anyone locate a place that still sells that? FWIW, Carl

Hi Johncdeere: I believe that your observation is correct. The passenger side seat does not have the same amount of rearward movement, that the drivers seat does, in the left hand drive 240-Z's as sold in the US. I replaced the stock seats in my 72 240Z with seats out of an Acura.. used the OEM seat tracks and bolted them to the Acura seats.. I first noticed the difference when my son, about 6'2" sat in the passenger side seat on our first road trip after installing the Acura seats.. he couldn't slide the seat back far enough.. whereas he had no problem on the drivers side. See: <a href=http://zhome.com/ZCMnL/AcuraSeats/AcuraBeck.htm>http://zhome.com/ZCMnL/AcuraSeats/AcuraBeck.htm</a> I too thought something was hanging the seat track up... So I took everything back out. If you hold the Drivers side and Passenger's side seat tracks, the side that has the lock/stops on it, side by side you will see that the passengers side seat slide, does not have the full range of motion that the drivers side seat does. The only thing I could figure out was that something inside the slide/track, stops it from having the full range of motion... I didn't want to destroy the seat track... by forcing it apart... So now I have another drivers side seat track for the passenger side seat, but I don't have it installed yet.. I guess I never spent enough time in the passenger's side seat to notice that difference before.. and it is a small difference at that.. but enough to be noticeable if you are long legged... and over 6' tall. Anyway, that's what I found... regards, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://Zhome.com

Hi Mark (everyone): I'm rather surprised, given the pace of advancing technologies in related fields, that you couldn't simply find a service bureau that could scan one of the Franklin Mint's die cast models and output a 3D Model... for something close to $100.00. Gee, you can buy a Super Computer for your desktop today for a couple grand! I called a service bureau here in Clearwater, and the cost was estimated to be about $2K. YEIKS!! As I talked to the nice man, the cost driver was the manual work necessary to take the scanned image from the Point Cloud output by the laser scanner, to the finished model. He said that if one of you guys had the RINO S/W... then you could take the Point Cloud and do the work yourself.. which would save a lot of the costs. Looking on ebay.. there is a Roland LPX-250 3D Laser Scanner (Demo Model) Item number: 7520552715 with a Buy-it--now price of $7495.00 The man I talked to here in Clearwater is a Roland Dealer.. he said that is a very low price for that model.. and that it could certainly be used to scan a die cast model of the Z. He said that the LPX-250 came with a pretty good software package.. and again at the price point nothing else on the market was close.. next step up is a $20K system. These are Laser Scanners... but there are also other alternatives we could look into.. there are also scanner systems based on taking photo images and doing the conversion to a 3D model etc. So, can you find 10 people that would pay $200.00 each for a 3D model, that they could input to their modeling/analysis programs? Do you know anyone that uses/has the RHINO S/W? Maybe you could sell 100 240Z owners a 3D surface model of the 240Z.. that they could play with for $20.00 a copy, or maybe they would buy several different 2D views of the 240-Z that they could use in simple drawing packages or as vector based clip art?... Like I said, there simply has to be an economical way to get a die cast model scanned in 3D today.... We need to find that method, or that service... Maybe a new side business for you Mark? Do 74 scan jobs for $100.00 each and you'd own your own scanning system... Should be able to easily find 74 small items that people want scanned... with the power of the Internet today.. Maybe start an ebay business selling 3D surface models of items.. Porsche/Ferrari Owners Models etc... I'll keep looking... everyone keep thinking.. researching, this has got to be something simple and cheap to get done. Mark, how fine grain or high resolution a model do you need? FWIW, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Hello Everyone: For the people that are interested, the Article by Dr. Ben Millspaugh mentioned earlier can now be read on-line at: <a href=http://ZHome.com/ZAerodynamics/AeroMillspaughPart1.htm>http://ZHome.com/ZAerodynamics/AeroMillspaughPart1.htm</a> The entire article is broken into three parts, and I've put hyper-links to connect them. It's about 12 pages in total length. FWIW, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com

Chris Wrote: >...snipped..... >In the mean time, you might go back to your Z Car magazines and read the >articles Ben Millspaugh, Phd,. Aerospace, wrote in 1995. That would be good >reading for anyone who is interested in Z car aerodynamics. Hi Chris (everyone) In reference to Dr. Millspaugh's, (IZCC #11695), 1995/96 articles in Z Car Magazine, you will note, I hope, that at the end of the article he lists his sources of information: "Sources: 1. CAR & DRIVER, May, 1974. The first generation Z-car tests referred to in "Aerodynamics, Part II" was the "Crisis Fighter Z Car", by Don Sherman. 2. For an in-depth technical coverage of automobile aerodynamics, the reader is urged to read "Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles" by Gino Sovran and Wolf-Heinrich Hucho in the Annual Revue of Fluid Mechanics, 1973." Reference #1 is the same article I referenced, and Dr. Millspaugh reported most of the same information in his discussion. While he was still with us, I did have several conversations with Jim Cook related to the aerodynamic effectiveness of the various spoilers, aid dams and ground effects packages available for the 240-Z as well; another source mentioned by Dr. Millspaugh for his article. I do agree that Dr. Millspaugh's articles would be good reading for anyone who is interested. Dr. Millspaugh has been kind enough to grant me permission, to put a copy of his articles on "the Z Car Home Page" for everyone to enjoy. (as the original Z Car Magazine is no longer in existence.. it isn't possible to get back issues from them, and there shouldn't be any copyright issues with them either.) I'll post the URL here when I get the article scanned and on-line. FWIW, Carl

Hi Alan: Great Stuff... thanks for the contribution... I'll put a draft up on the Z Car Home Page, send you the URL via e-mail (is it still the same as it was?). You can review the draft.... send corrections/edits as you see fit (copy/past plain text in e-mail will do, or if you can do the html coding that is fine also).. and once it meets your satisfaction... we'll link it to the main index. If you have color images, or higher resolution images that you would like to use.. just e-mail them to me (I have no limit on size of files on my e-mail and high speed connections etc.). kind regards, Carl Carl Beck Clearwater, FL USA http://ZHome.com beck@becksystems.com

Hi Chris: Please provide the source of the "other tests" including Nissan's and/or publish their results for us, I would very much like to read them. C&D wrote of the Factory Front Spoiler: ..."Unfortunately, the Datsun Spoiler hangs down so little that it isn't very effective. Our tests showed it developed only 35 lbs of front down-force and no measurable improvement in gas mileage. The 3.5 inch vertical dimension is simply not enough to block a substantial amount of under-car air flow." Secondly, BRE sold both the front and rear spoilers, so of course they would recommend them both. Both BRE spoilers are effective, as I reported from the C&D article.. I'd recommend both BRE spoilers, if the person wants them both. Recommending them both, for specified reasons (total drag reduction, total down-force etc.), does not in any way imply that the front spoiler is worthless without the rear, nor that they are both "required" in every case. Your original statement however: "Consider that the front spook is worthless without the rear spoiler." is, I believe, simply incorrect. Actually it is a conclusion, based on both personal experiments (one 72 Z with both front and rear spoilers, a second 72 Z with only the front spoiler)... and supported by the quantitative data provided by the C & D article. Additionally, I told you how to substantiate it for yourself - ie. pack for a road trip. 20 lbs of lift is completely offset by 20 lbs of down-force, no matter if the down-force is supplied by air pressure or additional weight. I seriously doubt that anyone driving their Z on the highway at 70 mph would notice any difference in handling when their fuel tank had 9 or 12 gallons of gasoline... for example. What does it mean?... It means that adding only the front Spook to a 240-Z, adds 20 lbs of lift to the rear wheels... there is no need to add the rear spoiler in an effort to offset that additional lift, because 20 lbs of lift on the rear wheels has no noticeable effect on the handling of the car. The car handles perfectly well on the highway at 70 mph, plus or minus 20 lbs of lift at the rear. On the other hand, as everyone who has added the BRE Spook will attest, adding it to the front of the 240-Z does have a very noticeable, positive effect on the handling of the car at highway speeds. FWIW Carl