26th-Z

is Saturday, 15 September. He will be 98. Send him an e-mail with birthday wishes. mr.k at able.ocn.ne.jp

Mike, Past conventions have had a photographer on hire and they sold a Cd of photographs of the weeks' events. I don't know what the Daytona group has planned. I will be there for the first few days and plan to take pictures. I'll be sure to see they get posted. Looking over the entry list, the stock 240Z class has 8 entries including Bob Speights and Charlie Osborne. Frank Rigiel has entered his '81 280ZX turbo, one of three. I'm really looking forward to the battle warming up for the Gold Medallion. Should be quite the show

I'm not really tied into all the planning for the show. I'm only relaying what I hear about the plans. Parking for "spectators" like myself will be next to the garages. I think the entrance is through the East tunnel and only people with trailers and such will come through the West tunnel. You must remember that the speedway is imense and once you get inside you turn right and drive down to the garage area. I would imagine there will be signs or people directing traffic. Yea, a 350Z must have lots of miles to be a daily driver.

Just updated the plan for the car show and thought you all might be interested. The guys organizing the show sent me the latest registration stuff and their comments about the layout. This drawing is getting close to what they have in mind. The show is in the garage and fan park area of the speedway. North is up and the pit / start finish line of the track is at the top of the page; thus "Daytona" is upside down in the drawing. The fan park is this grassy park area inside the garages with a restaurant, stages, and display shelters. There are supposed to be cars scattered throughout this area and then a bunch of cars in the garages. All those black dots are cars. At the moment, the stock 240Z class is the most competitive with 8 entries. The stock and street modified classes have 22 entries each. The Nissan Modified and Street Modified classes are pretty full as well with almost as many entries in the Ultra Modified classes. Suprisingly, no Daily Driver 350Zs are entered!? But that is just for the judged competition. There are a bunch of entries that won't be judged and will be part of the People's Choice vote. Should be fun. Pray for good weather.

Hi Kats! Her Majesty the 26th and Princess 27th have the rivet type.

I can't thank you enough Mike! The FLV player software didn't download properly for me, but I DID get the conversion software to download and install. It converts the FLV file that the U-Tube video is in to whatever file you want; such as, wmv, avi, mpeg, mp3, ipod...etc. It is only shareware and will convert up to one minute of video. In order to convert longer videos, I have to buy the software. Will probably do that today because I have a number of longer videos saved in my U-Tube library. The video of this thread converted to wmv in about a 4 meg file size. It is under one minute. Well! This has opened up a whole new can of worms for me! This is so great! Many thanks for unlocking the U-Tube frustration for me! Chris

I have been buying tires from TireRack for years. UPS ships them to my tire guy. It costs me about $40 to get them mounted and balanced. I wouldn't go to the TIRES-R-US store. Go downtown to a private tire buster and get to know him. Manny and Javier service my tires and we gab about Formula One racing as they are from Columbia where it is a big deal. They were on the TireRack recomendations list. Seriously. This is the way to go. I regularly buy tires from TireRack and have them mounted for half what I would pay at TIRES-R-US.

This has been the subject of a few e-mails floating around for the last couple of days. Does anyone know how to download this so that it can be saved on my computer? Carl Beck was asking. We have never seen this one before. Does anyone know where it came from? Date? Carl supposed it was made during the Vintage Z period - 1997, but I would be surprised. How cool, huh?

Gus, I heard that registration was moving to the track during the days of the events. Yes? No?

I need two of them!!!

I'm almost positive Craig Schwartz http://www.diversifiedpromotions.com/ is doing the Daytona convention. He did all the goodies at the Dallas convention. http://www.onesourcepro.com/osp/Shop/zapparel?dsp=homepage I have purchased a bunch of stuff from him and it is first rate. I have a Nissan umbrella, a Z logo Swiss Army knife and a couple of embroidered shirts. Craig will do custom work if you like things embroidered instead of a sewn on patch. He had Datsun watches.

I will be selling off a lot of my collection at the car show in Daytona. I do not plan to be at the convention for the whole week, but I will be there through Tuesday. I plan to bring copies of my research study on Vintage Zs - a 30 odd page booklet. I also plan to sell copies of my DVD "Birth of a Legend". I have quite a few racing posters and "garage art". Most of that stuff is from the 300ZX racing program and the GTP racing program. Some of the posters are signed by Millen and O'Connell.

I'm glad you guys enjoy this conversation! Hi Kats. Hi Pat. My green hood from 27th is a #1 hood, but it is so rusty! I would like to repair it, but for how much?

Here is one of the official publicity photos of Mr. K and Dale Ishimoto with the banner in the background. Dale Ishimoto played the role of the mystical Mr. K in the "Dream Garage" series of television commercials. This is one of the reasons I think the Vintage Z program was all part of the Dream Garage ad campaign.

No, it is not a Vintage Z. In Summary The Vintage Z portion of the Z-Store promotion conducted by Nissan Motor Corporation U.S.A. (Nissan U.S.A.) officially spanned between May, 1997 and October, 1998. During those seventeen months, approximately thirty-seven to forty restored early model Datsun 240Zs (1970-1972) were delivered to Z-Store dealers and offered for sale. Initially, the cars were priced at $25,000. They were completely refurbished previously owned vehicles warranted by Nissan for 12 months / 12,000 miles and represented as new. Curiously enough, I have just been told that the banners making up the backdrop to the stage have been aquired by a collector. Here is a crappy photo of Mr. K up on stage during the Vintage Z introduction ceremonies; May3rd, 1997. I have an old VHS film taken by Pierre of the event.

I can tell you with all certainty that the green hood is circa October 1969. But that's what got me going to photograph the two and show that there are far more differences than the holes on either side of the hood latch. In fact, the entire pressing profile of the inner rail is different. My biggest surprise was to see the reinforcement gusset plate in the back corners of the hood.

Greetings. Bring your Skyline to the convention in Daytona this October. Lets have a look.

That's just the perspective playing tricks on your eyes.

A big difference appears on the rear inner rail. The blue hood has a punch-out and the metal pressing around it is different. See how the pressing is raised? The huge difference is a gusset plate in the back corners of the hood. The metal folds are different as well. So the blue hood is very different and not the early style it was purported to be. I'm curious to see what other variations there are. Have a look at your hood and lets collect some pictures!

Along the side rail of the hood; a punch-out on the blue hood and none on the green. Same condition both sides.

The green rusty nasty hood is from 27th. Pretty obvious why I bought another hood, huh? The blue hood is the used one I bought. The punch-outs for the front inner rail are pretty much the same.

There has been a conversation going around my e-mail about early hoods (bonnets) and the differences between them. A couple of friends are pouring money into their restorations and the rest of the low VIN club guys are watching with delight. The conversation got on to hoods one day and I rushed home to have a look at what I have. Of course, you all know that Princess 27th of the rust brothels in Dover, Delaware is pretty trashed. I bought a hood from a guy who swore it was a very early '70 style. 27th's hood is trashed, but like most of her, its original. So I lined the two up and compared. The major question being; "Is there a difference between the hoods of the early model years" and "Can a replacement hood be made to look like an original early (1969 build) because a 69 hood is unobtanium. Read on to see what I came up with. Please feel free to add photos of your hoods along with model year. How many different hoods are there?

Its been so long, I had a nice stroll down memory lane looking at the pictures. A '67 BGT would be a nice car to have. 67 was the last year before smog devices and the rockers should be cast instead of pressed steel. I believe this was the most powerful version of the engine. The car may or may not come with a 5th speed which was actuated electronically. '67 is the year to have IMO. A BGT is a nice car. A Z is much nicer. And faster. I think the photos in the ad are a little too cropped and I am suspicious of the condition. At 29,000 miles, there should be no reason for new paint. I can't tell. The interior looks good, but I wish I could see more. I think ten grand is a little high. Even though an MGB GT is a nice car (I have owned one), it really isn't that desireable. The auction has had an offer declined, so far. I'll be anxious to see how this one goes.

Ok, I reported my deceased parts car

This is the only picture I have of a silver car with headlight covers. I took it because it shows that defined line of the front edge of the car. Such period Japanes styling! I'm a real fan of the headlight covers and have the chrome ring sets. I think they would look great on a silver car. Couple of comments about some of the posts on this thread: A set of oem ZG headlight covers sold on eBay last week for $750. No auction, just a straight sale. Reproductions were made and sold out last year. I have a set and the picture of V12 horse's is another set. You can't tell the difference. I would be willing to bet that the guy who made them will make another batch. They came from Japan. There IS a rubber gasket between the headlight can and the back of the bodywork "sugar scoop" headlight fender extension. The oem gasket is super rare brand new.