26th-Z

Greetings Greg! This calls for a celebration! I hereby convene a meeting of the Low VIN club. The best shop I can think of closest to you for restoration of 379 is Banzai Motorworks - Mike McGinnis - http://zzxdatsun.com/ in Maryland. He just took a Gold Medalion at the Dallas convention. Mike is top drawer "most correctest". But that's just one of my top three recomendations for the restoration technique know as; "send your car away and have it return flawless, eleventy guzzillion dollars later". My personal technique of choice is to spend the eleventy guzzillion dollars by sub-contracting work out and providing all the grunt labor. Here is a page on what I am up to. http://home.earthlink.net/~cwenzel/index.html You are going to find a wealth of information and friends here. Frankly, I didn't even realize what I had until I found this group. That was right after I met Carl and decided to surf the web one day several years ago. As far as I knew, I just had this old Z that I though might be worth something some day. But the timing was right and I took 26th out of storage and she became my hobby toy. I have had fun studying Z history and exchanging information about where to get stuff restored. It was quite a miracle that I secured 27th a year or so ago. I loaded up on parts first and I'm glad I did. Prices are on the rise. So congrats on securing 379th. You are going to find she is quite unique and it is great to see another early car come back to life! Chris

Sorry to jump in on this so late. I have been up on my roof for the last week. Almost finished with the new roof. Metal A couple of comments about this subject. The S30, HS30, HLS30 and PS30 prefixes all carry the same VIN sequence. In other words, #26 exists (or existed) in all four model versions. My 26th-Z is really the 26th HLS30 and not the actual 26th Z produced by Nissan. "Kats" from this site / club has presented some very interesting information about the production sequence of the very first cars. He presented information about how many cars were produced during the last four or five months of 1969 and then presented evidence of which particular VIN was produced during each month. It was a fascinating conversation for me and if I stretch the math a bit, I can suppose that Her Majesty was really in the 50s range of actual production sequence. I have photographs of the HS30-00026 and HS30-00027 versions. Both were RAC Rally cars in the United Kingdom. Kats also has quite a bit of information about the cars that were brought to America in the fall of 1969 to be test driven before the 240Z was released for sale. We have narrowed down the VINs of those cars and that information addresses the paragraph Carl has on his web site about the very first HLS30 models being test mules. I personally believe that they were not "pre-production prototypes" but rather production models that were not sold. There is a thread in the archives about S30-00002 including pictures. That was a very interesting conversation and I wouldn't be surprised if the car gets restored. Finally, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, Nissan did not look favorably on the S30 and during a dispute between management and labor during the late 70's, most of the official records, molds, and forms were destroyed - intentionally. VIN #1 is neither in a museum in Japan, nor are there historical documents of what happened back then. We have bits and pieces of knowledge and it would be lots of fun to think about finding one of the earliest, eh?

Didn't that car just come from Texas? Fred? Isn't that the car we were talking about?

Well...for the most part, these responses and your mirror observation are correct, but the full answer to your question is a long, drawn out explanation of what was sold where - world wide. What was imported into the United States was known as the Datsun 240Z. America did not get the full line of models developed for the S30 and many of them, including the cars sold in Japan, were right-hand drive. Early Fairladys had a 2.0 liter engine as opposed to the 2.4 liter engine America got. The Fairlady 432 and 432-R got the S20 engine. Later Fairladys got the 2.4 and 2.8 liter engines. So you see that the answer is really worth searching the archives for. I might also recommend the book; " Datsun Z - Fairlady to 280Z" by Brian Long. Chris

Hi Kats, The red dot arrived. It is in very nice condition . Just one nick in the plastic cover. Ever Wing. The glass mirror must be replaced. Any ideas about who might repair the glass mirror? I have a copy of the small Fairlady manual. Alan sent me a scan so that I could make a correct cover for it. I did not realize it was so small! My copy is large. Very nice parts listing for S20 engine! With this Fairlady catalog, I found the correct exhaust manifold I was looking for.

New guy on the block http://www.datsunspirit.com/ Give him a try. this is his blog and you can read about his projects. http://blog.livedoor.jp/datsunspirit/ One thing about carpet. The rear deck matt often comes with a sewn slit down the middle from the front. This is for access to the tool doors. If your car has the plastic covered tool bins behind the seats, it should not have the slit in the carpeting. Instead, the front of the matt has little indentations for the lugggage strap bracket.

Mike you lucky soB! I can just imagine someone offering you much more than you paid! And I can just imagine who it was! Mine was about three times the price you paid. Oh, well... Let me know first, if you want to sell your copy. All the editions of this particular catalog are fairly uncommon and will continue to get harder and harder to find. They are far more descriptive (and entertaining) than the catalogs we commonly buy in Cd version. Those are prints of the parts fische mostly. I would say any of the authentic printed versions of the S30 parts catalogs (as well as service manuals) trade for much more than one might expect. They are very collectable and probably have far more value in the hands of a collector like the guy who bought this example. I'm certain this eBay purchase went up on the shelf in the library next to his other editions.

Arne, I have been looking for authentic fog lamps for three years. I came close a couple of times, but no luck. A couple of years ago, Chloe (remember her?) called me up and said there was a pair of lights on Zcar.com. I bought them and as near as I can tell, these are 280Z option lamps. They may be Bosch; I need to go over to the shop and check. They are in very nice condition and as you can see, come with the plastic Datsun covers. This is what I am looking for.

I have a set of fog lights I would like to sell. I would like $100 for them. Chris

Those decals were given to me at the Dallas convention and they are signed by Masataka Usami who was at the convention. One of those unique collector "spoofs" if you will. I am told that the P-2 decal goes on the front of the valve cover and represents inspection of the engine. Usami-san would never have sigend them in reality, but who cares. THere's no "exact" placement as far as I know. Just an inspection sticker slapped on randomly. I'll bet Mike McGinnis has them or at least knows where to get them. But the P-2 decal is just like the Nihon radiator decal. As soon as you get the engine hot from driving, the decal is going to fade, curl and look horrible. I like the magnetic idea.

Something like these: The P-2 decal goes on the front of the valve cover

I love the Z33. I think of it less as a toad than I do the S30 an arrow. I see a styling interpretation in the new Z that reminds me of the S30. Enough that I am satisfied that it's a Z. I've driven the new Z in anger and it drives a lot better than my queen. (Ya' know, when she actually ran!) I really like the BMW Z4, own and drive a 330Ci daily, and that's the "GT" body style that attracts me to the Z car. The BMW Z4 has those swoopy front fender lines reminiscent of the early BMW sports cars. I like that rear hatch thing. But lets face it. The S30 is an aerodynamic nightmare and the Z33 is what contemporary performance cars look like. Cars today are ground suckers, not wind surfers. The toad thing you guys are talking about is from the short overhang which was done on purpose. The fender corners were rounded in on purpose to accentuate the short overhang. Thus "Toad", or more politely expressed, "Stop-Light Leaper". Someone mentioned the ZG and it brought this car to mind. This is another one of those instances where we Americans don't know much about this because it was never exported here. This is the Z33 Type E which was apparently built to homologate the body used for the championship JGTC GT500 race cars. It is very similar to the S-Tune options and I believe this was produced in 2003. The car is featured in the Motor Magazine Mook; "All About Fairlady".

You are very welcome, Will. The event was hosted by the Florida Z Association (meaning me, Rob Tyner, and Scott Blankenship) representing four Z car clubs, Suncoast, Central Florida, South Florida, and the 350Z club of Florida. Glad you had a good time.

SO that was a lot of fun! My first car show.

I'm still not able to load pictures through the gallery, so I'll tack them up here. Also a little explanation about what happened. Thanks for posting your great shots, Will. Good to see you! Same to see you, Sean! Z-Fest was around 130 Z-cars inside a 50,000 square foot pavilion on the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando. We had a dyno guy and there should be some awesome pictures of Z-cars on the lake floating around the internet soon. I want to thank everyone who helped out during the day. I was super pleased with the show and how easy everything went. It took us about two hours to fill the place, but there was plenty of room and it wasn't anywhere near as noisy as I worried. The music worked out real well. I didn't get any food. Was it Ok? Anyhow, it was on serious KICK BUTT show! In addition to the Z-cars inside, we had at least another 20 outside. About fifteen G35s showed up and we had them all line up. I didn't get a picture of that.

That's Rich Lewis' car with Bill's on the lake.

The 2400 valve cover is ADM, not JDM. If you find one in Japan, You'll have to outbid the Japanese for it!

That would be me you just bid against.

No, the picture was taken over a year ago.