About a week ago I was going over some books I have now I am not 100% sure if the info is correct but I am sure Alan (HS30-H) could confirm. Anyway it talked about the works cars HS30-00026 and HS30-00025 that were build for the last part of the 1969 rally series.
Hi Mike,
HS30-00026 & HS30-00025 were both part of a batch of works rally cars that were built specifically to take part in the 1970 RAC Rally here in the UK. The 1970 RAC Rally took place between 13th and 18th November, and the cars arrived in the UK ( coming off the transport ship from Japan in Belgium, and driven over to the UK on a normal car ferry by the Japanese mechanics ) during October. They were 'tested' a bit more here in the UK ( drivers and navigators for the most part never having seen them before! ) and fettled a little bit to driver / navigator preference, and were based at Old Woking Service Station.
Now, it's a little tricky to compare these works rally cars to normal road cars ( the bodyshells of the pre-72 season works 240Z rally cars were quite radically different to those of standard road cars ) but they
were given body serial numbers from the standard road car sequence ( in this case, normal 'HS30' RHD export body serial number sequence ) and therefore we can compare rough build dates
for the bodies, but not necessarily completed cars. I think it's likely that the bodies for this first batch of RHD works rally cars came off the production line in early 1970, and from there went to the competitions department at Oppama.
EDIT: Ok did come checking on this site and looks like HS30-H has post a bit of info here
http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,5612.msg48093.html#msg48093
So it looks like the very early HS30-000xx cars might have well be build in 1969 but might not have been actually sold until after the L24 cranks were fixed. Looking over some other internet based info (which you can't always or shouldn't trust) looks like the engine numbers in the early cars might be 1970 based not 1969. If this is true then it tie in with the L24 harmonic issue putting a hold on the export HS30 (ie RHD) cars. So the whole bodies could have been complete, interior, etc and just the engine removed or not installed while the issue was sorted.
One of the things that's been messing up the story about the early RHD 'export' cars is the fact that sources in the USA were for many years putting out erroneous and negative data about them. These sources insisted that
no RHD '240Z' had been built in 1969 ( even though the factory RHD export parts manuals contradict this ) and sadly this erroneous data stuck. It stuck to such an extent that we still have something of a battle on our hands to get certain people to accept that it is completely untrue.
Luckily we now know better, and the hard data comes from
Nissan Shatai themselves - the people who actually
built the cars. Their data tells us that HS30-00001 was the
seventh S30-series Z to be given a body serial number ( the six in front of it were S30-00001, HLS30-00001, PS30-00001, HLS30-00002, S30-00002 & PS30-00002 ) and this all happened before the end of June 1969..........
As we know, during testing of the earliest cars it was found that a crankshaft harmonic problem existed in the L24 export engines. Obviously this was not a problem on the 'S30'-prefixed cars ( L20A engines ) or the 'PS30'-prefixed cars ( S20 twin cam engines ) so production for those models was not affected. However, production of LHD export cars was slowed right down just at the point when it was supposed to be getting into full swing, and it is fair to assume that it affected RHD export cars too. This was in September to December 1969.
There's no doubt that LHD export north American market cars were the primary volume market, but Nissan were taking RHD export markets seriously too. The fact that these RHD export markets required at least
two different specs ( Australia/NZ market and UK market ) with differing needs / regulations will have affected things too. UK 'Type Approval' regulations were changed right at the end of 1969, and this caught Nissan slightly on the hop with regard to lighting. By all accounts, late 1969 and early 1970 was something of a crazy time at Nissan Shatai's Hiratsuka plant......
So, as Mike says, I think it is very likely that Nissan had built some HS30-prefixed RHD export cars
before the crank harmonic problem was solved. They will certainly have built some complete cars, but there's also a very good chance that they part-built some cars and put them to one side until the new L24s with the re-designed cranks came on stream. From looking at cars we already know, it seems likely that this earliest batch of 'HS30'-prefixed cars might only have numbered around 20-something. There appears to have been a big gap whilst other matters were solved ( LHD export demand took Nissan Shatai by surprise...... ) and RHD export production never really got into its stride until late 1970.
So there
were 'HS30'-prefixed cars made in 1969 and early 1970, but we have to look at the cars on a case-by-case basis to establish their likely 'production' date. We have to bear that gap in production in mind, and also expect to find the details of the cars differing slightly to what we might expect, as the specs were a little rubbery to begin with. Tricky isn't it?!
It's a pity the original poster on this thread didn't let us know how he got on with his car. It'd be interesting to know what he found.
Pete ( Campbell ),
HS30-00016 - great! Good to hear of another early HS30 still surviving. Congrats! I'm very envious.
Cheers,
Alan T.
