HS30-H

When I mentioned "non-linear" I was referring to the (bad!) habit of people tending to compare HS30-prefixed production serial numbers and dates with HLS30-prefixed production serial numbers and dates. There is a tendency to think of the factory as a sausage machine that could not be turned off and on, and that - therefore - HS30-00xxx must have come off the production line on the same day as HLS30-00xxx. That's not what happened. Sequential body serial numbers were assigned in a linear fashion for each prefix ('S30', 'PS30', 'HS30', HLS30' etc), so 'S30-00123', 'PS30-00123', 'HS30-00123' and 'HLS30-00123' would all have been made, but not necessarily within the same time period as each other. I'd urge GREAT caution in assigning too much trust to stuff written on local documentation after import. For example, one of my cars - a 1970 Fairlady Z-L - has been assigned as a '1982 Fairlady Turbo' by our UK national vehicle licensing agency. I now have a government agency document which says so, so it must be true, right? Well, no...

Sorry to hear about the loss of the car. I had a similar thing happen to me many years ago, so I can kind of imagine how you feel. 'HS30-00048' would not have been made in 1969. It is certain that 'HS30-00001', 'HS30-00002' and 'HS30-00003' were manufactured in 1969 (factory data proves it) and possibly 'HS30-00004' too, but production of 'HS30' prefixed bodies stopped thereabouts and didn't restart until several months later. I'm very familiar with the stories of 'HS30-00024', 'HS30-00025', 'HS30-00026' and 'HS30-00027' (they were Works rally cars) as well as 'HS30-00034' and 'HS30-00035' (the first two RHD 240Zs to arrive in the UK) and they were all certainly built around mid-year 1970. I'd tend to err on the side of caution and call 'HS30-00048' a mid-1970 build. Cross-referencing the manufacturing dates and quality control stamp dates on the components of the car (if any are still to hand...) would help to pin it down a little more closely. Doesn't change the valuation much in my opinion. 'Low number' cars have an undeniable cachet and HS30 #48 is pretty low, so it would make it more desirable to a particular cohort but it is difficult to quantify. Beware production data/stories that pertain to USA/Canada market 'HLS30' prefixed cars being mixed up with that for 'HS30' prefixed cars. They are part of the same plan, the same family and the same production facilities but production was not constant or necessarily linear. Hope you get the result and justice you desire. Good luck.

*Official* (according to the Factory literature) cut-off from FRP to steel was June 1972. It was a switch from E4100 (FRP) suffixed part number to N3000 (Steel) suffixed part number. In reality, there were quite a number of cars which left the production line with one FRP type and one Steel before that. I've been told that the main problem - and the reason the 'Sugar Scoop' headlamp housings were initially made from FRP in the first place - was that Nissan had problems in perfecting the press tooling that would enable them to knock out thousands of steel housings reliably. Their complex shape and the sharp details that were part of that design required some delicate tooling shapes which were too easily damaged when they tried to ramp up production. Repairs, re-design and - eventually - subtle changes to the shape (less sharp detail) finally allowed them to go into full production with the steel versions. It took a while, evidently...

So has the used Japanese car market.

Weber 45DCOEs replacing the stock Mikuni-Solex N40PHHs will certainly release more performance even on a stock S20. The N40PHHs are one of the (effectively) de-tuning measures for the stock S20. Factory tuning manual recommended 44PHH or 45DCOE (9s) for sports-oriented bolt-on upgrade.

Thanks for adding a link here Gav. Some people might wonder quite why I'm so 'exercised' regarding the concept, design, engineering and production of these cars, and perhaps why I seem so frustrated and forceful on the topic. The backstory is that - since I first became interested in these cars - I have always seen and read all that "Made For The USA" and "An American Car, Made In Japan" type narrative from the so-called Z gurus and historians. It just never made any sense to me - and from talking to some of the people involved in Japan I knew it wasn't accurate - but there's still not a week that goes by when I don't hear the echoes of that narrative in one way or another. Yes, of course the massive potential market in North America - the USA and the West Coast in particular - was a KEY part of the planning for the Z, but it was not the whole story. Some of the USA-based Z 'gurus' have tried for many years to tell us that the USA market HLS30U 'Datsun 240Z' was the sole driver in concept, design and engineering, and that other markets and other variants were an afterthought. That is - quite simply - a lie. The documents that my friend Kats Endo obtained from Hitoshi Uemura (chief engineer on the 'Maru Z' project) illustrate the fact that Nissan saw the new S30-series Z as a 'family' of models for domestic and export sales, that all of them were designed at the same time and that all of the different variants influenced each other. Anybody who knows the cars well enough should be able to see that already, but all that "Made For The USA" marketing talk got into the press from the very beginning and is now pretty much set in stone. Journalists repeat it in almost every new article. Nissan took the Australian market seriously. They took the NZ market seriously too. These markets were not as easy for them as the USA market was, but they mattered. An Australian/NZ market variant of the Z was part of the plan from the beginning. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Production date is cast into each individual block, semi encoded. Look on the inlet side, down near the skirt, after the (in L28 case) N42 or F54 block code. You'll see a long number and (usually) at least one letter. First number is the year (EG: '2' = 1972) and then the month. Format for double digit months is a letter. For example, I have a 'P30' L24 block with the code '1Y22A' cast into it. The '1' is 1971, the 'Y' is November (1 through 9 is Jan. through Sept. and X, Y & Z are Oct. through Dec.). The next two digits are the day of the month (22nd), and finally a casting batch code letter. They dated the castings as part of the QC process so that they could trace faulty batches should that be necessary. Machining was - obviously - the next stage.

https://zclub.net/community/index.php?threads/new-vid-on-zg-number27.29022/

Sean Dezart (as ever, on the ball... ) is simply repeating somebody else's ballpark guess as though it is gospel. Price is 'POA' and I think it will be much more than that.

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Thanks for that. I'm looking forward to seeing your panels filter out to end users, although I'm already feeling your pain with regard to handling them in bulk: They stack nicely when they are just a freshly stamped blank hot off the press, but they start getting 'lumpy' when you weld all the stuff on the back...

Thank you and I appreciate the photos (lovely to see a tall stack of freshly-pressed pieces) but, as mentioned elsewhere, I am curious about what details are included, how accurate they are (trim and garnish fixing points etc) and - for example - things like the drilled/punched holes where the panel would be attached to the body of the car (are they intended for plug welding rather than spotwelding?). Have you made jigs for the attachment of the bracketry/captive nuts, tabs etc? Have you also manufactured spring clips for the tail light garnish? Maybe I'm all too easily confused, but those are the kinds of things that I'm a little nonplussed about. See what I mean? Thanks for your responses.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the photos/images above appear - for all the world - to depict a genuine, original factory panel. Especially so for the last photo of the rear end of a car. I note the holes where factory spotwelds would attach the panel to a bodyshell too. These are quite complicated pieces to reproduce, with one very large pressing and several smaller pressings spotwelded to it. There are also numerous captive nuts, fastener brackets, wire harness tabs, interior trim brackets and the ever-elusive tail light garnish spring clips attached to it. All the images I've seen from Resurrected Classics appear to show this same single item. Call me a cynical old Hector, but I'd like to see a few more detailed photos of the actual product and a better description. I'm struggling to believe that the bulk production will match the factory part in its complex detail, but also wondering if - for example - it comes in a chromated finish, weld-through primer finish or just bare metal. If I had gone to the trouble of producing something like this I wouldn't be shy about showing the fine details or helping people to understand the tooling-up costs behind it all.

It's just another example of how the historical narrative around these Japanese cars is totally dominated - to their detriment - by the 'An American Car, Made In Japan'/'Made For The USA' babble. It's got to the stage now where even Nissan Japan's own press office are swallowing and regurgitating misinformed and skewed American opinion. Nissan took the Australian and NZ markets just as seriously as the North American market, and the S30-series Zs were a part of that. Australian & NZ models have a significant place in the S30-series' history and deserve to be properly recognised.

Exactly. They are selling a 'project' where the customer pays in stages for a restoration where they get to call some of the spec details to their choice. Like a kind of 'bespoke' build.