HS30-H

Gavin, I would take the 'data' and opinion on zhome.com relating to the the HS30-prefixed cars with a very large pinch of salt if I were you. For a very, very long time Carl was adamant that no HS30-prefixed cars had been made in 1969. None. It appeared to be a key part of his whole "American Car, Made in Japan" philosophy. He appeared to want to marginalise the RHD cars in any way possible and was certainly biased against them in his thinking. Myself and a couple of others were sure that this was not the case and tried to argue the point many time. Even Nissan's own factory documentation showed that HS30-0001, HS30-0002 and HS30-0003 were manufactured before the end of 1969. It was not until 'Kats' Endo got the unimpeachable prototype and early production data from Nissan Shatai that Carl changed his tune a little. Like I say, tread carefully...

Ironic given all the recent media babble about 'Fake News', isn't it? Nat.Geo. have been doing it for years...

Grrrrrrr..... Cobblers from start to finish, that one.

Somewhere around here I've got a copy of the original magazine. I'll see if I can find it... Car is long 'Missing In Action - Presumed Dead' I'm afraid.

Pulled apart by yours truly on the classiczcars forum quite a few years ago. It was a customised PS30 being claimed as a genuine PS30-SB. People used to be able to get away with that stuff before 'The Internets'... ;-)

I think - like all the cars - the HS30-Hs were made in batch form. As far as I can tell, and from conferring with those there (in Nissan Shatai's plant at Hiratsuka) at the time, the batches varied in size and were linked mainly in terms of body colour and 'Katashiki' (type variant). They tended to put through batches of like-type according to what was ordered/needed in dealer stock, and they were grouped by body colour. I think it would have been easy for the guys on the assembly line to build a mixture of sub-variants in a batch (easy to put together a 'Std' model in between a pair of 'Deluxe' S30s, for example) as the componentry was ready, marked and waiting. My thought on the HS30-Hs is that they would have been easy to build in amongst other batches of HS30-prefixed Std and Dx models as the H-suffix spec parts were special - external - additions to an HDx model. Only caveat on that is the G.P. Maroon coloured cars (that colour being unique to the HS30-H model at that time) whereas the G.P. White and G.P. Red body colours were shared with the HDx models. H-suffix cars were certainly built to a 'build sheet'/order though, as they were identified on the line as such (and have some secret marks to identify them....). Total build quantity of the HS30-H models is a tricky one. In order to satisfy FIA/JAF Group 4 homologation for the evolution Nissan had to build a minimum of 400 production models. They certainly fulfilled that, but by how much? Conferring again, it may well be the case that Nissan built as many as 1,000 HS30-H models. They were surprisingly popular. 'HS30-00013' never came to the UK as a complete car. Its firewall-engraved chassis number was cut out of the original (apparently wrecked/abandoned body) in Australia, paired with its engine bay tag and arrived in Northamptonshire as little more than a souvenir. I think the original intention was to make the identity live again as a circuit car (no need to road register it so no difficult paperwork, and "early" production number would have allowed entry to race series denied to "later" cars) but I have no idea if that ever took place. The last time I saw 'it', it consisted of two pieces of metal hanging on a workshop wall...

In my opinion, any set of "Production/Sales Figures" for these cars that doesn't include Japan - the country in which the damned things were conceived and built - is not worth taking seriously. Even if - taken in isolation - *some* of the figures appear to have a passing resemblance to reality... I believe the original source was a Nissan coffee table puff book titled 'Datsun 280ZX' (Not 'Nissan S130-series', as pedants like me might have hoped...) which was published to big-up the Karate-posing White Jumpsuited Fat Elvis of the Z family when it was launched. It's a crock of...

Yes, it was a 3 litre on 50s. As originally built it was possible to configure in both short and Grande Nose versions by taking off/adding parts. The car in your photo is Shun's car! I think it gets confusing because it got seen in short and long nose versions and with different owners over quite a long period of time (it was originally built in 1998/99).

The '565' ('Gorgo') sticker on the bottom of the rear valance identifies it as the replica built for Shun Koike by my friend Hideki Matsui of NP35. It was featured in Nostalgic Hero magazine back when it was first put together. Shun sold it some years back and I don't know the name of the guy who owns it now.

Judging by the work of the bastard builders who did my bathroom, any grouting is a bit of an art to do correctly...

Confirmed yes, that's a genuine factory-built 'HS30-H' model Fairlady 240ZG. All the right codes on the paperwork to back it up, too.

24Dat, Great photos. Thank you. About your ex-Works front struts: I reckon they have been modified and adapted, certainly by welding on a stock lower spring perch onto the original, and possibly (I'm guessing) to move the - usually short, your seem quite long! - threaded sleeve for the lower spring down somewhat, and hence lowering the ride height? The two parts of your original(?) Works type adjustable spring perch (the original spring perch and the locking ring) appear to be the same size, which I've not seen on Works struts before. The springs appear to be non-Works type too? Compare the above with this image of a typical Works adjustable lower perch strut. Notice that the bottom of the spring itself is flat and it simply sits on the (aluminium) notched adjuster. Notice too the simple and relatively neat welding of the (steel) threaded sleeve to the strut tube: Normally the Works struts had a bracket welded to the hub forging, which held a tab and band designed to brace the Halda drive outer. You can see the arrangement in this (early) fixed-platform Works strut. Note too the red Dymo labels, which most Works struts of that period had and identified their part number, batch and manufacturer (Tokico in this case, but Atsugi and Ampco were also used): Hope the above is of some interest. Cheers, Alan T.

The BRE car has a few Nissan 'Sports Option' parts on it, but it was mostly built out of parts fabricated by the BRE team for the specific type of event they were aiming at and its not really anything like a Nissan Works rally car of the same period. I would advise against using it as any kind of reference for proper Works parts and proper Works practices.

By the way, official data for Japanese market HS30-prefixed cars gives a figure close to 5,000 registered for road use. I'm pretty sure the 420 figure is simply the number for road registered PS30-prefixed cars and the writer ether doesn't understand the difference or was misinformed.

The 420 number for Japanese market HS30s is clearly way off (way, way off). There are plenty of other glaring mistakes in the article, so I wouldn't trust anything without cross-referencing from other - independent - sources. My guess is that he's confusing Japanese market HS30-prefixed figures with PS30-prefixed figures, which are often quoted as being 420 (420 sold to the general public, but a good 30+ never registered for the road). I also heard - long ago - that the first two HS30s sent to NZ were actually Nissan Japanese market specced press fleet cars rather than proper NZ market spec cars. Just hearsay though.

It's the bodyshells that are different between 'A' type 'box fitment and 'B' type 'box fitment.

PM sent. Thank you!

I think it's a bit too simplistic to believe that Nissan Shatai put these cars together in anything other than an orderly fashion. We may well see things that don't make sense to us, but that doesn't mean it didn't make sense to Nissan. They had a system that phased in rolling updates - in many cases making their internal departments and dealers aware of them though the domestic 'Service Shuho' booklets and, for Exports, Nissan Service Bulletins. There were hard and fast changes on some big details, but on small detail stuff (I'd say changes in seat webbing fitted that description) it probably wasn't deemed necessary to broadcast the fact and they could be phased in as the parts became available. Frankly I wouldn't trust the (very nice I'm sure) guys at MSA to tell me anything too specific about an 'HS30' prefixed car, so I admire your faith!

This car discussed in a little more depth here: http://zclub.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24834 And here: http://zclub.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27154 ....with several of the claims about it shown to be mistaken/untrue.

Yes, it's Takeuchi san's (famous) 432-R, chassis number PS30-00187. He has a great photo gallery on the classiczcars.com documenting its restoration a few years ago. Amazing work... Sorry if it's stating the obvious, but for anyone who doesn't realise - the younger guy in the race suit 'testing' the car is current works GT driver Masataka Yanagida. The gent in the black is his father, former Nissan works driver and 'Central 20' owner Haruhito Yanagida. The gent in the white shirt with the BBS sponsor baseball cap is Mr Takeuchi himself.

I'm having trouble uploading photos from my phone (I'm getting close to throwing the damned thing out the window at this point...) but they probably aren't needed at this point. The green and red coloured markers on the white harness labels carry extra detail (possibly day of the month and something else) but I don't know anyone who has decoded that yet...

US-based forum wise, classiczcars.com is probably the most relevant for a part like this so you're probably already in the right place there. You could try some of the S30-series Z specific Facebook groups, but 99.999999% of people on there won't have the faintest clue what these clocks are in the first place, and secondly would not pay the going rate for one even if they did.... ;-)

At least one of them is (oscillator had water ingress for some years before I acquired it...) but not 100% sure about the other. They've been in the cupboard in the garage for years...

Brilliant! I'll take two, please. If you can spare two that is. I have two oscillator clocks sitting in the cupboard with knackered oscillators, so this is perfect. I reckon I'll be able to install them myself (fingers crossed...), so just the units themselves please. Tell me where to send the money. Thank you for doing this!

The bellhousing is different on S20-powered models though, so that's a lot of what you are paying for there. The bellhousings alone can change hands for 200,000 JPY. This particular 'box has been rebuilt and modified as well. The FS5C71-A was fitted to L20A-powered S30-series Zs as well (specifically the Fairlady Z-L model) and early L24 models, but also (first!) to the C10-series Skylines with L20 and L20A engines and a couple of other sedan series too. Nissan made quite a lot of cars that used them, but it's mainly the S20-powered models that are dragging their demand and prices up.