HS30-H

"598th Zee car made". I reckon somewhere around 1,600th.

ATE is the abbreviation of Alfred TEves Maschinen und Armaturenfabrik, a German company with a long history. They still look after their obsolete product range and there's a downloadable catalogue of 'Classic' spare parts on their website: https://www.ate-brakes.com/products/ate-classic/ I reckon your calipers were original factory fitment on a Porsche, and you should be able to overhaul them with ATE 'Classic' parts.

Full disclosure: I haven't got a Christmas card list...

Shirley's only my name on every second Friday of the month. Don't want to wear out those stilletos.

You're officially off my Christmas card list.

I've only got 6 minutes into it so far (can only take so much at one time...) and already its chock full o' garbage. Typical example of people viewing Japan and Japanese products through the prism of the USA, complete with Katayama Lore (who says the 510 was going to get an OHV pushrod engine until Katayama intervened?) and a complete absence of consideration for the possibility that Japanese people might have wanted a better product themselves, and were not necessarily giving a damn what Chuck in Pigsnuckle Alabama wanted. And that 'joining a freeway in a 410 was a nightmare' story was actually about the 210 in 1959. Mash up. Does it get any better? Looks like I have about 25 minutes to go. Better get the blood pressure pills ready...

Just for comparison, here's a nice UK market 'HS30-QU' model 240Z marking. ENG for England. The people of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were hopefully not offended:

That's a first for me. Love it. I'm wondering if this might have anything to do with radio waveband range needing to be region-specific?

Lovely! Thank you.

It's from my GP White ZG, the ex-Masami Kuwashima car. The GP Maroon car had almost identical markings, and most of the manual trans ZGs I've looked at in Japan had very similar markings. Quite a few of them were made around a similar period of time, so that might explain the similarity. Have surprised a few owners in Japan by pointing the glovebox markings out. They are not - generally - common knowledge. Trouble is, the more people know about it, the more they can be faked...

In my personal experience (sticking my head into the footwells of other peoples cars...) there's some variation, as we might expect, but generally speaking: 'S30-S' model Fairlady Z 'Standard' = 'S - S', 'Z - S', 'S30' and 'Std' (there might be other variations too) 'S30' model Fairlady Z-L 'Deluxe' = 'S30 - D', 'S - L', 'Z - Dx' and 'Dx' (ditto) 'PS30' model Fairlady Z432 = 'PZ', 'PS - D' and 'P - D' (ditto) 'PS30-SB' model Fairlady Z432-R = 'PZR' (also written on column support) L24-engined Japanese models followed the L20A-engined pattern, but with an 'H' prefix ('H - S', 'H - D' etc): 'HS30-H' model Fairlady 240ZG = 'H - H' *BIG CAVEAT: None of this is written in stone. The guys writing this stuff had their own systems and it was for internal, Factory, use and not for us 'Civilians' to make sense of. We must expect some variation depending on who wrote it, and when. I feel like I've looked at a lot of cars in Japan (the owners often surprised that there's anything written there...) but truth be told it's just a tiny, tiny sample of total production.

I think the whole 'boat load' and 'diverted' thing is just nonsense. For one thing, the cargo ships were carrying other cars as well as Zs, and were often carrying other cargo besides the cars. Ships didn't get turned around mid-voyage unless there was a major problem (war, huge weather event, mechanical problems) and if they had to divert it would not have been far off course, and likely to a port they were already scheduled to call at. I think it all started with TWO Australian market-designated cars being held back from being sent to Australia, at short notice, and being sent to the UK instead. So just a matter of the two cars being put on a different boat for a different final destination (unloaded in Belgium, then sent on to UK). You can imagine the chinese-whispers type scenario that ensued. People just weren't all that well informed back then. The failure of the UK/Euro market-designated cars to meet the newly introduced Type Approval legislation (they failed on front lighting/signalling minimum heights) caught Nissan on the hop, and a hasty re-design/re-positioning of the front indicators and side lights was necessary. This was a fairly significant bollock drop for Nissan Europe, and possibly (reading between the lines here) had its root in poor communication between Datsun UK (at that time a concessionaire rather than being wholly owned by Nissan) and head office back in Japan. It seems this held back UK/Euro-designated production and Australia/NZ may have been allowed to have more cars, earlier, than originally scheduled. It seems to make sense.

Again, 'Australia' written out in full in Katakana (phonetic) characters. Letters circled at the end could be '1 M' (manual ?) and possibly a Romaji letter 'G' (?) at the end. Dash column support single character appears to be a stylised number '4'.

Ah, that's a nice variation. Sometimes the 'graffitoes' on the column support frame of the dashboards come across as in-jokes or indecipherable (by us) messages between line workers, but this one is a lovely "Aust TorCon 10". However, both 'M' and 'TorCon' on the same car? Are they both original to 'HS30-#1410'? That would not appear to add up... One thing about the dash column support frame graffitoes is that they are covered up when the dash is installed. That means - obviously - that they cannot be written, or read, when the car is fully assembled, or even just when the dash is in the car and the column is bolted through it. In contrast, the writing on the glovebox bases is always visible (although you have to look for it...) so this may signify a difference in use and/or point of application? Lots of guesswork here. I've been looking at these things for years and I still don't understand them fully.

Nice! This one comes across as being written quickly, but confidently. "Aust M 223" At this point I don't know what the numbers signify, but I'm guessing it is something to do with logistics. And these are - after all - not meant for the use/reference of us civilians. They are factory in-house markings, for use whilst on the production line and/or component transportation/movement etc.

My point is that there were hundreds - if not thousands - of incremental detail changes on these cars during production, and between different model/market variants. Exact model/market variant and production date are still the key factors in identifying the content of an individual car. The terms '240Z' and '260Z' don't cover it.

Over here in the UK I have often heard people saying "...the factory used up all the old 240Z parts on the early 260Zs...", and some people actually seem to believe it. Its bizarre. I think that's simply a failure of comprehension. One of the biggest problems is the whole idea of the terms '240Z' and '260Z' in the first place. What do they actually mean? What spring rates does a '240Z' have? Does it have a rear anti roll bar? What's the diff ratio? What's the output of the engine? What side is the steering wheel on? Of course, the answer is .....it depends. To get our heads around all this I think it helps to remember that there were numerous rolling detail changes to these cars by date anyway, and then you have to throw market and sub variant into the mix. It gets complicated!

The 'C=Close, W=Wide' thing is only a useful mnemonic. In practice it is mostly true, but the C and W actually denote Synchro type, as you have found. But why were you surprised to find your FS5C71B uses the Servo-patent, Porsche type, steel synchros? That's correct for the type. There's a lot of bad information and data floating around out there, and when it comes to gearboxes a lot of it emanates from the USA. They get confused because they never saw a factory 5-speed on an S30-series Z until the 280Z turned up. Most of the time they are talking about S130-series transmissions and Warner-patent synchros, whereas most other markets got Servo type synchros from the beginning of production (with the FS5C71-A and then the FS5C71-B). They also talk about 'close' and 'wide' ratios when both would be considered 'wide' in other markets. The fact is that the Servo type steel synchros were thought to be too 'sporty' in nature for the north American market (its all about the nature of the shift, with the Servo type requiring a deliberate and positive action by the driver) so they were given what was considered a more easy to use, less effort required, Warner type.

Thank you. I don't know where they get it from. You'd think that social media and The Information Age would help truth and balance to spread, but the opposite seems true. Just dumber and dumber. Just last week I was having a 'conversation' with an American guy (although it was mostly him talking *at* me, and firing Google links in my direction like they were truth bombs) and he was a great example of a die-hard Katayama worshipper. According to this guy, Katayama single-handedly built "Datsun USA" (despite the bad guys back in Japan "hoping he would fail"...WTF?), and then conceived and designed the 510 and 240Z (and specifically "for the USA"). Claimed Katayama was "a qualified engineer" (he wasn't). It's like arguing with 'Truthers'...

brent012, No personal offence intended, but that video is utter, utter garbage. It has all the usual Katayama Lore (the normal huge exaggeration of his role) but adds in - quite bizarrely - some nonsense about engineer Dr Shinichiro Sakurai (famously synonymous with Prince Motor Co, the Skyline marque and Prince - then Nissan's - racing activities) being involved. They imply that the L24 engine came about because Nissan "bought" Prince (they didn't...) and Dr Sakurai started designing Nissan engines (he didn't). Real WTAF stuff.

Wasn't actually me who led/financed the project, but I was peripherally involved with it. Costs were huge. The patterns, castings and machining (and testing, heat-treating and coating) were all done in the UK by a motorsports-specialist casting/forging company, and that ain't cheap. The latest run of replicas being sold in Japan by M-Speed are made outside Japan, so their overhead costs are much lower. They are slightly different than the originals, and are made from Aluminium alloy rather than Magnesium. No idea.

Very much my cup of tea. However, I'm an awful long way away so shipping and the dreaded duties/taxes would be a bit of a hit. Hmmmm...

No, it's the factory option 48400-E4112 leather-covered stock diameter Izumi steering wheel. I think the part number was 48400-E4112 for the 'open-hole' type (?), and 48400-E4110 for the earlier - and rarer - 'closed-hole' type. It's in the earliest Japanese market factory parts lists.

Not that it's impossible or anything - HS30-00015 could indeed have made it out into the hands of the general public - but in *that* car's particular case....