good to see that you already started working on it.

I think your car is an early generation maybe 1971 because it has vertical heating stripes on the hatch glass.
Did you notice the shape of your rear wing is not round like on most Z? I have a friend in Geneva who restored a 240z too and he has only one of his rear wings square like yours, the other is round. He noticed it only when the car was finished. I wonder if it is bad quality repair panels that were used or if there was really this kind of wings on some generation of Z cars.

Also I noticed your avatar shows the rims I ordered for my Z (in black), Drag DR-20 isn't it?

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1973 euro 240Z

hi mitx,

do you mean the rear fender? i know-the co-driver side has been repaired once and looks weird. i will order a set of repair fenders an d weld them in. they've filled the whole inside with bondo at the last repair...

regarding the year see next post. made some pictures today.

the rims shown in my avatar are the Original WORK Equip 03's but there are many knok-offs. those wheels are still sold with documents here in switzerland. check work-wheels.ch i think. they're sold by aerotechnik in stein am rhein near schaffhausen I'll go for the original work wheels of course, no fake here

btw: where do you have your fender mirrors from? found a few sets but i wondered where you have yours from ?? thanks for your reply

on we go

I decided to do some research on the year model today, because i want to buy some parts and im not sure which year my car is. i still wait for the documents. i found this homepage:
http://datsun-240z-blog.viczcar.com/nissan-datsun-s30-buyers-guide.html

but it just made me more confused, because my car seems to have a few early and a few later model parts.. maybe the last guy who worked on the car mixed up parts a bit?
maybe differences also depend on the country as this is an european model and the buyers guide is from australia i think..
here a few indicaters:

1) Valve cover - shows "Nissan OHC"


2) heater threads in the rear-hatch-glass - are vertical


3) headlight-surrounding - seems to be a Fibre-glass construction according to the crack:


4) also i have those storage-bins behind the seats (See older pics)

anyway. im still not sure. hope the documents arrive soon...

continued on the work a bit:

First i removed the glove-box to get better acces behind the dashboard for disconnecting all wires and hoses:


then i tried to pull the dashboard out.. nah - it's not out yet, but almost. i need to remove a few lines from the heater control. but then i think that damn dashboard will come out


that's it for today.. only one point:

i was wondering a bit on those different styles on front winkers. I'd like to go for the bigger under-bumper winker lights. Because i need to replace the complete front under valences anyway. does anyone have any information on the different winkers? Is the difference coupled with a year-model or why are there different models?
here is my version:

Dating evidence is written all over your car in the form of manufacturing / quality control date stamps on many of the components. Cross-reference enough of these, and you can pretty much pin down the manufacturing year and month of the car.

Have a look at the base mount of the interior mirror ( it should have a series of numbers ink-stamped onto it ) and also the white labels on the sections of the wiring loom, for example. It's all there, you just have to get tuned-in to understanding it.

Take a look around on www.classiczcars.com ( use the term 'Date Stamps' in the SEARCH function ) as we have discussed this topic many times there in the past.

Actually, you may have missed what is ( for me, anyway ) a nice piece of evidence to help you pin down some of the specs and details on your car. It's right here, chalked onto one of the corners of the glovebox liner:



It's written in three Katakana ( phonetic ) characters which read "Su", "i" and "Su". Join them together and you get the equivalent of "Suisse". It's quite obviously one of the rare original Swiss market HLS30 models......

About the front winkers: The European ( inc. UK ) models all fell foul of new 'Construction And Use' regulations which came into force in early 1970, and which dictated new minimum heights for side lights and winkers. Nissan had to re-design the corner valances and re-site the front winkers on the bumper ( using a stand alone pod-type winker unit ) and re-jig the side / running lights. This is how your car came from the factory, but you can easily change over to the 'original' design corner winkers if you source the correct parts.

Interesting - and rare - survivor. Good to see you getting your teeth into it!

Cheers,
Alan T.

Good to see you are making progress, An simple trick for removing the tar is to freeze it with dry ice, The tar matting chips of in larger sections once frozen.
Work equips 03 are porn on s30z, i have 15x10 on the rear and 15x9.5 on the front of my 260z 2+2. They are worth every dollar!

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sorry worth every franc!

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I also had these front winkers on my Z which was bought in France. I changed them by sourcing a pair of complete winkers on ebay. I had to cut the panel using the gasket as a template.

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1973 euro 240Z

whoop, that damn dashboard came out today How lucky i am now




then i started deconstructing the A/C system, but after i removed the blower i wasn't able to remove the big thing in the middle because i hadn't access to the screws in the rear. i decided to refer to the manual first before i continue..


So i continued with the Audio system. Because i made an apprenteship as audio / Video technician once i can say the guy who built this system didn't really have a lot of an idea of car hifi systems


And that's how i ended up today. there's still an Amplifier mounted under the firewall but wasn't able to get it out now. will do that later..:


Still studying the age of my car, but sadly the only information i found in the glove box was this:


well i think i have to search more intense

thanks for all your inputs and feedbacks, guys. you're great

@ HS30-H:
thanks for the input, i checked the glove box, but see the picture in the last post. I'll check other things this week. sadly almost all the cables have been replaced or covered in tape, so it's hard to get any information, but im pretty sure i'll find some information on the date. and of course i soon will gett the documents with information about the first registratoin soon. CHassis number is definitly a HLS-30. is it possible to get information about the car regarding the chassis-number? i have the complete one stamped inside the engine bay into the firewall.?!

@ GTS-Retro:
thanks for your input too, i already thought about the dry-ice method for the sticky tar mats in the front. the other ones come away fine with the hammer

@ mitx:
ok, thanks for your input as well
I need to replace all the lower valances anyway, so i decided to look out for a complete set of USDM valances with the cutout and fitting winkers / Turn lights as well so i have the complete new frontend

Well, don't be surprised to see English-language data stickers on the car. You didn't expect to see a Romansch version, did you?

The chalked message on the underside of the glovebox liner shows that the car was originally destined for the 'Suisse' market. The point being that this will help you to distinguish it from a north American market car that was privately imported later.

As a 'Suisse' market car, you will find that it has many similarities with the north American market 'HLS30'-prefixed models, but also many differences. I would expect a nice close ratio 5-speed transmission ( FS5C71-A judging from your photos ) and a 3.9:1 Diff ratio. It will also have stiffer springing, damping and ARBs than the north American market versions, and a faster steering rack ratio too. It's a rare model of '240Z', and worth appreciating it for that.

To production-date the car, you can compare your body serial number with the other HLS30-prefixed cars, as they all shared the same sequence. The HLS30 production dates are very well documented.

What's the full number stamped ( it's actually engraved ) into your firewall?

Wow, thing's progressing here, every day i learn so much about the Z - it's amazing

1) I started to remove the heater core today, but i got some kind of bad Pain in my neck so after probably 15 minutes i had to stop the work. anyway, the heater core is loose but i need to unbolt the two hoses before i can get out the whole heating / venting system out of my car. then the most of the interieur is luckily out sadly i forgot to make pictures today...

2) i was abit afraid of the fact that i probably couldn't be able to do most of my work at home, because i have no car lift and no special tools in my garage. but after reading david Lovett's amazing S30Z build thread (http://sites.google.com/site/nakazoto/current-cars/1971-s30-nissan-fairlady-z/s30-page-1) for the second time i was pretty sure i will somehow be able to strip the whole car including engine and subframes in my garage. maybe not as easy as in a professional garage, but i think it will work with the help of some friends

3) Thanks to the input of Member HS30-H in my JNC Build thread i was able to find out my car is acutally a rare swiss market car, not an imported US-Model. cool
How i know this? On the glove box liner there are three japanese katakana characters (ス イ ス, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana) which means Su-I-Su and stands for Suisse, see here:


that's his input:


Actually my engraved Serial number is: HLS30-56801 and yeah, i have a 5-speed manual gearbox. And of course another difference to the US-Model is the different front end with higher and smaller turn signals Now i know so much more about my car. thanks HS-30H you know really a lot

Hopefully my neck will be better again on saturday so i can contine with the heating system and start deconstructing the body

Glad to be of help.

'HLS30-56801' by my reckoning would be a very late November 1971 / early December 1971 build date.

Probably would not have reached Switzerland until March / April 1972 at the earliest.

Just two things today:

1) Got the heater core out, hopefully I'll be able to get my tar mats out tomorrow with the dry-ice method. A buddy of mine will come over and give me some help
there still was some rusty old water in the heater core..


that's how it looked when all was out - it's getting clean inside in the meanwhile i also removed the relays and the ugly plush in the drivers side foot area..


Sadly one of the heater hoses is broken:


2) Luckily i managed to find a date stamp on one of the relays in the drivers side foot-area. it tells me the part was quality checked on 27th November in 1971. As HS30-H mentioned, it might be a november 71 build, but i researched a bit on the web and it might even be a january 1972 build.. but anyway, it was for sure registered in switzerland in the first half year of 1972:

more coming soon

So, today it was time to remove all tar-mats and sound-deadening mats by using the dry ice method.
Danny, a friend of mine came over to give me a hand and have a couple of beers

1) Cleaned out the car well:


2) Then i bought 6kg's dry-ice pellets (16mm) and a rubber hammer. I got the dry ice at the local pangas shop for about 33$ including Packing


3) filled in the stuff into the car and waited about 20-30 minutes until i heard the mats began to crack..


4) Hacked around with the rubber hammer on the tar mats and after that the came out really good in big pieces with a hammer and a spatula.
here's my friend danny working on the mats.


5) and here you can(t) see me working on the drivers side.


Made a big mess, but i will clean it up on monday and then you'l get some picures of the result. I think the method works pretty well, but after all it still took us about 2-3 hours.
anyway, it's done now

so, i allready got a lot of t hings done i wanted to do tomorrow, but i think that's nothing bad

The biggest part of today was cleaning out the mess from yesterday's dry-ice action and work on some details.
After an hour of cleaning, vacuuming and filling a complete garbage-bag with crap again the car looked like this:

I Like <3


After the big cleaning was complete, i decided to do some other things i had in mind for a few days now, so i...
... removed the plastic covers behind the steering wheel
... removed the footrest rubber-cover
... removed all those Rubber-things in the floor-pans (Does anyone know what they're used for?)
... removed the wiring harness in the front, Antenna wire plus Audio wires complete
... removed the numberplate-lighting in the rear bumper
and at the end she looked like this inside:


So, interieur is almost done now. Next steps will be to remove the pedals and steering column, and then I'll begin to replace the Exterieur with the USDM / JDM Front end. When everything fits i'll start to take the exterior apart.

Progress may not be as fast as i hoped, but anyway i got a lot of things done yesterday and today. Usually i get stuck on some broken nuts or things don't working as i thought it may work, but overall i still have progress and it's great

Yesterday i did a lot of small things.
Got a set of jackstands and printed the jacking-section from the service manual, so i can jack it up soon:


I started with the steering wheel, and as i hadn't any nut who was big enough i took the wheel nut cross and it worked well


looked like this then:


After that i removed the accelerator pedal and link:


Next i wanted to remove the rear bumper who is bent by an accident from one of the previous owners, but sadly i wasn't able to get out the bolts in the side,
and o lot of nuts broke, so i decided to let it be for a while and only removed the rear number plate lighting:


Also got off the Tank Lid and the Lock surrounding (Still in place in this picture):


Also did some minor cleaning on the inside and removed a few screws here and there...

Today i decided to start with the steering Joint thing. worked out better than i thought


And that's the result:


then i started to remove the clutch and break pedals and got 'em loose, but i didn't get the pedal support bracket / Box out because it seems the clutch is mounted with some cind uf rubber on that, so i need to get rid of this first. As time got short i decided to get out that old panasonic Audio Amplifier that Was mounted under the firewall / Dashboard.


Well that's it for today, hope i'll be able to work on the lady soon again

nice project. i want your civic. what's with the tail light housings? custom?

thanks
1) Sorry, I'll never give my Civic EK9 away. it's the one and only over here in switzerland and took me three years to modify and get it registered with all those modifications - so there's too much love in that car

2) Yeah i was thinking about those tail light covers too.. it seems they're original, but i can't really say if it maybe is a special year model or special euro model. all others i've seen so far on the internet looked totally different. so if anyone has more information on this please let me know. im really unsure which taillights will fit in there or if i need to replace that (hard to get) part... please help me guys

hmm. i was a bit curious about my taillights all the time, as well as some of you. So i made some research with help of the mighty internet and found out that the guy who restored the car once must have done some kind of Corvette taillight conversion or something because these taillight-mounts are not genuine. compare here:
Original Datsun (Ignore the lines in the picture )


and mine:


the good thing: I think they just welded in those new mounts into the original tail light panel, so if i cut them out again and maybe ad some sheet metal, i'll have the original taillight mounts back in place.
Great, but sad i'll need to do some xtra stuff again need to order some taillight covers and tail lights so i'll have a template to cut the holes out..

Yeah, made some serious progress today, and even was able to do more than i planned - great

1) Took a closer look once again at my taillights and figured out that the new mounts just have been welded into the original bracket and that means i just can cutem
back out - great You still can see the old surrounding in the picture:


2) drained the window cleaning fluid and removed the cleaning fluid tank:


3) Removed the complete pedal box


4) jacked up the car, but i need a floor jack who can do more height the jackstands are now in t he lowest position and that seems to be to low to work underneath:


5) Removed the damaged headlight cover on the drivers side:


6) Removed the frontbumper and broke a mount on the passenger side:


7) removed the tray-locks on the inside. needed to make cuts with the dremels into the screws to catch 'em but worked fine:


and last but not least: another view from the inside, how she looks now: