A must read!: A collection of archived news articles from 1971-1974 relating to the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo

I have discovered much history relating to the early 70s motor sporting events of the 2.1mile racetrack at Batu Tiga, Shah Alam, Selangor of Malaysia archived in the news of The Straits Times relating specifically to the 1974 Datsun Violet Turbo.

Be informed that the site is very specific about copyrights and would therefore require you to acknowledge their terms and conditions before allowing you to browse the articles. All the articles both text and graphics are also watermarked!

Due to a plethora of news articles, which is a good thing, I have only selected a good eight of them in chronological order that involves the 1974 Datsun Violet Turbo starting in 1971.

Check out the "Improved Touring Cars" category for the Datsun Violet Turbos!

Article 1: 2nd Sep'71 Prior to the arrival of the 1974 Datsun Violet Turbos...

Article 2: 8th Apr'74 Datsun Violet Turbos completed 1st Selangor GP...

Article 3: 10th Apr'74 Datsun puts out an advertisement featuring car no.120!!

Article 4: 26th Aug'74 Sponsors up the ante on prize money for the final meet in September...

Article 5: 29th Aug'74 Datsuns are better prepared according to Japanese ace driver K.Takahashi...

Article 6: 8th Sep'74 Excitement with the final Selangor GP meet being today!!...

Article 7: 9th Sep'74 Results of the final 1974 Selangor GP!...

Article 8: 15th Sep'74 More news on the final Selangor GP results!...

Kunimitsu Takahashi won the "Improved Touring Car or Saloons" category in car no.123 after which it was shipped back to Japan! Car no.120 remained in Malaysia with Tan Chong & Sons Motor Co. Sdn. Bhd. till it was auctioned off in 1991.

Double checking identification tag of the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo

Was having a look under the hood and it occurred to me that I've never looked at the identification tag of the Datsun so here goes...

ID Tag is a little faded but the important chassis no. is imprinted on!

Figure 1
Engine No L16-827710
Car No KP710-008363

Engine no. L16-827710
Chassis no. KP710-008363

Well it is confirmed to be the same as auction details. :-)

Final thing to check is the engine block number...

Figure 2
L16 838618

Opps! looks like the original engine was swapped at some stage with all the sending back to Japan after each race. I did read in the news that after the 1974 April Selangor GP both the 160J SSS engines were sent back to Japan to be inspected/datalogged/refreshed for the final event in September. Anyway this being a factory race car, engine swaps would have been the order of the day and there is no necessity in keeping to the original block for any reason.

One final point to note is that although the block is stamped L16, it is actually an L18 block. Datsun L18 blocks can be bored out to 2 litres. This is not to be confused with Datsun's own 2-litre L20B engine. The reason I say that its an L18 block is the extra rib on the rear right hand side of the block.

Figure 4
Extra rib indicating this is an L18 block and not L16.
Block was subsequently sprayed blue.

Figure 5
Extra rib running down center of figure indicates an L18 block. The L16 is not reinforced in this manner.

Cheers!

History of the year 1971 leading up to the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo

Let us go back to 1971, I was four years old so what do I know?

Thanks to archived newspaper articles I have been on a thrilling rediscovery of what was 'in the air' back in 1971 in Malaysia. I contacted the newspaper's administration for permission to publish their articles after which, when I get a positive reply, I will post on this blog. Suffice to say, a picture showing the Datsun 160J SSS 710 Violet Turbo car no.120 was even in the news of 1974!

Briefly, the Japanese and European car manufacturers were setting their eyes on a 'little' (by world standards then) 2.1 mile Batu Tiga racetrack in Shah Alam of the Selangor state of Malaysia to settle their, literally brewing mettle with metal or commonly known as motorsports :-). The competitive spirit was, always has been and will be on a high note.

What do I mean? Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, Opel, Porsche and Datsun, to name a few, were hot on the pursuit of victory at the Selangor Grand Prix held a couple of times annually. Yes, you read right, a couple of times means twice a year.  It was the melting pot of motor racing technology being poured in from manufacturers all over the world in this part of Asia!

And I read that the FIA rulings were pretty liberal if thats what was followed then and Datsun was already hotly experimenting with turbocharging in 1971. They intended to bring their turbocharged Datsun SSS (most likely a 510 body), a first ever appearance anywhere in the world, to Batu Tiga racetrack to be driven by their top aces drivers Kunimitsu Takahashi and Kenji Tohira. Reported to make over 200 bhp from 2,500cc are snippets in the article. Yes, they were called aces drivers back in the early 70s.

Albert Poon representing Malaysia will drive an Alfa Romeo GTAM. Now that got me all excited as I know that Malaysia then even had a couple of GTAs on the road! I am surprised no mention was made of Henry Yap who would have piloted the fabulous UK Ford Cosworth BDAs escorts and in later years the German Zakspeed tuned Mk II escorts of which I attended to see with my own eyes in 1977. Of course many other Malaysian drivers are on the scene as well and will receive mention later.

Indonesia was to be upheld by their ace Hengkie Iriawan driving the Opel Commodore GS. Singapore even had their ace woman driver Anne Wong attend as a spectator only.

This was leading up to the 1971 Selangor GP!


For the interested, check the following forum for some local discussions:

http://penangtalk.com/nmvccr/posts/683.html

Power and torque specs of the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo.

How much power and torque does this 1974 Group 5 2 litre turbocharged non-intercooled 4-cylinder 16-valve racing engine make?

Figure 1
Power and torque figures.

Projections are wild and I have seen blog sites quote bigger figures but I am reminded that this was way back in 1974 when turbocharging, wastegating, intercooling and blow-off valving was very much experimental. Porsche only released a 2nd version 930 turbo with intercooler in 1978.

Nichimo incidentally has some figures quoted for their yellow version of this race car of which I have no idea on its history nor facts but just for sake of knowing....

There we have it, 300ps and about 230 foot pounds torque. Considering that this car hasn't got an intercooler it would be close to the ballpark figure of a later normally aspirated Ford Zakspeed escort. Do note that maximum power and torque are delivered at lower RPMs courtesy of turbocharging.

With the use of lead and higher octane level of fuels back in the early 70s I believe this power figure is most likely the more 'practical' as opposed to 500ps which I've read elsewhere.

By the way, cars in the early 70s of 2 litres and under usually hovers around 70hp for the single carb to 120hp for the twin carbs. A figure of 300ps with 230 ft.lbs torque was extraordinary!

How did I come into possession of a 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo?

In the minds of readers of this blog, I bet some have asked the question along the line, "How did he get one?".

Before I answer that one, I have related how three units of the Datsun 160J SSS Violet Turbo were brought in from Japan in 1974 and raced at the Selangor Batu Tiga Shah Alam circuit of Malaysia with car no.123 taking victory. I may have been wrong. The number of units of car may have just been two. My unit being car no. 120.

In all my online web searching, I have only ever heard of car no.123 making the headline news back in 1974 and at that, only scraps of historical record of what had happened then.

On another historical matter, I read that Datsun was on an experimental spree with turbocharging back in 1974. The FIA rules of this 3rd generation of Group 5 racing cars had the flexibility to allow manufacturers to push the boundaries of car performance then and everyone was pushing, no doubt.

So one suspicion of mine, as to why we have not seen any Datsun 160J KP710 SSS Violet Turbo in any museum, is that this era of racing car development technology was top secret. Nichimo, the scale model manufacturer, was given special privileges to make 1/24 scale moulds of the body. On the other hand I have not seen the LZ18 turbo engine in that 1974 form anywhere.

My hypothesis, until I am proven wrong, was that like many earlier top secret racing operations, the Datsun LZ18 turbo engine was disassembled/destroyed after important new data was collected.

So why was car no.120 left behind? It was perhaps a slight oversight by the Japanese or that Tan Chong & Sons Motors requested it be left behind as a memorial car. All of my suggestions are but just theories. One thing I did find out about car no.120 was that it had suffered a blown head gasket either during testing or whilst in the race driven by another driver?

Back to the first question, "How did I buy this car?". Tan Chong & Sons Motors did keep the car fairly intact for a good 18 years in their storage before it was somewhat forgotten of its former glory and auctioned off as a rally car in September 1991!

Figure 1

One would not be surprised that it was labelled a rally car instead of what it truly was, a road racing Group 5 car! Datsun then became Nissan and had many successful campaigns in the world rally championship in the 80s. A general manager in marketing control would have heard all the good news of rallying successes all around the world.

Semi-glossy black new paint on wheels of 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo.

Completed spraying several layers of semi-glossy black on each wheel.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

And I think they look fabulous! :-)

Priming spray of wheels done for 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo.

Weather permitting and I couldn't wait, the wheels were sprayed with aerosol acrylic primer...

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Now to allow proper drying of grey primer before applying the semi-gloss black...

Figure 4
Datsun emblem...raised embossing.

Closeup for spray painting wheels of 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo.

Getting the wheels ready for spray painting. Of course one would ask why not without fitting on the tyres first? Well, scratches I thought and also I couldn't wait to see what the wheels with the tyres fitted on looks like. So it is settled, it shall be done this way...

Figure 1
Taping up.

Rims are already slightly sanded down with fairly rough sandpaper to remove lots of gunky, powderly oxidation maybe.


I noticed something that reminds me just how special or rare these 15-inch rims actually are. There are no other symbols or manufacturer stamps anywhere except for this.

Figure 2
Can you spot it?

Figure 3
This wheel might look clearer!

A raised embossing!

It looks like a symbol that reminds me this is the 1974 era Datsun label.

Figure 4

So theses mags are truly Datsun forged items :-)!

Figure 5
YRL...no idea what that means yet!

Figure 6
Spoke style of the rims.

Figure 7
Mount side of rims.

Figure 8
For your eyes only.

Figure 9
Almost ready.

It being an overcast day with high humidity and rain in the horizon, I'll probably delay priming till I find a nice hot afternoon!

Road going tyres for the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo.

Vintage or Post Historic are the terms one would hear in 2014 if tyres are needed for the Violet Turbo befitting its very unique set of 15-inch diameter magnesium alloy wheels. Dunlop Post Historic CR82 threaded tyres are one such available option today.

I decided to look for road going tyres that would give about the same width and aspect ratio. As blogged earlier, 225/50R14 for the front and 295/50R15 for the rear.

Figure 1
Loading up to go tyre shop. Rear rims had old Pirelli P7s 285/40R15 on from since 1993.

Figure 2
Rare in this part of the world, a pair of 295/50R15 Cooper Cobra Radial GT was sought and bought for the rear.
Front tyres are Taiwanese Sonar.

Front tyres: 2 x Sonar SX-608 225/50 R15 91V

Rear tyres: 2 x Cooper Cobra Radial GT P295/50R15

Figure 3
Rear tyre installed on wheel.

Figure 4
Degreasing wheels.

Figure 5
Washing wheel to ready them for some spray painting.

Night shots and calculating road going tyres for the 1974 Datsun 160J SSS KP710 Violet Turbo LZ18.

It's a beautiful Sunday to blog. Love the shape of the car! Thought I'll take some shots to remember the restoration itself.

Figure 1

Earlier I had mooted the idea of getting the Dunlop CR82 Post Historic tyres but since I do not think of track time as an option yet, it'll do much better and cheaper with available road tyres. The trick I believe is to get the size of width and height to equate to what some real(Not available anymore :-(...) slicks from 1974 would have looked like.

Also the 1/24 Nichimo scale model is in my opinion quite a good model given the scale of things although not a completely accurate reproduction of what the Datsun 160J SSS 710 Violet Turbo should look like. I'll say the Nichimo scale model does stand a touch too high(ground clearance wise...) and certain portions of the bodywork differed. I do, after all, have a real car to check out! I will in future post another blog on this matter alone.

Refer to:http://racedunlop.com/vintage.php and check the "Post Historic" section.

Front tyres(tires):
Back to the Dunlop CR82 table, the front tyres for my 9-inch wide 15-inch dia. wheels would require the 430/1160-15 which gives an overall diameter of 23.7 inches. In 2014, the 225/50R15 tyres  of section width 8.9 inches would give overall diameter of about (225x0.50x2/25.2)+15 = 23.9 inches. With a good width and slight spreading of the tyre walls I would be close to the targeted ballpark figure of 23.7 inches :-).

Rear tyres:
Rims are 12-inch wide 15-inch dia. wheels. 530/1360-15 gives me overall dia. of 25.7 inches. A set of 295/50R15 tyres of section width 11.6 inches would be (295x0.50x2/25.4)+15 = 26.6 inches in overall diameter and after slight spreading of the tyre walls on install, again I'll be happy with 26 inches rear diameter :-). Both front and rear would have the "wide" look as well.

I'd expect to pay about one fifth of the total costs of importing the Dunlop CR82s.

Back to admiring some night shots:

Figure 2

And one more for a good night's rest...

Figure 3