stevesmax

I know this is a little late, but the Chevrolet badged Statesmans were actually just known as the "Chevrolet 350", you are correct in saying they are pretty much a Stateman with a 350ci engine, though they also sported a unique grill, hubcaps and badging. They were essentially a replacement in NZ for the Chev Impala, and a little more upmarket than the Holden Statesman or Caprice, with the Caprice being slightly more upmarket than the Statesman.

An elderly lady in Ashburton had a dark brown Chev 350 that was immaculate, which I believe is now owned by her son/daughter in law, who incidentally had as their daily driver, an immaculate metallic dark green V8 HQ Monaro LS, and a WB Holden ute.

There were a couple of Prince Miler utes in Christchurch in the 60's, with one rumoured to be in use by a business at Woolston well into the 1990's. I do recall catching a glimpse of an odd looking ute in Christchurch in the late 90's, which I was sure was a Prince, but cant guarantee that's what it actually was.

One was owned by they Neate family who owned Croydon Motors, the NZ Prince importers (as well as the Borgward and Daimler importers), and was used to tow around their Skyline GT raced by Carlos Neate.

The Miler utes have an almost identical front to the very rare handbuilt Skyline Sport couple/convertible, and the general run of the mill Skyline sedan of 1962.

1961 Dodge Pioneer. My granddad owned one from 1971 till 2005

I know this thread is a little old now, but I remember these stickers, and even had to use the external stick on ones in the 80's. If you put them in the path of the wipers, it would have the sticker worn off in about 12 sweeps. I also even have an unused carless day application form.

My 1962 Prince Skyline Deluxe 1900, which ive finally got the fuel issue sorted, ended up being a blocked pipe. Decided to video the test drive. Turned out way better than expected. Will take it to the garage next week to get a wof check done to see if anything needs doing before I take it to VTNZ for re-rego with new plates.

Its always a laugh watching other people open the bonnet. Only had the boot lid lock attack me a couple of times in 20+years of owning it.

Believe it or not, the factory 1900cc engine drags the 1300kg body along quite nicely. You would think 1900cc + 1300kg = gutless, but not really the case. It will certainly keep up with modern day town traffic. The only downside is they are extremely noisy and revvy at 60mph, but not so much you cant hold a conversation.

I dont get the centre armrest at all, only the access reducing armrests on the wheel arch, although i do get step lamps on the side of the seat base which light up with the back doors open and cloth inserts on the door cards. The crimson coloured carpet is original, while up front I have the same vinyl mats as yours, which are now all hard and brittle. The standard '63 Skyline S21S-4 had the side armrests too, except the seats were trimmed in vinyl instead of cloth. we got both the Skyline Super and standard sedan and Skyway wagon here in 1963, and only the Deluxe sedans in 1962.

When I got mine back on the road in 1992, I took it to show the original owners, who were over the moon to see it again. The man said he had something that I could have and went fossicking in the garage and bought out the factory Prince radio and toolbox, which he had kept for all those years. He said he then knew the reason why he could never throw them away. The BLSID-3 Skylines had the radio as standard where the S21D-4 didnt. Not sure of the reason for this as the Deluxe and Super were the same spec. The parts book only lists it as optional for all the S21 Skylines and Skyway wagons. I was also very lucky in that the Prince glovebox manual and a couple brochures were still in the car.

And contary to popular belief, the dipswitch looking thing on the trans tunnel is actually for the foot operated windscreen washer pump. That gets a few people as well. To switch between high/low beam headligths, the column mounted light switch flicks back and forward like a modern car. The other thing ive been told to watch our for, is that the steering wheel is easily broken if used to drag yourself out of the car. I used to know an elderly man that had a Skyline Super, and he had broken about 3 steering wheels doing this.

Not sure if this is going to help, but these pics are from a brochure I have which shows the frame, although its not all that good. I scanned them for the guy in the US with the 1960 Skyline, for him to have a look at.

Ky, NZmax's one isn't legit is it?

Sadly my Skyline isnt legal at the moment. Rego lapsed when I was in OZ 2yrs ago, the reminder came after I left and only had 12 days to get it done, so was over when i got back. Didnt think about it when I left. Tried begging the Motor Vehicle registery place, but their attitude was not our problem, you should have known. Anyway, my own stupid fault in the end I guess.

In the meantime its had fuel issues, and still does. Had to have the fuel tank cut open, cleaned out and then resurfaced as it was full of what looked like paint flakes. Fuel pump has packed up, and now that ive hooked up a new electric one, it doesnt seem to supply enough fuel to the carb to go over 30miles per hour, which is ok for round town i suppose, but I live 26km from a major town. So either a bigger pump is required, which I bought over the weekend, or I have a blocked line from the back of the car to the engine bay. Hopefully its not the blocked pipe option. If it requires the bigger pump, at least ill be able to use the smaller pump for when I convert my C32 Laurel back to petrol from LPG as its the right litre/m, so it wasnt money down the drain.

Colza...the top of the rear guards by the back window is a common rust place. My '62 has rust there, but not through yet. Also the seat cloth seems to be pretty resilient on these too. Mine has the same pattern and is still in good nick also, just the vinyl have a few holes from the previous owners grandkids stabbing it with a screwdriver. Being a '62 model, mine had the earlier front with the headlights as part of the guards. Watch the bonnet too, it will smack you under the chin if you are not careful as they seem to be heavily sprung, and after 30 times of banging your head on the catch on the underside of the bonnet when its open, you will still keep doing it. One of the joys of Skyline ownership. You mention on your vid about the lounge style rear seat, the front is the same. Ive always said that driving a 1st generation Skyline is like driving a lounge suite. Pleased to see its gone to a good home.

My parents still have a road legal '66 Prince B200. And yes...we did have a '66 B200 Estate many years ago.

Steve

The S54 6cylinder Prince Skyline GT's had front discs as standard. The Grand Gloria in Japan had them standard also.

In NZ the later A30 series Nissan Gloria (1967-69) had front discs. Not sure how easy they would be to find nowdays, or if they would be an easy fit, but the A30 Gloria's were a Prince, but badged as a Nissan as they were released after the merger date.

Ive had in order of owning:

1957 Austin A35

1964 Morris Mini Minor 850 (1/2 owned with a mate)

1962 Prince Skyline Deluxe (bought in 1985 and still have)

1965 Prince Gloria 6 (bought in 1985 also, and still have) was my everyday driver for couple of years

1979 Datsun 180B 810series

1982 Datsun Bluebird ZX-E 910

1985 Honda Accord (heap of sh*t, owned for 4months)

1982 Datsun Laurel 2.4 Hardtop C31 NZ new

1985 Nissan Laurel 3.0V6 SGX Hardtop C32 NZ new

1987 Nissan Bluebird 1.6SG

1991 Nissan Maxima SE J30

1998 Nissan Maxima SEL A32

2001 Nissan Maxima ST A33

1985 Nissan Laurel 2.4GL Sedan C32 NZ new (currently own)

1993 Nissan Maxima S J30 (currently own)

My parents have a 1963 Pontiac Laurentian which they have owned since 1974, and was our family car for years when I was growing up. Has only just done 86,000miles.

1st owners swear they have never had an accident in it, and the 2nd owner didnt do much with it and put it in a shed. Im the 3rd owner. Is a bit rough round the edges, but still in good original condition. Even the paint still shines nicely when its not covered in dust like in the pic.

The 1st owners lived on a shingle road, which is the reason the base of the bootlid and bumper valance dont have much paint left on them. The chrome on the rear bumper is pitted for the same reason.

Interior is in good nick too. The top of the front seat has a couple of holes in the vinyl where the 2nd owners grandkids stuck a screwdriver through it. Being a Deluxe, it has cloth seat facings which are still perfectly intact, although a little grubby. The factory crimson carpet in the rear has seen better days. Has vinyl matting in the front which has gone a bit brittle with age.

Prince was its own independent company before the mid-60's Nissan takeover; this wasn't popular in Japan with Prince dealers, who considered their cars much superior to Nissans, there are still older Nissan dealerships that signpost themselves "Prince" in Japan

"Prince" had that name because members of the Japanese royal family owned Prince cars

The "Prince" name was so well regarded in Oz and NZ, that later cars like the Gloria were badged as Princes years after the Japanese domestic models had changed over to Nissan badging

I saw a Station wagon version of your car for sale in Auckland around 1993, 2-tone blue, it was a gem

Probably the rarest car on this forum.....

GW

Just to add to your post...

Prince Motors and Nissan merged in August 1966. The reason for the merger was a Government initiative to make companies bigger so that they couldnt be taken over by foreign companies. The same reason Mitsubishi and Hino merged, as well as Toyota/Daihatsu.

The original company changed their name to Prince in honour of the then reigning Crown Prince of Japan.

The Prince name pretty much disappeared off new cars in NZ during 1967. The new shape A30 series Gloria was released here in May 1967, and badged solely as a Nissan, even though it was designed by Prince. Skylines were assembled in Japan (Glorias were assembled in Christchurch) so any badging followed the Japanese market cars, with the last of them badged as Nissans but did still retain the P symbol on the grille and rear end.

The Gloria was also known here by its export name of B200. The export name for Skyline was A200. Prince cars and trucks were exported to a lot of countries round the world.

The earlier Skyline wagons were called Skyway, and were sold here in 1963.

My BLSID-3 Skyline Deluxe was registered new in 1962, and was 1 of 49 sitting on the wharf at Lyttelton when the first owners test drove it, still covered in protective grease. It was one of the first Skylines sold out of the first batch imported. From what ive read, Croydon Motors in Christchurch had a licence to be able to import 300 Skylines sedans and wagons, which i believe includes the S21-4 series (Kytelers model) sold during 1963.

A search of Wikipedia shows the BLSID-3 Skyline at Southwards Museum in one of the pics, even though its labelled as an ALSID-2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Skyline

Pic of my Skyline. Kytelers is an updated version of mine, with the different front guards, grille, bonnet and headlight position. The rest of the car is virtually the same.

Ive had friends in similar situations, doing a bit of work in the late afternoon/early evening and noise control rocks up and the noise is nothing louder than a drill being used to drill some holes in timber. Some people just have nothing better to do than complain.

Im lucky that all my neighbours are pretty good noise wise and usually inform the neighbours of any parties or if they are going to be doing something loud for any period of time. No one has an issue. One neighbour we used to have in a rented house, decided they were going to pretty much have a party every night of the week, 9 times out of 10 till at least 3am. Dont get me wrong, I have no issue with neighbours partying or making noise now and again, but every night when you and most of the other neighbours have to be up at 6am to go to work with only a couple of hours sleep, is a bit of a piss off. Complaining to them fell on deaf ears. One night the bass was so loud the glass was literally rattling in the window frames. After them partying Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, when Wednesday night came round and they were still going at 3:30am Thursday morning, both my neighbour and I rang noise control. About 5am the party died its natural death and I still hadnt been to sleep, and noise control were no where in sight. I found out later that they had been out about 5:30 and found no noise......thats 2hours after they were called, basically their attitude was that they couldnt give a fuck.

Luckily it wasnt long before they moved out. Rumour has it, one of the other neighbours a bit further down the street went over there a few day later with a shotgun and threatened to turn the stereo into a piece of modern art if they kept it up. We didnt have too much of a noise issue from them after that.

I just moved your post into the discussion thread Steve. I figured the tank would be a pain in the ass! Sounds like the much have replaced the carb too. I was hoping to use the glass plate from my C110 carb but it's a slightly different shape so it's a no can do unfortunately. I'm quite impressed though at how well the engine runs, despite having massive ring/valve issues and losing a lot of oil via smoke, it's still purrs pretty damned nicely!

CLEANING FUEL TANK FOR DUMMIES

Drain Fueltank and remove tank from S21

Drop 3 or 4 handfulls of coarse chip and 2 litres of petrol into tank (only the coarse chip not the fine sand that comes with it)

Shake vigorously upside down, right side up, left, right, north, south, east, west, south east, nor nor west, etc.

Empty tank onto your neighbours lawn, taking care to spell "Cunt" with a capital "C"

Pour 2 more litres of petrol into tank, shake vigorously, smoke cigarette, empty pertrol into toilet cistern (or behind garden shed, into your little sisters diesel Daewoo, in your ex girlfriends shampoo etc) smoke more cigarettes (repeat 3 times)

Pour 2 litres of methylated spirits into tank - swish around firmly (not shake) drain meths ensuring to filter through a loaf of bread and keep the remanants for Friday night drinkees!!

You now have a nice clean tank..

I recommend adding a quantity of fuel tank sealer and turn tank regularly while sealer is drying/follow instrructions on bottle of sealer.

DONE!!

Not quite so easy on a Prince Skyline. The drain bunghole is little bigger than a 10cent piece and actually has a small lip on the inside. Also the filler neck on top of the tank has a lip protruding into the tank also. Even the sender unit hole has a reinforcing ring on the inside that creates a lip. Would be easy to get the coarse chip in but not so easy to get it out.

The guy that cut mine open said it was still full of flaky paint. I had tried for hours shaking, swishing, swearing, and only got a fraction of the stuff out.

Well, I did a bit of a disassemble, clean and reassemble on the carb today, it ran MINT. So mint, I fixed the binding R/F brake and decided to try my luck taking it for a spin. I got a few kms but something went a miss on the way back. I think it's a fuel delivery issue but unsure exactly where and what. Might just be low fuel in the tank. Which should really be removed and drained out anyway I put an inline filter in (it didn't have one initially) and the amount of crap it's picked up, while to be entirely expected. Is absolutely hilarious.

So, next week... sort out the rest of the brakes so that all four drums are working as well as the R/F is now and then likely work on the steering having a theatre's worth of play in it and then onto the fuel tank.

The short term is to get the car actually running and able to be driven, so that anything else I need to get done, is a HELL of a lot easier with a movable car.

Unfortunately, two things have come up recently that require cash. One is another Skyline and the other is an engine for my other Classic Skyline, the C110. So, things may slow to a grinding halt on this again. We'll see.

Talking about Skyline petrol tanks......mine was full of flakey stuff that blocked the end of the pick up tube. Basically you will have to get someone to get into the tank and clean it out. Way back in the day Prince Motors decided that it would be good to paint the inside of the tank, sadly this has come back to haunt current owners (if they have been sitting for any period) and has flaked off and is lying in the bottom of the tank waiting for some movement to stir it all up. No amount of filling it with liquid and shaking it and turning it upside down will get rid of the flakey stuff......believe me....I tried...lol. I got a tank place to cut mine open either end and the bottom as it has two baffles at 1/3 the way along the tank. Have got brass patches on it now which wont be seen when its back in the car, although mine still as the funny black painted board which screws onto the tank holding straps, which hides the tank when its installed.

My carb has a glass cover over the float chamber so you can see the level of petrol in the bowl. The cover is the same as the Gloria if i remember rightly. It has a line with "level" written under it and then it has "Nikki" on the glass as well. As my original GB4 engine has been replace with a G2, they must have swapped the original carb onto it.

Also, the Skyline = 6stud Those piddly Gloria rims are useless to me!

Gloria rims are 13", Skyline rims are 14".

If it helps in any way, our Skyline rims are the same size and 6stud stud pattern as the early/mid 70's Mazda B1600 utes. The only minor difference between them was the clips that hold on the hubcaps were in a slightly different place.

As far as i recall the s30 shape 280z was sold on the American market only.

NZ got the S30 240z and 260z and then the S130 280zx.

A mate of mine had a 1972 240z a number of years ago. He had a few books about z cars and im sure i read it in one of them.

Hey, have been signed up here for a long time and thought it was time to share some pics.

Prince was a Japanese make taken over by Nissan in August 1966, who continued with the Gloria and Skyline name.

1962 Prince Skyline Deluxe 1900cc 4cyl. Model code = BLSID-3. This was the third facelift of the 1st generation Skyline. 50 Skyline Deluxe sedans were sold new during 1962 and are said to the first Japanese cars sold in NZ. Being a Deluxe model it has cloth seats, interior lights everywhere, foglamps in front bumper etc. Still has original Prince AM radio, glovebox manual and toolbox.

1965 Prince Gloria 6. 2000cc OHC straight 6. Model code S41E-1. Is a 2nd Generation Gloria. (1st generation Glorias were just better appointed 1st generation shape Skylines) These were bought in fully assembled during 1964, and assembled in Christchurch during 1965 and 1966, and considered a bit of a luxury car when they were new.

The silver one is a 610 Datsun (Nissan) Bluebird 2000GT. Used the L20A 6cylinder engine. Australia got them i think with a L24 engine. They were a 610 Datsun 180b with a six cylinder motor with a different front and similar 180B taillights. Is the same as the brown one on trademe.

my olds almost had a different car every year: Renault Dauphine, 1965 Prince Gloria 6, VC Valiant, HR Holden Special, 1963 Pontiac Laurentian (which they bought in 1974 and still have), and to top it off they also had a late 70's Austin Princess....yuck yuck yuck.

I use valvemaster, but it fouls the plugs up faster. Someone mentioned to me once about cars that need an upper cylinder lubricant. Some of these cars have had LPG fitted for years and have had no trouble at all. LPG doesnt have an upper cylinder lubricant property and nothing added. Question is, do we need valvemaster or the likes or is it just a ploy for us to part with our money. Im still in 2 minds about it.

NAME= Steve

LIVE = Rakaia, Mid Canterbury

VEHICLES OWNED: 1962 Prince Skyline Deluxe, 1965 Prince Gloria 6, 1963 Prince Skyway (Skyline) Stationwagon.

The Skyline and Gloria are in original going condition, but the Skyway needs a bit restoration before its ever back on the road.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/622621

Link to my Skyline page.