GARAGE: My Documents Archive

Frequent readers know that I love to collect documents related to my cars, and over the years I have built quite the archive, and people keep asking be about it, so I decided to give you a bit of an overview.
Recently, I got a big load of documents so it was time to get a larger shelf and resort things.

It’s already quite full again, but there is always room for more.

So what do we have in there? The top row is entirely dedicated to the “Eaglemoss Colelction” Fairlady Z-L 1/8-scale craft model. Some of the empty parts-boxes, the four binders with the magazines that came with it, the DVD that came with it, spare fasteners, the tool puch and much more. The assembled car is on the opposite side of the room.

The Magazines have a ton of great information about the S30, and its development, rally cars, and also a lot of history from that time.

One row below, you find loads of green Datsun Switzerland folders

These Binders hold various Service bulletins, technical information, warranty handling times, marketing material, advertising and much more.

Some folders hold more marketing material of all shapes and sizes, like printing master cliche’s, etc.

Some are Datsun / Nissan specific special tools catalogues by Kent-moore / Nissan:

In the department next to it, you find various parts manuals, and microfilms from various countries. That includes rare service instruction slides and Microfiches, plus a bunch of cool service tool gauges / sliders at the bottom:

I also got a bunch of early L-drive / R-drive parts manual in the large binder version which can be very useful, even though most of the information is available digitally, these days.

Then I got every 240Z / S30 related book I ever came across so far. Many of them are quite useless with a lot of wrong narratives and stories, but some are a bit more useful.

I recently also acquired a bunch of Carboy magazines from the 80ies, which often include the crazy drag-racing Z’s from that time:

And I also got a bunch of Nissan Japan / Switzerland / USA customer magazines from various years:

In the next department I have the American / export market Service bulletins / journals and the later version which is mainly a collected book of TSB’s: 

Those bulletins are quite rare, but very useful to research specific topics on a specific model. On the left you can also find the Japanese Service Shuho version.  

Then we have a load of Factory service manuals for the whole car or individual parts like the transmissions, heating system, differential, etc. Both Japanese, European and North American market versions.

That also includes manuals from various suppliers, like Mikuni / Solex, or Hitachi:

Then I have a collection of many Major Japanese tuner brands from the late 90ies early 00 years, when I was importing parts from JP as a business.

Some catalogues are quite valuable these days, but I love to keep them as a memory of my good old business days:

A row deeper, I have some general “Coffee table” books / collections. some generally about Japanese cars, some more related to Honda / TypeR.

Then I got a collection of Nissan chronicles books, Fairlady Z chronicles book, and some Kobe Seiko chronicles books, all nicely in their original cardboard boxes:

Of course I’ve also collected a ton of related Magazines, like Nostalgic Hero, Nostalgic Speed, Car graphic, and Option magazines:

Most of them somehow related to Z’s:

Then we come to the “mixed goods” section. These include a variety of Competition / Option / NISMO parts catalogues.

But also random Datsun Switzerland documents, like the Technician training guide from 1997, 

Or a lot of Press release folders from the Geneva Motor show, which was one of the big car shows in the world, at that period:

I have collected a huge load of Swiss Z and ZX documents, and also a load of Datsun / Prince Switzerland documents:

Like this press release and 240Z brochure:

Or this very early Swiss Prince Gloria brochure:

And a large selection of original color sample charts for all kind of Datsuns / Nissans:

The rest is more dedicated to my Honda With a variety of service manuals from Switzerland and Japan, Parts manuals and advertising VHS cassettes

But also more-or-less rare sales brochures:

I have also collected Honda Switzerland press releases and other documents related to the 6th generation Civics, all the early HyperRev Magazines, and of course a load of Mugen, Spoon, J’s racing, Toda, TwinCam, SARD and many other aftermarket catalogues from that period, with parts that are installed on my car, or just as a reference.

And last but a bunch of general folders with invoices, and other car related documents.

Including one with aftermarket magazines and documents / brochures for my Daily Mazda 6 / Atenza station wagon.

That’s it. It might not look like a lot from this view, but when you think that all these documents are mainly related to two very specific cars, you can spend days finding the right information in here 🙂