Ah ! You were right about net-routes-create.... I was at the cluster API. It does work at the vserver level.
So that works but there is still other 8.3 stuff I can't set now. I.e. Creating the NFS policy for that vserver, most attributes are supported but the newer ones like showmount and udp:
cmd4 = NaElement("nfs-service-create")
cmd4.child_add_string("is-nfs-access-enabled","true")
cmd4.child_add_string("is-nfsv2-enabled","false")
cmd4.child_add_string("is-nfsv3-enabled","true")
cmd4.child_add_string("is-nfsv40-enabled","false")
#cmd4.child_add_string("is-udp-enabled","false")
#cmd4.child_add_string("is-showmount-enabled","true")
cmd4.child_add_string("is-nfsv41-enabled","false")
xo4 = call_api(d,cmd4)
These 2 attributes would result in API error for extra arg.