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Rainier Auto Sports Club

The Wishbone Alley Gazette

September, 2001

Club News

Woody's Grill and Bar. 14450 Woodinville-Redmond Rd, Woodinville WA, 98072; phone: 425-483-6633. It is located at the corner of Woodinville-Redmond Rd and SR 202, just east of the Red Hook brewery. Kids are allowed.

Rally News

-by Mark Nolte

Some of the circus is in town already- the Subaru team rented some roads from Simpson, via the NWR-SCCA - to do some testing prior to the rally. 50 entries firm, 10 more "nibbles".

The route remains a secret. Not sure if this is to escape penalties for rallyists who want to wander the woods, and would be penalized for pre-running, or just the way things are organized.� Pretty sure "Mason Lakes" stage on Friday night (when we did it, it was foggy!), and my guess of "Taylor Town" was confirmed.

In any case, the workers should be in the stages, not doing "parking attendant" duties at the Controls.� I hope the spectating maps lead the spectators elsewhere than to my stage!

Saturday will feature FCO at 9:31, to a 29-mile stage made up of the popular roads east of California road, and north of the Simpson Sort Yard.� Although it gives bragging rights to "longest stage", it'll be only run once if a 2 minute "dust window" spacing is required.

The RASC stage, at 13 miles, is a shorter version of Cranberry Marsh, with a fairly good Spectator Corner.� Working a stage rally is no longer a "red circle" date on most calendars; at WAG deadline, the stage was mostly covered. Tom Palidar is manning the Finish end with his Torque Steerer's "Timing Experts".

Workers get T-shirts.

Called� "Don't Go There", Rallymaster Eric Horst has spent his time in south King County- he mentioned "Green River".� Checkout is on the 7th ("Y'all invited!") Dash plaques are nearly in hand, so it's all ready to go.

NWRC Friday Niter- approx. 28-29 cars (17 novices!) slight instructional errors caused some lost souls.� Joel and Steve ran the rally-Rainier ran a checkpoint. Ok event.. Good attendance

Previous Friday Niter- No Traps, 22-25 cars. No big traps, not anything super exciting , but standard rally.�� Good consistent attendance of events recently

"Don�t Go There"- The Rainer Friday Niter, Eric stated will be a conservative rally traveling through the likes of Renton, Tukwila, Kent, Green River area.� Not a really fast paced rally.. approx. finish time - 9:45 at a Pizza joint.

The club discussed purchasing Mark�s Timing Lights. After much discussion the majority of people decided timing clocks such as Alfa checkpoints or Timewise clocks would be money better spent. Jerry Hines promised to get prices on several used clocks (that don�t work well for the Alcan in frigid temperatures?) The discussion was tabled until more information could be obtained.

Kirk and Terry brought their two Foster Children to the meeting who behaved very well during the 2-hour meeting

Much to the disappointment of everyone at RASC, SCCA will now use the SCCA Pro-rally timing system instead of FISA rules.� Will likely make a long spread out event.

Alcan Report- Jerry brought an entry list for the upcoming event with 19 competitors, 16 of which pre-paid.

Meeting adjourned�

The speedometer is pegged at 135, on the freeway, in traffic�� Not likely!

I�ve had a large and varied collection of cars and not had the pleasure of �cleaning� a speedometer until now, until Subaru.

The first symptom came on the Sportwagon, our chase-car, parts-car, service vehicle, and TSD rally car.� Gradually the speedometer needle indicated higher and higher speeds on the freeway, although the tachometer remained steady at 3500 RPM.� Soon, 60 MPH became 70 indicated, then 80 and climbing.� Another instrument cluster was installed and freeway speeds came back close to normal-- Unfortunately I found, after the swap, that older Subaru speedometer heads are gear-ratio-specific (as opposed to different senders at the transmission).� Our Turbo-motor 3.7 ratio now had a non-turbo 3.9 speedometer.� We were rally types, we could live with a correction factor, and we did until the replacement failed.�

It failed on the Totem 2000 Rally, in the snow, where 33 MPH actual speed rapidly climbed to 45 indicated and eventually peeked at 120-plus.� In a rally, in the snow, in the middle of British Columbia, is not the time to have a speedometer failure.� I had to get creative.� I had to drive by the tachometer!� We created a gear-to-rpm-to-speed table, and rallied on, but...� Something about our Subaru speedometer had to change.

Technically the speedometer needle is not �connected� to the speedometer cable.� The needle is connected to a �cup�; the cable is connected to a �cone�, which fits inside the cup with a magnetic field causing the cone to drive the cup, against a very specific resistance spring.� When all is right, the two are not connected, except that Subaru speedometer cables often fill with transmission oil and as it creeps further up the cable it eventually works around the cone and fills the cup and the rest of the speedometer cluster with oil, grease, lint, etc. and the connection is as good as solid.

Removing the speedometer from the instrument cluster is the easy part-- The cluster from the dashboard is the hard part.� Not wanting to make this a life�s work, and not wanting to undergo repeated expense I did some research.� Subaru recommends a new seal at the transmission and a thorough cleaning of the cable.� A new seal means removing the tranny.� Since both failures occurred after 130,000 miles I thought I�d take another less costly route.� An ex-Subaru employee said to just take the speedometer apart and clean away the goo.� It should last another 100,000 or so�� Great!

Once the speedometer head is in hand, use a "plastic safe" cleaner (e.g. CRC non-CFC electronic cleaner) and thoroughly remove all traces of grease and goo.� Clean any residue off the face and odometer wheels and re-install.� This is a good opportunity to help nighttime views of the trip odo.� Carefully lift out the little black window bars in front of the trip odo wheels, allowing more illumination and easier reading.� You may also want to remove the colored vinyl covers on the speedometer illumination bulbs, thus making them brighter.

The speedometer on the replacement RX was pegged too (125,000 miles), with grease coating the entire backside of the dash, the radio, and the ashtray.� After removing the dash for roll cage installation, a cleaned speedometer was installed.� I still have cleaned 3.70 and 3.90 speedometer clusters on the shelf�� Just in case.

Subaru RX Rally Team�� 10835 SE 170th Street,� Renton,� WA� 98055�� ronsorem@hotmail.com

�(Ron will be piloting the� "new" RX at Wild West club rallys this weekend. - MN)

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