Fooling around with old rally instruments can be as rewarding---or frustrating---as tinkering with the cars themselves.
Following our devastating humiliation of the Historic Hordes at Thunderbird, I expect we'll hear a certain amount of puling from the whingers: "No FAIR! They. . . they USED A COMPUTER!" This never-never land of what should and what shouldn't be allowed in Vintage/Historic/Beater Class has been going for some time; in fact, that's what led us to this year's strategy.
It started when Martin Wilson and John Rapson had the temerity to show up with a Brantz odometer at Thunderbird five or six years ago. Nobody said anything about it that year, because the Porsche 911 spent the weekend wallowing in deep snow---or, rather, tobogganing across it---but the following year, they had the nerve to win the Historic Class. . . with an electronic LED-readout odometer of recent manufacture. "Booooo!" cried the Luddites. And all of a sudden a new rule appeared: It said that Historic cars could use MECHANICAL instruments made any old time. . . but if they wanted anything electronic, it had to be 25 years old. Take THAT, Wilson! Take THAT, Rapson!

That's when the Alaska Rally Team set about searching for a genuinely vintage rally computer, something from back in the Zeron 550/660/770 era, and sure enough we came up with one of these behemoths. Jack Christensen of TimeWise fame got it to light up, spit blood, and produce numbers, and we installed it in one of the Too Many Saab Sonetts that litter the grounds of the ART estate.

Now, just as the Lancia Stratos was the state of the art in its day, TSD rallyists of the '70s were constantly tinkering with cutting-edge paraphernalia. The Pacific Northwest was a hotbed of electronic jury-rigging, with many geeks fashioning their own versions of the Hot Set-up in rally computers. And today, just as it is rewarding to tinker with older cars and coax them across the rally route, so, too, it has been an interesting experience to get an old Zeron to produce calculated time. Just as you have to remember a careful routine if you want to find reverse gear in a Sonett, so, too, you have to remember not to inadvertently cancel the Zeron's clock settings! Unlike its modern counterparts, such as the TimeWise 798A, the old electronic box---should that be "electronic boxcar"?---has quaint and unpredictable habits, such as manufacturing numbers when its input speed is zero.

The rationale behind a computer in a "drivex" event is the same today as it was thirty years ago: Only the most able and skilled navvy can crank out numbers on a Curta when the car is being pitched thither and yon by a manic lead-foot driver. Of course, it takes quite a bit of skill to address the computer properly---especially when it's an ancient box that requires certain Druidic procedures to work at all---but at least that level of ability can be attained by any proficient navigator who isn't prone to The Technicolor Pukies. In fact, the arguments for computers in Historic are the same as those for other classes: They level the playing field more than any other element of TSD rallying.

Years ago---1988, to be precise---I argued against the use of computers in Jerry Hines' AlCan rally. "If you let them in," I said, "it means a guy will have to buy a computer if he wants to win."
"Right now," Hines replied, "he has to buy a Tom Grimshaw. Computers are cheaper---and there are more to go around."
That was the point that swayed me to the Dark Side of Electronic Intervention. Now, I have always rallied in pampered luxury; that is, I have had
1. navigators who were spot-on, muy excellento time-crunchers, and
2. equipment that could measure to a gnat's kneecaps, whether it was a Halda Twinmaster fed through an adjustable ball-disc integrator, a Zeron 700 odometer/clock, or a TimeWise 797/798 A box.

I like to win; but rallying is mostly a game of personal best, since we are always trying to attain an impossible ideal score. I have never taken a lot of pleasure in "beating" other rallyists in TSD events when their instruments are inaccurate or nonexistent. But as a driver, I have always tried to minimize everything that distracts me from the chores on my side of the car, like navigator input: hence a simple read-out that says, "You're early, dude!" or the more-likely-in-Canada statement, "You're late!" I prefer it when we eke out a win by dint of---dare I say it?---a certain amount of driving skill.

After all, the computer may be able to multiply two numbers, compare the results to a clock, and tell me I'm late. But how hard can that be in an event like Thunderbird?! Yeah, I KNOW I'm late---but the damn computer isn't doing diddly to get me down the road any faster. In fact, our greatest pleasure in Thunderbird 2001 was our battle with Bob Chandler and Mark Clemmens in Chandler's ancient 240Z---and since it was equipped with an Alfa computer, the Zed car wasn't even running in the Historic class. "My goal," said Chandler, "is to be the top-finishing two-wheel-drive car." Obviously the Alfa gave no particular advantage in the traction department, and we were barely able to squeak out a score with a front-wheel-drive Hakkapeliitta-churning SAAB that was lower than  a rear-drive, tail-happy limited-slip Datsun!

Those who want to dismiss our success in Historic with "They've got a computer!" are not only selling navigator Russ Kraushaar short---spend a ten-hour stretch behind a Zeron sometime before you decide it's a cakewalk---but they are also missing the true nature of Thunderbird. The truth is that at one point Sunday morning, we were two minutes down. First of all, the stupid computer had done absolutely nothing to keep me from flinging the Sonett off the road, over the ditch, and onto the rocks; it didn't even help push us back on the road. More important, it did nothing thereafter but chronicle our slow efforts to wind ourselves back into a respectable position; that we were able to do so had to do with luck (if the timing control had been closer, we would've been hosed, eh?) and a certain amount of Alaska experience that enabled us to get down the road at a reasonable clip. Oh---and when we did finally slide past the timing control, the box gave us a cheerful estimate of the penalty we were taking.

Another argument against equipment---in Historic or any other class---is that it raises the costs of competition. True enough; it's always going to cost more to fill your toybox. But there is certainly no cost advantage to equipping a car with vintage mechanical devices (or reproductions) over vintage electronics. Our ball-disc integrator cannot be found at any price (and ours isn't for sale!). As I write this, the bidding for a Halda Twinmaster on eBay has just passed $700 with three days to go; Tripmasters are fetching between $400 and $800, with Speedpilots around $500. A fair hand with a Curta---between $400 and $1000 on eBay---and an accurate odometer ($200--$500 in modern form) can produce the same calculations as a rally computer. We paid $300 for the Zeron after Christiansen refurbished it.

At this time, my own corner of the Alaska Rally Team toybox contains the Zeron rally computer, a Zeron odometer/clock, two Halda Twinmasters, the ball-disc integrator box, one Halda Tripmaster, a Halda Speedpilot (hey, nothing looks cooler than a Speedpilot!), and enough gears and cables to tie this stuff to just about anything that rolls, along with three Curta calculators---and I'm the driver; navigator Kraushaar has another two Curtas and two Tripmasters.  There's also the TimeWise 797A and the TimeWise 798A for when we're not in vintage mode; Russ also has one of each.
The Sonett ran the Grand Canyon Rally with the TimeWise installed, but there was no vintage class at that event. Actually, my preference is to run the same set-up we had at Thunderbird, since it represents "the cutting edge of technology" we were trying to achieve a quarter-century ago; the big clumsy box with its humongous knobs and buttons is kind of quaint, and the sound of Russ madly pushing buttons to adjust the computer is a perfectly appropriate counterpoint to my mad search for gears in the four-on-the-tree column-shift transmission. Since my vision of historic competition is to compete exactly as we did in the Olden Days, burgeoning electronics and all, I plan to run the Sonett with its Zeron set-up in as many events as possible this season.
That way, any time we take a modern car and a TimeWise to a rally, Kraushaar will be so grateful for the vacation that he'll be willing to pay for the beer!
---Satch Carlson

It's always good reading to receive anything from Satch - never let anything get in the way of a good story!  Fact is, Satch did exactly what we did in Thunderbird some years ago; read the rules and saw what was legal and what was not.  When Martin and I used the Brantz, the rules, whether inadvertently or otherwise, permitted the use of an electronic odometer, as long as there was no time computation capability.  Computer or not, no-one can take away the fact that Satch and Russ did a hell of a job to horse that elderly Sonett around those roads with only 30 penalties, albeit with a bit of luck regarding control locations. Rallying, as Satch says, is a matter of personal best, and part of that is making things work to your advantage - when Satch organized the Mayflower Rally in the mid 90's, and told crews that control locations would always be at the bottom of the minute, it was clear that the way to stay clean was to calculate mileage for the bottom of every minute and just keep hitting those points. Having figured that, Martin and I were mildly chided by Satch for having done just that, and all entries advised that the rules would be changed the following year. As  always, rallying remains a challenge thrown down by the organizer and taken up by the competitors!