Turning Off Speedo

[DriverOne]

air biscuit :p

[Bert]

Hey guys I was wondering something.

I'm not much of a mechanic, I'm a rookie as of this year, but I'm trying to learn more and more. We had a friend of ours saying that he was able to turn off his Speedo by switch, claiming that it made him faster since he was not worried about his speed, just looking at the road/tach. Is this actually possible or is he blowing this switch stuff out his behind? If it's possible to do this I think I would actually consider it because when we get up in speed I tend to let my eyes wander to the speedo. I tried searching for threads but mainly came up with replacing or upgrading the speedo instead of switching it. What are your guys' thoughts on it?

This is not a good post regarding rally driving. That continually-becoming more-sophisticated road sport is not about speed or distance at all but rather punctuality at checkpoints. The courses are designed all around keeping with and meeting speed limits.Turning off your speedo (which includes the odometer (if you happen to have a Festy tach instrument cluster)) only re-affirms that you are even more driving 'by the seat of your pants' which is solely a recipe for placing dead last even though you got to all the check stations first.

The question is naive and all I can figure is you had the 'wool pulled over your eyes'. Mechanical speedos (you are using one) require physical work to disconnect and magnetic/electronic make no difference to mileage etc etc anyway nor does not using one. When you and 'the' car are intimately familiar with each other you shouldn't have to look at a speedo at all. You will 'feel' how fast you're going and there are only 3 obvious categories: too slow, tolerable, and too fast. The tach tells you how hard to push the motor (or in financial terms how long you expect the engine to last) and when to start looking for another gear.
The navigator calls the shots from his/her computations and without a speedo or odometer the driver is entirely a 'lost dog' in any situation.

[getnpsi]

Being one with your machine is key. Dirtbike guys do not have speedos, just their reaction time to compensate for judgement errors for turns and obstacles. Not trying to make this a psycology experiment but the guys in their 30s or older have driven more than 100k miles in their lives constantly checking speedos. Thats a huge amount that is all but hard wired by now if you're just talking mental. If you are a numbers guy in sure you took a turn by your house at say 40 and knew you could inch it up next time by whatever you thought was resonable. Its an interesting discussion but timed rallies have so much tenology inside and outside of vehicle, not to mention not all tracks and courses are multiple laps

[Advancedynamix]

This is not a good post regarding rally driving. That continually-becoming more-sophisticated road sport is not about speed or distance at all but rather punctuality at checkpoints. The courses are designed all around keeping with and meeting speed limits.Turning off your speedo (which includes the odometer (if you happen to have a Festy tach instrument cluster)) only re-affirms that you are even more driving 'by the seat of your pants' which is solely a recipe for placing dead last even though you got to all the check stations first.

The question is naive and all I can figure is you had the 'wool pulled over your eyes'. Mechanical speedos (you are using one) require physical work to disconnect and magnetic/electronic make no difference to mileage etc etc anyway nor does not using one. When you and 'the' car are intimately familiar with each other you shouldn't have to look at a speedo at all. You will 'feel' how fast you're going and there are only 3 obvious categories: too slow, tolerable, and too fast. The tach tells you how hard to push the motor (or in financial terms how long you expect the engine to last) and when to start looking for another gear.
The navigator calls the shots from his/her computations and without a speedo or odometer the driver is entirely a 'lost dog' in any situation.

He races with Rally America, which is a stage type rally, not a checkpoint type rally. The goal is to get the fastest times on each stage. The driver doesn't need to know mileage or speed, that is monitored by the co driver who uses a device like the TerraTrip to instruct the driver what is ahead. This is actual racing, not a scavenger hunt with expensive cars like what you see in most checkpoint style rallies.

[WTFestiva]

This is actual racing, not a scavenger hunt with expensive cars like what you see in most checkpoint style rallies.

I almost got us into one of the checkpoint rallies by mistake until I read up on it online. Had me thinking, "Why is the entry so cheap?!?"

I'm the co-driver currently, until next year :thumbup:. While I'm co-driving though, as someone said earlier, I'm trying to get the mindgame out of him. Lovin the "not fast enough" and I'm hoping to eventually install a big'ol tach with the fancy lights and such on it that tell you when you'd normally like to shift. Until then I'm just going to stay on track with getting it running again after the timing belt, and switching to aspire or capri breaks and such. And a phantom grip.
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Then will come the BP...
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Then will come the turbo... After that who knows (AWD?), depends on how I feel working mechanically by then and if I can get me a welder on call again...

[Advancedynamix]

The BP will put you in prod Gt. I think, and a turbo will be Super Prod. which is a very competitive class, but I believe the Festiva can hold it's own. A proper AWD setup with a BPT would be guaranteed to draw attention.

When I was growing up the walls of my bedroom were covered with posters and banners that I acquired at various races. My favorite used to be an SCCA pro Rally poster with Tim O'Neal driving a VW golf. The poster read, "Real Cars, on Real roads, going Real Fast!". We had 2 SCCA Pro Rally events a year in my home town, and it was awesome. The town roads would fill up with Factory backed Rally cars from all over the world. All the motels were like the best car show ever. The sounds of Backfiring and turbochargers wailed into the night air. I love rally.

[getnpsi]

Loved the scavenger hunt metaphor

[Advancedynamix]

Lol, thanks. I did one of them once with a friend and we did horrible because we drove too fast, and I thought we were going far too slow. It was around easter so we joked about getting a rally confused with this local easter egg scavenger hunt. The organizers didn't think my joke was funny.

WTfestiva, Your signature picture is awesome! Please post more festiva rally pictures. You can start a thread in the Photo forum.

[WTFestiva]

Working on it now, I was posting to my profile but on the thread would probably be a better place

[Advancedynamix]

sign up for a free photobucket account and then just link the pictures. It will autosize to the correct size for the website (sometimes it doesn't work, Sorry Willie).