]IINES

glf.g5It(o. 22il

rhe SAAB clutr Mctgctzine

The Red Dog BMW and Pigs On lce 9000 Turbo take a break on the ice of the MacKenzie Riverln the Arctic with Pigs On lce

page 14

Historic Competition
The Longest D"y, 1 980
Baja 500, 1973

page 21
page 25

Technical Talk

page 28

Aftermarket Wheels, DIY Tools,
Performance Tips that don't effect emissions,
Alternator Upgrade, 99/900 Suspension work

Sporly Saabs: A drive in the'95 900 Convertible, page 12.

lllllEs, the sI[,lAB Clul, Hctgct-lne
another team that stood an equal, or possibly
better, chance of winning the whole thing.
That was a factory-backed Ford Explorer

with Billy Edwards doing the driving, andAlcan veteran Greg Lester navigating. Alongfor the ride was Jim Shahin, a writer for
American Airlines magazine. Billy is adriving instuctor for Track Time Driving
Schools and always a front running competitor at events like One Lap of America.
(Those who attended the 1992 National Saab
Owners Convention in Columbus, Ohio, may
remember Billy as the guy who conducted
the driving school.)

GBAEE O}IJ GLA\ZE
Ahh, the lure of the Alcan.
In my previous ePisode on the Alcan
5000 Rally (NINES #208, Nov 9l) I closed
by saying I was making plans for the 1992
Winter event. I wasn't able to participate due
to commitments to run another couple oflong-distance rallies in '92, the Downeast
Rally and One Lap of America. Regular callsfrom Satch Carlson kept my interest up to run
the Alcan Rally one more time.
Jerry Hines may be the person who does
the legwork to lay out the course and set up
the hotels for all the competitors, but Carlson
is the unofficial publicity person, Satch's
influence accounts for about halfthe people
involved in running the Alcan. This year,
Satch signed on to navigate for rookie driver
Steve Norman, owner of BMW Seattle, in a
BMW 325ix, the all-wheel drive model.
Satch's brother, Dennis Gunn, was the third
team member for the BMW.
Satch has two cars that are prepared forrunning the Alcan; a black I 987 Saab 900
SPG - the same car that Satch, Russ Huntoon
and I drove to second place in 1991 - and awhite Mazda 323GTX. If at all possible, heteam of Jim and Christy Breazeale and Alcan
veteran navigator Adrian Crane.
Sponsor for the Alcan this Year was
Isuzu, who provided a Rodeo as a sweep
vehicle, a couple more Rodeos for filmmakerJohn Corser, and a Rodeo entered for race car
drivers Paul Dallenbach and Johnny Unser.

With Carlson's help, Isuzu hired ace
navigator Tom Grimshaw for the Rodeo
team.

While the Dallenbach, Unser, Grimshaw
Rodeo was certainly a favorite, there was-trents these two cars out so that others who
don't have the time, money or desire to
dedicate their own vehicle to Alcan prep can\still participate. Both cars made the trip thisyear, the Mazda crewed by the father-son
team of R. Dale Kraushaar and Russ
Krauschaar with Jules Moritz as third driver,and the Saab covered by the husband-wife

14\

The early plan for Saab Club involvement was to get Saab's P.R. department to
put up a new 900 (or better yet. several new900s) to demonstrate the capabilities of
Saab's Traction Control and anti-lock brakes
under poor weather conditions. Russ
Huntoon put together a proposal for he andme, with Reno Saab dealer and former Pro
Stock drag racer Brad Yuill as third teammember. to pilot the Saab.
There was tradition to be uPheld, we
reasoned in our proposal. When the first
Saabs rolled off the assembly line in late1949, a couple were immediately prepped to
run the 1950 Monte Carlo Rally and bothfinished that famous event. When Saab
Motors was established in the U.S. market in
1956, a three car team was entered in the
Great American Mountain Rallye, with the
Saab 93 driven by Bob Wehman and Louis

Braun winning the rally overall. Saab took
the GAMR team trophy as well with factory
test driver Rolf Mellde and Morrow Mishkinfinishing 6th. and a third Saab driven by thehusband and wife team ofJerry and DorisJankowitz in 17th despite the handicap of abroken speedometer cable.
The Saab rally tradition should becontinued! A new Saab model should
participate in a winter rally, and notjust any
winter rally, but The Alcan! 4,000 miles
through the Canadian wilderness and theArctic! But the Saab PR department said all
the cars they use for such promotion were in
the hands ofjournalists for test drives andthey coutdn't free one up for the length oftime required to outfit it and run the ralty. Of
course if we wanted a car for a golf or tennis
tournament, the marketing department could
provide one. But an event where humans
would actually be driving a Saab? Sorry, that
isn't how cars are marketed in the '90s.
Rallymaster Hines called a couple ofweeks later with a carrot. A friend of his,Jerry Lietch, had a 1986 9000 Turbo that was
outfitted to run the Alcan, but Lietch couldn't

.to- 22il

"We're off on the Road to lnuvik..." The Saab feams pose at the Arctic
Circle crossing. Wnd chiil was about -g0"F.
L to R: Blackbird 900 - Adian Crane, Chnsty and Jim Breazeale; Pigs on lce g0001
Brad yuitt, Russ Huntoon & Tim Wnker.
participate because of other commitments.
Would we be interested in renting the 9000?
A deal was struck, the folks at Saab kicked insome sponsorship money (l take back any
disparaging remarks made above), and theteam made plane reservations for Seattle.
I arrived a couple of days early to dosome last minute work on the 9000 and pickup supplies. And as long as I was in Seattle,
I wanted to get together with members of theNorthwest Saab Owners group to schmooze
and share Saab tales between rallyists andother Saab lolks. My prelerence was to meelat one ofthe popular Seattle brewpubs or
micro breweries, Red Hook if it could bearranged. Imagine my surprise to find outthat Jim Breazeale, who would be driving theBlackbird 900. is a brewer at Red Hook.
Arrangements were easy, and we got the
cook's tour ofthe brewery to boot. Several
Northwest Saabers showed for some fine beerand good conversation.
The Alcan has a reputation of being
loosely organized. That is, due to rubber
mileages and other gray areas, the rally has
never achieved the status it probably
dcserves. Several nationally ranked rallyists "have run the Alcan and vowed not to returnrvhen they have encountered these problems
llrst-hand. As a result, anyone has a chance
to be competitive, including our 9000.
It rvas raining in Seattle as we left theWest Coast Camlin hotel on the morning of
F.ebruary 25. The foul weather turned tosnow as we moved into the lor.ver reaches of
the Cascade mountains in preparation for the
first of many time-speed-distance ('ISD) rally
sections that make up the bulk ofthe scoringon the Alcan. By the time wc reached thestart ofthe TSD section there were several

inches of heavy, wet snow covering every-

thing, especially the road. Our speed for the
first several miles was 48 mph, perfectlylegal andjust a bit brisk when road conditions were dry. With the snow, the drivers
had their hands full trying to keep up.
We were car 7, which meant we started
six minutes after car l. Russ was to drive,
while I would be flipping the switches on the
Timewise rally computer. Car 6 was a Chevy
Blazer, unfortunately not well equipped forthe rigors of the Alcan. We caught andpassed the Blazer in the first mile. Russ wasable to stay pretty close to on-time until asteep uphill section later in the rally section.
The given speed was only 35, but uphill in alront-uheel drive car on snow is not aterribly good combination. We found out
later that we had actually scored prctty wellon the section, but one checkpoint wasremoved from the scoring, and everyone wasallowed to drop their worst first day score,
which immediately dropped us from third tosixth place.
Since all of the competing vehicles andworker vehicles were equipped with businessband and citizens band radios. we were able
to stay in contact over many miles, particularly on the business band. As with CB, allof the teams were best known by their radio
handles. The black 900 was, ofcourse. theBlackbird; the Mazda was again White Trash;
Dallenbach, Unser and Grimshaw in the
Rodeo were the Jerky Boys; the red BMW

The desolation of the Dempster Highway. white and gray are the true colors.

15

illllEs, Ihe saalt clul, tctg.t-Ine
I

score of all the teams on the rally section, aBlackbird at the Quesne/ So/o. The roof rack caries extra tail and brake lights
with Satch, Steve Norman and Satch's

and was able to make repairs in a matter ofbrother Dennis Gunn was Red Dog. We
were the Pigs On Ice, so named by a friend of
Russ's who went so far as to print businesscards for the team. The radio not only kept
us in communication in case of emergency,
but was also a source of amusement as we
spent many hours on trivia games and jokes.
After getting out of poor weather
conditions ofthe higher reaches, we soon
came to the border crossing into Canada at
Sumas. Customs officers requested about
every other car to pull over and IDs werechecked to make sure there were no

minutes. Unfortunately these delays put us
well behind the rest of the pack. We were I 5
minutes late to the start of the next rally
section near Williams Lake and were forced
to take the maximum penalty of 200 points.

undesireables amongst the rally crowd. Must
not have been as they sent us all on our way
after a short delay. A greater delay presented
itself less than a mile down the road, where
the highway was closed due to blowing snowthat had caused a multi-car accident. Most of
the rally teams retired to the local
McDonald's to evaluate the alternatives.
After losing about an hour in total, we
decided to try the frontage road, which was
not blockaded against traffic. Sure enough,we were able to skirt the closed highway andget back on the prescribed rally course. But
we were now faced with an average speed of
58 mph to reach the next TSD section on
time. Since most traffic travels above thespeed limit anyway, we figured it could bedone if we kept our gas stop time to aminimum. Fate had other plans.
Both Brad and Russ were stopped by the
RCMP for speeding, then the rubber intake
boot blew off the turbo, rendering the car

virtually immobile. Fortunately Brad
recognized the turbo problem as it occured

16

We arrived at the overnight stop in
Quesnel just in time to watch the women's
figure skating at the Winter Olympics and see
Tonya Harding fall on her butt, too.
Saturday morning began with the first
Solo II section at Goldpan Speedway. The
Solo, or autocross, is a closed course slalom
where the fastest time wins. Fortunately thetwo Saabs, the only two-wheel drive cars
competing, would be in their own class andnot scored against the four-wheel drives. The
course was on a 3/8ths mile oval track that
had been plowed one lane wide, thenpartially blown over with snow during thenight. That meant that for part ofthe course
cars would be wading through deep snow
while other parts would be flat out. With
three solos in the scoring, each driver would
get to race the car twice. We flipped a cointo see who would drive the 9000 in the firstsolo; Russ was odd man, so Brad and I got
first shot. I ran in the first session, trying tostay smooth. I was quicker than Diamond
Jim in the Btackbird, but the times of thesecond drivers would decide the outcome.
Brad was about a half second faster than meon his run, but Adrian whipped out a very
quick lap in the 900 to set the pace for the

2WD class.
Immediately after the solo there wasanother TSD. We proved that we had the
stuff to be competitive by getting the lowest

small consolation for the previous day's
troubles.
Next stop on the route was Dawson
Creek, B.C., where we met the mayor at thevisitors center near Mile 0 of the Alaska
Highway. Another hour up the road andanother TSD section near Fort St. John, thisone with a double switchback hillclimb.
Again, the Pigs On Ice leam scored rvell. butwhen a poorly located checkpoint wasremoved from the total, we lost one of ourbest scores ofthe section, a 2 where otherteams had collected 4s and more.
Our overnight stop was in Forl Nelson,
where the bar was closed before midnight.
On a Saturday! There were no competitive
sections on Sunday, just the 600 mile transit
to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. While
refueling in Watson [,ake (across the roadlrom the famous Signpost Forest). we heard
via the radio that one ofthe sweep vehicles. a
seriously prepared Ford Bronco. had flipped
over. Damage was minimal. but one of thepassengers was in great pain and wastransported to the nearest hospital. The
injury turned out to be only a sprain. but theBronco headed back to Seattle, accompanied
by another sweep vehicle.
Somewhere on this stretch. the Blackbird began to exhibit symptoms of poor
running, occasionally dropping to threecylinders. A roadside investigation revealed
a cracked porcelain on one oftheir expensive
Split Fire spark plugs. A set of NGKs was
installed and the problem r.vas cured.
Heated underground parking wasavailable at the hotel in Whitehorse, so wewere able to dry out the cars.
Monday began with trvo competitive
sections within the city limits of Whitehorse.
a hillclimb rally and a Solo II on the Yukon
River. Brad took over the driving chores forthe rally. In trying to make up time, hebumped the speed up to near 40 mph on a 30
mph section, only to lose all confidence after
a crest when the road suddenly made adownhill decreasing radius tum. We weregoing a little too fast and he went lbr thebrakes. The 9000 skidded toward thesnowbank on the outside ofthe curvc andstuck fast. No damage, but another max
penalty for the section.
The autocross section went better, as
yours truly was able to put together a smoothenough run to top the 2WD class. Satchsurprised everyone, including himself, bysetting fastest time overall in the BMW.
Three and a half days into the Alcan.
and most ol'the competitivc scctions were.to- 22il
already run. There were only the rally near

Wasilla. Alaska. and the Big Lake Solo left.
and horh sould he on rhc final day.
On to Da*'son via the yukon Highway,
and a night-o-rest at the Downtown Hotel.

Along the way the teams were kept entertained by a f'lood of trivia questions lrom
Satch. Some ofus even knew the correct
answers. It was during this stretch that theradio handles were modified. The Red Dog
became the Pucc Poodle, the Magenta
Malmute, the Crimson Cockcr, the Russet
Rctriever. and the Blood Hound. pigs On Ice
became Polar Porkers and Glazed tIam.
Part ofthe reason for the trivia questions
was to get rallyists primed lbr another formof competition, the trivia contest broadcast
on the National Trivia Network. NTN
broadcasts l5 multiple-choice questions per
game; scoring is based on how quickly you
answer each question. The primary competi_tion is among the local patrons, but once thelocal scores are tallied, the network posts the
rankings of everyone who participated.
Alcaners (Alcanists?) raised the scores of the
Downtown Hotel for that evening, andseveral finished in the top rankings. yourhumble editor bested the bar and ended upl3th overall on one game. Tom Grimshaw
wrapped up the evening by setting the best

The Alaska Rally Team lines up for a portrait on
the MacKenzie River at tnuvik.
L to R: Pigs on rce 9000, Btackbird 900, white Trash
Mazda, n;i ooi' suw
score for the bar, and for the entire network!
snowdrift while trying to avoid the remains
The drive to Inuvik on the Dempsterof the Blackbird's front spoiler. Billy told
Highway was a bit controversial. It wasme later that it was his first ever auto
nearly 600 miles one way, but there were no
accident. Team navigator Greg Lester relatedcompetition sections. The general feelingthat the rest of the drive to Inuvik was pretty
was for the teams to drive as far as the Arctic
silent, but as they neared their destination,
Circle about 20 miles north of Eagle plains
Jim Shahin offered, "speaking as a person,
just to say we'd been there, then head backtothis has been a terrible day. Speaking as a
Dawson for another night of trivia. The
weather tried its best to discourage us; as we
made the turn north onto the Dempster

Highway, the temperature was about l0
degrees Farenheit, but within the hour it was-10F. The temperature continued to drop to
an indicated -29F on the 9000,s dashboard
readout (the BMW's on board thermometerI

quit at -22F), accompanied by high winds
which created snow drifts across the road that
could catch a car and toss it offthe road...
and several did. The Subaru 4WD Wagon of
Justin and Colin Brost and Susi Fouse, theWhite Trash Mazda, and one of the film crew
Rodeos all went off the road with minor
damage, but most were able to continue toInuvik. The F'ord Explorer rolled overenroute to Eagle Plains when Billy hit a

17

IIIIIES, Ihe SAAB Clrrl, t.tgrt-lrle
Far Left: The winning lsuzu Rodeo.
Left: The winning divers, Paul
Dallenbach and Johnny Unser.

writer, it could hardty have been better."
The Dempster Highway is particularly
desolate. When we arrived at Eagle Plains,
the road was closed due to the drifting snow,
but plorvs were on duty and it was clearedrvithin a few hours. The next habitation of
any size rvas Fort McPherson, then it wasanother 150 miles to Inuvik.
lnuvik, with a population of 3,400, has
thc distinction ofbcing the largest Canadianciry- north of the Arctic Circle. It is the endof the Dempster Highway, at least insummer. During the winter months, theMacKenzie River is plowed so vehicles canmake it another I l0 miles to Tuktoyuktuk.
While preparing to leave Inuvik, we
discovered that the ice road also extends tothe south on the MacKenzie River, though it
hadn't been plowed recently and there were acouple inches ofnew snow covering the ice.
The four Alaska Rally Team crews decided
to see where it went. Twenty miles ofdriving at unregulated speed down a winding
river later. it came to a dead end at a resort on
the riverbank. The only thing to do was todrive the twenty miles back up the river.
Damn. the bad luck! We switched drivers sothat more ofus could have fun. Huntoon got
behind the wheel of the BMW and promptly
took off. I followed in the Polar Pork Chop,
tossing it into the curves as best I could whatwith the snow and the overly neutral
tendancies ofthe 9000. Since we had lots oftime to look at maps on the way to our next
overnight stop, we came up with the "possibility that if that road were plowed all
the way to where the Dempster crosses the
Arctic Red River, we could have a sixty milestage on the frozen river!
The drive from Inuvik to Glennallen,
Alaska, was the only overnight driving forthis year's event. Nature cooperated with abriltiant display of Aurora Borealis. Most
teams pulled off the road several times towitness the grand spectacle as the lights
changed from green to red in their danceacross the Yukon skies.

With virtuatly no other traffic on the

18road and ultra bright driving lights to show
the way. those team members who were in
charge ofthe steering wheel tended to ignore
the posted speed limit in favor of pushing alittle harder to make it to Glenallen earlier.
As we neared the Alaska border, Russ
misjudged a corner and the 9000 slid up andover the snowbank alongside the road,coming to rest at about a 45 degree angle,
stopped from going completely over by acouple feet of soft snow on the opposite sideof the bank. I was pretty well wedged in theback seat at the time and decided to remain
there since I figured it would take more thanhuman effort to extricate the car. Several
competitors worked at digging the Saab out,
but even a towing attempt by one of thelsuzu Rodeos failed to budge the car. After acouple ofhours. a very large tow truck
arrived and with minimal effort the 9000 was
plopped back on the road. Breakfast in Tok
Junction, a few hours up the road, was a bit
grumpy, but we got over it later.
It was in Glennallen where we had our"Northern Exposure" experience. The
fictional town of Cicely on the TV show isjust that, nothing but a place dreamed up by abunch of Hollywood writers. But while
walking out to the car in the middle of theafternoon, I encountered a moose sauntering
through the parking lot. As if that weren't
enough, at the local bar/restaurant later in theevening the strains of Edith Piaf singing "La
Vie En Rose" came from the loudspeakers of
the jukebox. I had to pinch myself to makesure this wasn't some weird dream.
Two more competitive events were heldon the final day. And standings changed due
to a couple of minor mishaps. Two of the top
running teams slid off the road early in therally section and were forced to takemaximum points. It began when the White
Trash Mazda misjudged a sharp corner andskidded offon the outside ofthe turn. A few
minutes later, the driver of the Blackbird 900
didn't see the Mazda in time and decided theoptions were straight into the snowbank or
hit the Mazda. Snowbank it was. The photos

show both ofthe cars belonging to Satchburied in snow side-by-side on the outside ofa curve. As Satch put it, "lt's nice to see allof my assets in one bank." Billy Edwards
missed a poorly marked turn in the E,xplorer
and picked up a big score at one checkpoint,
while our scores got continually larger over
the rally because my teammates had kindly
raised the tire pressures, thereby throwing off
our correction factor by a couple of percentage points. Still, we did better than mostteams.

The final competitive event was another
Soto, this time on Big Lake, using part of acourse maintained by the sports car club in
Anchorage. Not much changed on this event
since there were very few points that could
be added to scores. Russ Huntoon did get achance to drive the AWD BMW 325 in a
timed run to celebrate his 50th birthday. It
was the first time in all the years he's known
Satch that he was able to compete against his
old buddy head-to-head in equal conditions.
You'll have to ask them who won.
We tallied up final scores on the way toAnchorage and, to no one's surprise, thelactory lsuzu team was lhe 'urinner.
The awards banquet was filled withfrivolity and speeches and thanks to all for awonderful time. Unfortunately we were too
tired to stay up late and finish the keg ofRed
Hook ESB arranged by Jim Breazeale and
Ron Clyborne.
The Alcan Rally is run as a summer
event in odd years and a winter event in evenyears, so the next Alcan will be in September, 1995. In the meantime, however, Satch
has decided to put on his own winter rallysith a similar format, to be called, "The Rallyof the Lost Patrol." We had a chance to leam
more about the Lost Patrol, a legend of theKlondike, when we were in Eagle Plains
waiting for the road to be cleared. This rally
will be similar to the Alcan in the roads andlocations it uses, but will use a little different
scoring system in an attempt to clear up
scoring problems with the Alcan.
The turbo version ofthe new 900 isavailable now. Equipped with a set of Nokia
snow tires and driving lights, it would make agreat ride for the Alcan. How about it?
Tim Winker
Drawings by Andrey Feldshteyn.
Photos by Satch Carlson, Russ Huntoon, Brad
Yuill, Christy Breazeale and Tim Winker.