Steve,

Can't tell for sure from the photos since there is NOT a close up of the
odometers in the group which I found, but I would make the comment that since
the car has a PA dealer on it that Lafayette was a popular consumer-oriented
electronics and electrical shop located throughout the northeastern USA back in
the 1960's through sometime around 1973 or so when they went out of
business. I know that they sold a line of 12 volt electromechanical counters
(some
with reverse, manual reset, and paused switches on them).

I myself used many of their counters for a homemade odometer on my rally MGB
during the day. In fact I still have a couple of them around in my junk
bins. None the less, I think that your characterization of the setup as a
"Lafayette Rally Instrument(s)" is likely not real. If you post a better close
up
of the electromechanical counter I bet I might recognize it. The
traditional setup was "home made" by the various car owners and usually
consisted of a
speedometer shop fabricated "T" fitting which would go behind the stock
speedometer.

There would then be a mechanical speedometer cable which would run to an
accessible location. At that location there would be either a "home made" gear
train (to get the number of revolutions per mile down to something like 100
revolutions per mile).

The better setups used a plastic gearbox with interchangeable gears (4 of
them). Using a simple calculation the navigator could "correct" the odometer
calibration factor to "official rally miles" through consultation of the table
after running the odo-check. The table would give the "new" combination of
the 4 little gears that would result in 100 revolutions of the mechanical
cable per true rallymaster mile.

ON THE OUTPUT of the gearbox (either the homemade one, or the 4-gear
commercial box), there would be a cam and a microswitch wired in series with the
battery and the counters. For each revolution of the cable, the microswitch
would click out one pulse that corresponded to 0.01 miles (or kilometers). And
that was that. Very simple and most people who were serious about the sport
made one (or had an engineer buddy make one for them).

I have several of the little gearboxes which I could post a photo of should
anyone be interested. They were a specialty item but were sold by several
rally shops, Competition Limited (owned by the recently deceased Gene Henderson)
sold them. In the end, this setup was a cheap alternative to the
commercial Halda and Gemini units which did the same thing using metal gears.
But
both of the latter were strictly mechanical whereas the setups like yours was
electromechanical in nature.

Some variations included a front wheel hub driven mechanical cable that
would supposedly "eliminate" mileage errors due to driven wheel spinning, but
most rallies of that timeframe were not "zero hero" events where mileage
measurements and calculations to the 0.001 minute determined the winners and
losers.
Of course, the Halda SpeedPilot crowd were not up to that accuracy or
resolution anyway, and believe me there was many a fast event won by
SpeedPilot-based crews on both sides of the Atlantic.

If you post the photo I will see if the font on the name looks like the
Lafayette Electronics logo format.

Regards,
Walt Kammer



In a message dated 10/21/2008 9:34:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
milano164@... writes:




I recently acquired a Sunbeam with a set of Lafayette rally instruments in
the location of the cubby box.
It is a really nice setup with two pairs.

I am trying to find out more information on these odometers. I am guessing
they are early "impulse" versions since there is a cord with an RCA jack that
looks like it might have plugged in near the speedo.
Does anyone remember this company? Not sure if they will ever work again but
they are neat.

(I will have to talk to the Electrical engineeers at work.... surely there
would be a way to generate a signal to use these odometers again...)

I added a couple of photos to the group. It really is a nice original car.

Steve

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