Barbie finishes the 24 Hours of LeMons!

On hour 1 we were over heating

On hour 2 we were running strong, clawing from 110th place

On hour 11 we were chewing up the competition. There was no stopping us as we shot up to 45th place.

On hour 13 (go figure) we were leading a huge trail of steam with the engine boiling over. It looked like our day was done.

On hour 17 two of us were trying a last-ditch attempt to get back on track while the rest of the team slept.

On hour 20 Alex pulled a needle in a hay sack and found us a water pump 30 minutes away.

On hour 23 we went back out on the track.

On hour 23 and 5 minutes we were back in the paddock

On hour 23 and 55 minutes we were back on the track, passing people like they were standing still.

At the 24 hour mark we flew under the checkered flag with what was left of the field, and officially ended Barbie's first 24 hour lemon experience.

Update: We finished 81st of 136 challengers. Sorry for the oversight in not mentioning it earlier :)

Thank you all for your attention these past couple of days. When we've had a moment to recover, we'll be updating this page with some photo albums and such.

Happy Motoring!

Redemption! (We hope)

It seems that by some miraculous coincidence, an Autozone 30 minutes away has the actual water pump we need! We're speeding down the road now to get it while the rest of the team disassembles the motor again.

After the initial failure, most of the team had pretty much given up for the night, waiting until morning to find out if we could find a new water pump. But Brent, ever the optimist said "Hey, the water pump's bearing is trashed, but it still spins! Let's just put it on, bleed it really well and hope for the best. We've got nothing better to do aside from sleep." So Brent woke me (Rob) up and sold his idea, and the two of us put it all back together with new belts. That's when we found the real problem.

Ok, non-car people you might want to skip to the last paragraph

It turns out that a bolt had backed out of the alternator and that had taken the tension off of the belt driving the water pump, hence the overheating. The fact that the water pump bearing was actually trashed was either exacerbated by the loose alternator or was just made apparent by it. Excited that we had solved the problem, we bolted everything back up and fired the motor.

As the motor spun to life, we could hear the shredded water pump bearing making one heck of a racket, but it was spinning. Brent raise the alarm though when he saw little "droplets of coolant" flying out of the water pump. Closer inspection showed that the "droplets" were actually little shredded chunks of metal flying out of the housing . The water pump was well and truly trashed.

The bolt backing out on the alternator bracket may have actually saved us a much bigger blow-up. Had the water pump seized, it might have broken the old belt we had on there and that could have torn up the rest of the belts, destroyed the cooling fan and possibly punched out the radiator.

But luckily, none of that matters, as we now have the new part in the truck, and we're heading back to take the checkered flag with what is left of the original field of 136 cars!

Barbie is sick :(

I go to sleep for one little hour, and when I poke my head out of the tent, here comes barbie smoking up a storm.

It seems our cooling system problems have returned with a vengence. No longer just a little air in the system, we now have a completely destroyed water pump, and sadly, we have no spare. We're looking into our options now, but the prognosis isn't great for finding a rare 1983 BMW waterpump in the middle of North East Ohio.

Wish us luck folks!

45th and STILL CLIMBING

Sorry for the lack of updates folks, the primary web-updater guy (Aka me, aka Rob) had to have his stint on the track and as fuel guy.

Things that have happened since last update:

1. Alex took over and put in some solid, fast laps.
2. Night fell at Nelson Ledges
3. Robert took over and managed to keep the team's pace in the dark.
4. Several wrecks occurred which brought out a full course yellow for 20 minutes.

(During the full course yellow it's nothing but mind-numbing follow-the-leader. After the rush of racing it's quite the energy crash to be stuck at that for so long. Rob was just about to come in for a driver change when it finally went green)

5. On the next full course yellow Rob pitted in and Brent took over driving.
6. A car rolled over on the back carousel (aka "The Dong"), along with several other wrecks/breakdowns.
7. The ensuing full-course yellow lasted almost all of Brent's two hour stint. (extended from the usual 1 hour due to the yellows)
8. Tom took the reigns @ 11:45pm local time.

The People's Curse award is about to begin, so I've gotta grab a camera. Well be back soon with pictures!

Justin takes the helm!

Ryan has come in after a great first stint, and Justin has taken over at the wheel. His last radio call was "Hey, this is kinda fun!". Needless the say the car is doing pretty well!

The only hangup at the moment is that 2nd gear is grinding, so we're having to stick to 3rd the whole way, which is hurting us a little on the front straight, but on the back straight, Barbi is hitting 110 miles per hour! A bit of a scary concept in a $500 car!

Here are a few more shots to keep you busy:

136 cars makes one hell of a race field!






Here is the guy who hit us!


Barbie runs down the track


Jet power?


CHICKEN!


Lada vs Volvo... Russia vs. Sweeden... I wonder who Finland is in this equation.

All is well as Ryan takes the helm!

With our cooling issues behind us (fingers crossed) we continue to make up ground lost due to being in the pits. At first report, we were 110st out of 120, and one hour later we were up to 90th! 20 positions an hour, 24 hours, that should be more than enough to take the lead!

Ryan has taken over driving duties from Tom and seems to be going strong, whith is a great credit to him as he has never been on a racetrack before! Now he's out there with 119 other cars and is doing fine! GO RYAN!

Barbie fights it out with the rest:


Stay tuned for more race action!

Barbie had a little moment, is back with a vengence!

The action continues! Brent had to bring Barbie into the garage a second time because she was still overheating badly. Super-heated as she came in, we had to work carefully. When we finally got everything open, we tried some novel air-bleeding solutions while Tom got belted and plugged into position for his drive. Once Tom was ready, the wrenching team tightened up the last few bolts and we all crossed our fingers as we sent him out. After a lap or two, the radio call we all wanted to hear came in: "She's doing fine! Temperature gauge looks good!"

Since then it's been smooth sailing as Tom ticks over lap after lap. We had an accidental black-flag, so we had to come through the pits briefly, but beyond that it's been uneventful. Even got a radio call from Tom saying "Having fun out here!" This is what it's all about!

Radio communications are working pretty well. There are some portions of the track where the driver is out of contact, but other than that we seem to be in good shape. Some of the team is in town getting a larger antenna for our transmitter, so we hope to have that cleared up.

The best part of the morning though had to be team Barbie getting into their costumes (including Kat, our chief Barbie model) and wandering down to the driver's meeting with Aqua's "Barbie Girl" blaring. We got TONS of attention and everyone wanted to take pictures. SO COOL. Watch http://www.jalopnik.com for coverage! We're famous!



Tom is at 3/4 of a tank, and the wind is getting ridiculous out here. Have to reinforce the camp before it blows away! Will keep you posted as we can!

Barbie is back in it!

Cooling mystery simplified by removing tstat. 40 minutes in the pits and barbie is back in the race! Stay tuned!

barbie in pits

Overheating... Will advise

Green flag!!!!!

The barbie car is out and running!!!!

Barbie loses her cherry!

The Barbie car's track cherry has officially been popped! Clownshoe Motorsports drivers Brent Meyer and Robert Phelan took the car around for a shake-down run during the night practice session. With only one run around the block since its completion, this was definitely sink or swim time!

There were quite a few cars on the wet track, with bright shining lights from every direction making for limited visibility. There was lots of traffic going different ways as people learned the track and got used to racing at night, but the Barbie car did just fine! The first couple of laps had us concerned with a rubber-burning smell, but upon return to the paddock spot, no problems were found and back out she went!

It started raining again as Brent went out for the second stint, and our plan to use only Rain-X and no wipers showed its flaw. In night racing all the other cars' lights light up all the water droplets on the windshield, making it very difficult to see. We've reconfigured the windshield fasteners to accommodate the wiper blades, and we'll be putting the arms back on tomorrow morning.

Our radios are having a hard time keeping the team in communication with the driver, but we're hoping some extra antennas will fix that for tomorrow. All in all the car has pretty good power and seems to be handling OK in the few laps we ran. We're all pretty excited about the race start tomorrow at 12PM.

Keep watching this space for details from the moment the green flag drops!

Through judging and tech, no penalties and the rain stopped!

After a downright nasty morning with multiple trips into town for this and that, the team unloaded the Barbie car and wandered over to the tech and BS judging booth. The rain finally started giving us a break and the skies brightened as we snaked our way through the long line of crazy-themed cars. (There are apparently over 120 cars here!!!).

Tech was relatively uneventful, needing to fill a couple of rust holes before they would pass us, but nothing too serious. Next up came the nail-biter. The judges in their black robes looked over the car and bantered back and forth with our chief BS negotiator Tom "Major Lube" Templeman. In the end, Tom's negotiating skills (and our bribe of a nice bottle of Powers Whiskey) won the day, and team Barbie Must Win made it through with NO PENALTY LAPS!

Next up: rig up the radios, finalize some wiring, and have a big dinner/planning session to discuss our various strategy points. While we do all that, check out some pics below!

The car gets unloaded


Most of the team with the Barbie car


The rain got a little ridiculous



Some of the competition

There are a lot of cars here:


No doubt the coolest LeMons paddock area ever.


The cardboard car


The leopard-print volvo


You've seen RedBull racing... how about DedBull?


Afterburners?



Look for a race-day update tomorrow!

Base camp set up. Cold and rain continue...

Nothing like 40 degrees and steady rain to start your morning. Base-camp has been set up and car and crew are sheltering under tarps trying to warm up with the morning coffee. Tech inspection and BS penalty assignment coming up.

Barbie Must Win Base Camp


The car awaits a break in the rain:


Some of the crew hangs out around the the breakfast table.

A long trip and a late night arrival

After 12 hours on the road, team "Barbie Must Win" has pulled into Nelson Ledges Raceway at 11:30 local time. Tents are being setup and anything vulnerable to icky cold and wet is being packed away as we have rain in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow. Local temp is 43 degrees and a mist hangs over the hundred or so trailers, RVs and rigs covering the wet grass. It's rather amusing to see $250,000 rigs being brought in to transport "$500" cars.



Tomorrow morning we present the car to the organizers for the "Bullshit" session, where we do our best to prove that our car was built for less than $500. If they don't believe us, they will assign "Bullshit Lap" penalties that will decrease our final count. After bullshit detection and tech (to make sure we won't burst into fire on the first lap) we'll get the car prepped for practice runs and the pink Barbie car will be used in anger for the first time.

The road trip was relatively uneventful, except for the tarp that didn't want to stay down. It kept flapping in the wind like mad. It scuffed a little paint here and there took off some vinyl stickers, and sadly, beat up our poor Barbie decklid decoration so badly that by the first stop she was battered and tangled, and by the second stop, she was gone!. One can only imagine the reaction of the driver behind us as a Barbie doll came flying through the air at them.

Barbie at the start:


Barbie at the first stop:


Barbie at the second stop:



Look for another update tomorrow after the tech/bullshit sessions!

And we're off! (And rather soggy)

Under the pouring rain, the "Barbie Must Win" crew all converged on the garage and loaded the car onto Phil's trailer. All the tools and camping gear were loaded into Ryan's borrowed van and the rented U-haul trailer.

It's been a series of long nights for the team getting last minute things taken care of. The car is pretty close to it's final appearance in the attached picture. We'll see if it still looks this pretty after the race!

We still have a bit of work to do once we're at the track, but we're just about ready to take on the grueling 24 hour battle that lays ahead.

Just 607 more miles to Nelson's Ledges!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog coverage of the "Barbie Must Win" 24 Hours of LeMons attempt. Last minute items on the car like the lighting, exhaust, venting and wiring are frantically being completed before our Thursday departure for Nelsons Ledges Race track. Keep your browser pointed here for regular updates from the preparation and then live coverage of the race action!

Live coverage starts on Thursday, October 1st as we drive cross country from St. Louis to North East Ohio and continues through Sunday night.


[Image provided by Keith Lee - See more picture of the almost completed car]