You race fans might get a kick out of this.

Last summer I took our Barth to Connecticut for a weekend at Safford Springs Raceway for an event a friend of mine was doing called the 24 hours of LeMons (the LeMon cars had to cost less than $500 minus the safety equipment and make it through a two day endurance race). It was a very hot weekend and the Barth soon became the staging area for the drivers on our team with its AC on full blast. We all had a great time and friendships were formed as we competed through the weekend.

Yesterday, I got an email from one of the guys on the team asking if I would like to co-drive with him in the 2011 One Lap of America. For those not familiar, this is the current name of what began as the Cannonball Run (Brock Yates).

Essentially, we will hit 11 race venues (including Daytona, Barber Motorsports, Summit Point Raceway) over 8 days covering 3500 miles. The car that begins the event must race in each venue then transit the public highways to the next venue, no trailering allowed. Here is a link to the event page: http://www.onelapofamerica.com...hedule.do?eventId=30
We will be running in Vintage Foreign class with this car which is owned by the fellow who invited me:

If anyone wants to follow along once the race begins, I'll post the tracking page for the event results. It all starts April 30th at the Tire Rack facilities in South Bend, Indiana.

Wish me luck!

Sounds like a BLAST!!!! Have fun and good luck!!!

We will be cheering from the sidelines. What an honor for you to be a part of this, good luck.

Very Nice!!! Please keep us updated Corey.

I went to the 24 hrs./LeMons at West Palm bch.FL.
new years eve./day.
What an event.
I have a vintage comp. lic. if you need help w/the 911.
Jan

Thanks for the well wishing and offers to help. If we are at your neighborhood track (see previous link) stop by and say hi. How much time I'll be at each track is dependent on the draw, once we complete our section we are off to transit to the next venue, grab some sleep, a bite on the road. Sorta like RVing without the comfort, safety, leisure......not much like RVing at all, except the fun part.

There was a whole fleet of black Barths. They were purchased by a black agency of the Feddle Gummint for crew transport to and from the SR71 Blackbird at Area 51 way back when it was a big secret project. They were all painted black to confuse spies with satellites and looky-loos with binoculars and cameras. The idea of painting them black was not to make them black, nor was it to make them all look alike. It wasn't even because they had lots of black paint. It was to eliminate their radar signature as they drove to and fro in the dark. They used the same special high quality flat black paint the Blackbird used, so they were practically invisible at night, and difficult to spot on the blacktop roads of Area 51. If you have ever noticed that there are no stripes down the middle of any of the roads there, it is so the Stealth Barths would be harder to detect on the blacktop.

These are the most prized of all Barths, as they also had a Banks dual-turbo 468 engine installed, with a Gear Vendors overdrive. Those naughty boys who like to go fast in their Barths love these because they are invisible to police radar, IR, Lascar, Vascar and even melt into the blacktop as seen from the eye in the sky.

Several of them have placed very high in the annual Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash of yore. One was first used as a chase car/support vehicle for the Skoda team, but it turned out that it was faster and more reliable than the Skoda entry, so the team finished in the Barth. By sheer coincidence, the driver of that Barth was Bart Markel, a motorcycle racer, whose nickname was Black Bart. He was known for riding faster on bikes others couldn't handle. Well, word got around, and the next year there were several other RVs wanting a piece of the action. The only one that came close was a Revcon with a Joe Mondello Olds engine. The Revcon was very fast due to its lightness and low profile, as well as the belly pan. Of course, Mondello's engine, taken from his Parker Enduro win, helped a lot, too.

But, I digress. The RV class was neck and neck until the Olds spun a rod bearing, a weakness of that marque, even with Joe's magic done to the rods and upper gallery restrictors, and the Barths swept the field. Sadly, a number of other RVs failed or crashed, and, because of the danger of bad publicity, RVs were banned, and have never been invited back.

One of the Factory Barth drivers told me that it was a good thing, as the Black Barths were getting too fast for their own good, far beyond the potato chip truck chassis' capabilities. Some of the mods they did were picked up by IPD, SuperSteer and Hellwig, and can be purchased today.

Buying a Black Barth would be owning a piece of history. This is perhaps the last one, as most of the other ones fell victim of their own speed and got into the notorious P30 death wobble, a deadly combination of a yaw, pitch and a Dutch Roll. Barth knew of this, and also knew there was no escape, as each oscillation fed the previous until it pitched itself into the air to land in a 45 degree roll. So they fitted a Martin-Baker (no relation to the eponymous Erwin Baker of the Cannonball Run) ejection seat for both driver and navigator. If anyone goes to look at this, you can tell if it is the real deal by looking for evidence of a hatch over each seat. And if the H is missing off the end of the Barth logo, it will be the Crown Jewel of Barth's racing history......The Barth driven by Black Bart himself.

I have a copy of the top secret schematics for one of the earlier era "Black Barth's" that I ferreted out of the Barth Factory.



Black Barth - hover over image after clicking this link

Here is the link to this fine specimen...

BTW: If you click on the special EARTH logo - it takes you to a magical place.

quote:

There was a whole fleet of black Barths

There was one parked next to the pile of blacktop patching material in Lower Saucon Township, Northampton County in Pennsylvania a few years back. Nobody knew it was there until one day when it was gone.
That was around the time my Barth was being parted out.

quote:

Originally posted by Dick Dubbs:
Nobody knew it was there until one day when it was gone.

Sounds like the stealth coating was still doing its job.

There is the possibility that it is still there, but just can't be detected. The stealth coating is still being tested, this time for the secret gummint black helicopters. Being bituminous in nature, it derives its energy from other tar-like substances, particularly blacktop. You will recall I mentioned earlier that the blacktop roads around Area 51 did not have center lines. That was to prevent the "Black Force" in the blacktop from polarizing and interfering with the navigation instruments on the Black Barths. The Black Force is a very powerful thing, not fully understood by anyone, really. It is known that bituminous material generates Black Force as it concentrates. Something like magnetic domains gaining strength, but not magnetic. As blacktop rubble sits, the particles settle, and the force concentrates. This probably was the reason the Barth either disappeared or was absorbed into the pile.

This raises another possibility for the disappearance of that particular Black Barth. Many scientists in government still remember The Philadelphia Experiment, and how things went so terribly wrong, that they are trying to find all the Black Barths and round them up and contain them to prevent any incidents that might endanger their secret projects. Word is that Area 51 has most of them, kept some distance from each other and far from any bituminous material concentration.

quote:

The Black Force is a very powerful thing, not fully understood by anyone, really. It is known that bituminous material generates Black Force as it concentrates

I am wondering if there is some distant relationship to the light suckers.

Footnote: The original name was "The Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Mad Trophy Dash"

Sadly, the Sea-to-Sea, no holes barred, race had to be heavily modified. In those days you could race anything that had wheels, bikes, buses, Barths, ambulances. Today, the One Lap of America only races on the tracks and the rest of the time you are transiting between tracks. This means there are only classes for cars and trucks. Of course, the faster you get to the new track, the more time to relax, prepare, sleep so there is an incentive to get there quickly.

quote:

The Black Force is a very powerful thing, not fully understood by anyone, really.

Bill,

We need you to get some of this paint for the 911. Invisibility will greatly increase our ability to speed to the next venue. Naturally, we will need to slow down when we get to the south where they use more cement, but up north with blacktop we will be golden!!

I know a guy who knows where there is some paint, but he said if he told me he'd have to kill me.

911, huh? Nifty. I get to drive an early one whenever my friend goes back to Toronto. I don't fit in it very well, but it is a neat car. Sudden oversteer, though. Does yours have the 46 IDA 3 carbs? I drove myself crazy with a coupla those on a Corvair. Finally acquired five more Unisyns and got it right.