Batmobile Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Batman Car Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

Next Ryan tackles cleaning the interior vinyl using Quik Interior Detailer to first clean all the different components and surfaces and then he'll apply Natural Shine to condition and protect the vinyl surfaces...






Before QID







After QID



Before Natural Shine



After Natural Shine

[ajb39oh]

Re: Batman Car Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

Looks like a fun time!

Just curious- how does one get a makeover like that and what does Meguiar's charge? Just curious.

[n8mobile]

Re: Batman Car Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

Hey Nat-man here, just wanted to share what this car has been through before Mike and his team went to work on the bat-mobile!
I did a cross country rally the FIREBALL RUN from Florida to Beverly Hills and got LOTS of bugs in the first day from Orlando to Baton Rouge! Heat, dirt, through Texas and Arizona, and smog in Los Angeles!

Then I took the car to MONSTER JAM in Pheonix and while in the arena, Grave Digger (Dennis was driving) did spin outs and cover the car with dirt and ROCKS!!! On the way home it started raining, so we strapped the cover on the car, and the wind wipped on a few spots creating rub marks on the car and the WINDSHIELD which is plexiglass. Thanks to all the hard work, I can SEE clearly again! The car looks great! Listen to these guys, they know their stuff!

[n8mobile]

Re: Batman Car Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

http://starcarcentral.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/

Here's the link to the MONSTER JAM photo and story

and the FIREBALL RUN starts here, with shots of the bugs we collected!

http://starcarcentral.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/

http://starcarcentral.wordpress.com/2008/02/

Archive for February, 2008

26
Feb

NATE AT THE OSCARS!

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Categories: academy awards and oscars
Tags: academy awards, george clooney, jon stewart, oscars



Nate on the Red Carpet!Nate on the Red Carpet!
Well lots of Cars, lots of Stars, but no STAR CARS, still it’s the OSCARS and I figured it was worth a post!
I worked with the crew from the United Kingdom for SKY1 coverage of the event, great group of folks!
It was great seeing a lot of my old pals in the freelance TV world again, after spending 25 years in Television production on over 100 shows and events I was bumping into old friends and distant memories of shows I have worked on all day! I was suprised to find that I remembered my way around so well, since the last show I did there was season one of American Idol! The red carpet was damp, and there was one cool vehicle there, the bomb squad van!

Sure Clooney was there, and all the rest, but this year the only nominated movie I have seen was “Ratatouie” on DVD! Security was tight but well done. Walking the red carpet was fun, posing with Oscar, and good friends as well as “gettin paiyed” made for a fun time!



07
Feb

FIREBALL STORY IN A CAR MAGAZINE?

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Categories: 1966 batmobile, Batman, DC comics, Dukes of hazzard, GCPD, Ghostbusters, HOUSTON, Herbie, Star Car, Television, batmobile, cannonball run, car rally, fireball run, florida, grave digger, monster jam, movie cars, movies, news and transcontinental
Tags: 1966 batmobile, new batmobile, original batmobile



HOW WILL IT END? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ROCKET GETS STUCK ON THE ROOF, AND THE INDIAN TAILPIPE?
Well, I actually got contacted to write the story for a magazine, but on the condition that I don’t post it or sell it anywhere else, so SORRY! Stay tuned, if it doesn’t pan out I will just post the rest here. Who’d a thunk it? The 1966 Batmobile will return!
Kinda weird!

Star Car Central

06
Feb

HOUSTON TRACK DAY 4 FIREBALL RUN!

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Categories: Batman, DC comics, HOUSTON, Star Car, Television, batmobile, cannonball run, car rally, fireball run, florida, movie cars, movies, news and transcontinental



HOUSTON TRACK DAY
Well, like every day of this race, including a few after, I didn’t sleep well, and woke up early. My mind racing, calculating all the different ways I could get the car home, if I couldn’t find the shut off problem, deciding what to do while watching the weather channel and seeing a storm front headed to Oklahoma City, my eyes popped open and I was up. So while Christopher slept, I left him a note and went down to the front desk. I sat through the meeting for the guys headed to the race track (you had to be race certified, roll bars, helmet and insurance to take the cars on the track) watched those that were racing go off to the track.
The front desk lady said there was a firestone place right next door that worked on her car all of the time, and it was walking distance. I called and told them of my problems (rubbing tires in the back from cutting my springs and not installing air shocks), sudden shut off of the engine, etc.) and they said they could fix me up. So down to the garage I went, took off the cover, drove it to the place less than a block away, and cleaned out the car in the humid heat.

THIS WAS AFTER THE RACE, BUT JUST FOR AN IDEA OF THE TRASH THAT WAS IN THE CAR! I HAD DONE SOME WIREING SO THAT’S WHY THE UNDERDASH BOARD IS PARTLY OFF… ADD ONS FOR THE TRIP, NEW CD PLAYER, GPS, COLOR DUAL REARVIEW CAMERAS AND NEW SCREEN, BLUETOOTH SO PHONE CALLS COME THROUGH THE SPEAKERS, OR THE BATPHONE DIRECTLY, THAT’S PRETTY COOL!
(AS LONG AS I DON’T DISCONNECT THE POWER!)
I was dripping sweat every time we got ready to leave, just organizing stuff behind the seats and getting set for the day due to the heat and humidity! So I leave the car with a list of safety items to check. It was running fine, but after that mysterious shut off, I wanted a mechanic to go over it, and check my brakes as they were acting weird, not that I used them much!
Once the car was squared away, I took a walk over to a Walgreen’s and got a LOT of drinks to rehydrate us. 2 kinds of Gatorade, Orange juice, Diet coke, and a few extras, batteries for the camera, Blistex and an ice bucket that was a great idea that helped us keep cool water in the car longer. Before I bought it, we were drinking hot or warm water all day! No time to stop for a cool drink on this rally!
The rest of the day in Huston was great. We drank and drank and drank, to get our kidneys working again. We had missed breakfast so we had the same great burger for an early lunch. We went to the pool and Jacuzzi, worked out in the gym, and went to the mall. Got Chris a haircut, and then had dinner at Chili’s.
A much needed day of rest was great, and Chris and I had a great time, expecting to pick up our car at 7 pm with everything fixed up. What all had to be fixed? Well, the electronic ignition control had over heated, and had never been replaced since I bought the car as a donor, so that was what shut us down the day before. Then I had asked them to flush the brake system, they did and found that two of the brake lines also from 1979 had partially collapsed, and so two of the brakes were not always working. I knew that something was wrong based on how it braked. They also replaced the rear cylinders that were leaking, also 79 original parts that I had never replaced. Then the rear tires were getting cut every time I hit a bump so they installed air shocks in the back, and raised it up, and solved that. Also a problem I was aware of and a solution I had figured I would do, but I put it off when I was just driving to closeby car shows, but with 2500 miles in front of me I figured I should do it now as I had no spare tire! A blowout would be a big time loss and could damage the car, so it was cheaper to put in the rear air shocks. Dig em!
So Chris and I wander over to pick up the car at closing time, and the car is up on the rack. More problems? They had done all the work, but when taking it for a test drive, they couldn’t get it in reverse!
Back on the rack we discovered that the shift cable that a mechanic pal had installed melted due to sitting on the manifold while I tore across a third of the USA. It also needed two front tires as a steering rod had been bent, and worn away the insides of both front tires over the last 1000 high speed miles. They looked brand new from the outside, but the car is so low that unless it was up on a rack, you would never know! So change of plans #1253! We left the car, I told them to replace the front tires (asked for Futuras, but now I am half Firestone, the original tires the #1 wore and 1/2 Futuras!) and fix the bent rod, and find me a shift cable. Now we were in trouble, as the fireballers were taking off at 7 am the next morning, and all of our pre-paid hotels and meals would be going off in the distance with them! We decided to go back to the pool and cool off, and see what happened the next day. Fell asleep watching the weather channel, and a big storm front moving towards Dallas and Oklahoma City! (Sorry, no photos from this day, didn’t think to get a shot of the great guys who worked on my car! I sent them a toy batmobile and n8mobile shirt when I got home!)



05
Feb

DAY 3 BATON ROUGE TO HOUSTON FIREBALL RUN!

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Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: 1966 batmobile, batmobile, fireball run, movie cars, Star Car



DAY THREE BATON ROUGE TO HOUSTON
We are at the Batmobile early and the starting line is down by the bay, so we follow a line of fireballers to the starting line and line up. We take lots of photos and for the first time I feel like I may have a problem free day, as the weather is cooler than the day before.

THIS IS THE OLD STATE CAPITAL BUILDING IN THE BACKGROUND! IT WOULD DO FOR WAYNE MANOR!

GT IS STILL TRAILING TEAM GOTHAM!


GETTING STILL COVERAGE OF THE VIDEO COVERAGE!
After about an hour of milling about, we get our envelopes, and the race begins! One of the clues is “turn yourself around” so we ended up back at the starting line looking for a statue,

NOPE, WRONG ONE!
but we then get back into the Batmobile and on the freeway, to find the RIGHT clue, but it’s a ruse, then we find the right one and get our next envelope. We head off not listening to directions and get turned around in Baton Rouge, and are playing catch up the rest of the day! All my fault,as I got caught up in the other teams tearing away! Once back on track, we head for a local landmark, and after asking for directions from a few folks we find our way there, get our photo, pose for a few and head back.

Christopher puts in our next destination and chooses “shortest way” vs. “fastest” way, and we are driving the batmobile through rolling back hill roads, get stopped by a bridge with a boat going by, then a train! We are running out of gas at this point, so I see a one pump station and figure it might be our last chance for gas before getting to the freeway, so we pull in.

I ask for mid level gas, and hand her my card. I go to pump and nothing. I walk in and she says, the mid level doesn’t work. “Fine” I say, “give me the Premium.” I go out and no gas. Chris runs in and is told, that only works on the other side. While this was happening, someone pulled in on the other side. “FINE!” I go for the low grade, add some octane booster and buy a couple of drinks.

Meanwhile a nice guy in a truck has been asking me questions, and I ask him to lead us to the freeway and if he had heard of the restaurant we were supposed to be at for lunch. He said there were signs on the freeway, can’t miss it. So back on the road, only to see as we come around the corner that there is a twenty pump truck stop! grrr.
On to the freeway, find the lunch stop, get some water and sandwiches and pull out after the ford GT! Amazingly we were not in last place after all of that! Other teams had to get gas about half as many times, and could go faster and not worry about rain but we still beat almost half of the field!
So off we go with the new clue!
We were so hot we just wanted to get to the hotel, and I started doing math in my head that if the dinner was near Houston, we were all ready out of competition as it was too far away. But it wasn’t in Houston. Then we hit a bridge where a truck had jack knifed and was blocking the one big bridge, creating a standstill of traffic! The car starts heating up because it’s HOT everywhere, and I pull out of traffic into a small gas station. After refueling and getting a blue icee drink, a local said we could go around the bridge and go down to the next one! So off we go, recalculating and then of course, it starts to rain! I am driving through a neighborhood of homes, with no over hangs, nothing, and it started pouring. I then see a half finished house with no doors on the garage, and I pull in! Chris and I videotape a little, take some photos and wait out the rain.
Had we waited in line at the bridge, we would have been drenched, had the truck not jack-knifed, we would have been caught in slow traffic on the freeway, so it was actually a good thing!



Well, of course we are too far behind now, I decide! The rain stops and we head out again, over the next bridge and start making great time towards Huston. Well in the instructions for the game, it suggests that we have someone with internet access or bring a laptop computer with wifi, but our brains were so fried and we were both so sure we couldn’t make Houston, we just looked for signs that reference the next clue and drove as fast as the car would go. Right through Beaumont, home of the next stop and Dinner, in time to check in! Of course no signs, just listed on Google! So as the other fireballers were waiting for us in Beaumont, we got to about 15 miles outside of Houston, doing 80 MPH, just trying to get to the hotel and air conditioning, and the car SHUTS OFF! I coast as best I can over 6 lanes of highway with armstrong steering and brakes, to a place where there is a bit of a shoulder to park, and start going through what went wrong. I can’t find anything wrong with the car, so I call AAA. A nice lady stops with her kids and tells me that this was the WORST area to stop in, and right behind those front buildings is a very bad area! Great. Next some nice Cops stop,

and then the fireballers start showing up after I called in saying where we were. That’s when I found out they were waiting for us in Beaumont! So J gets some bags of fertilizer to help get the bat on the flatbed, the driver has about three teeth and was grinding my knife blade into his truck before we stopped him!

Get everything up on the truck and take a death defying ride into the Hotel, where we unload it behind the hotel next to Movie Mike’s RV.
All of “Team Sunburn” in the fireball Lincoln jump in and start checking everything.

THATS CHRISTOPHER PULLING THE BATMOBILE OFF THE TRUCK!
HE DOES HAVE HIS PERMIT, HOWS THAT FOR A FIRST CAR TO DRIVE!
Fuel, check, spark check, everything works! So we start it up and it works fine! We move it over to the hotel for the night, wondering what that was all about. Chris and I find the spa again, and a cool pool over looking downtown Houston, we had missed dinner at Beaumont so we had the best hamburgers ever in the bar of the hotel. I spend the night trying to figure out if I should put the bat on the rack and try to figure out what that shut off was all about, or just rest the next day while the teams who had roll bars and racing school experience tear around the track. Air conditioning, cool pools on the top of the hotel over looking Houston, and a cold bottle of water never felt so good! We were over a thousand miles closer to home, and happy to be getting out of the humidity! Believe it or not, the crazy towtruck ride was GOOD LUCK, for a couple of reasons, but that’s later. If I had just waited for the car to cool down, it would have started, but as AAA was my sponsor and I have a high end AAA membership, it was a very good thing I had it towed a few miles, even though it started up fine after a rest! But that’s all later…. Stay tuned, batfans!



04
Feb

DAY TWO FRIDAY START DAY

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Categories: Batman, DC comics, GCPD, HOUSTON, Star Car, Television, batmobile, car rally, fireball run, florida, movie cars, movies, news and transcontinental



DAY TWO FRIDAY START DAY
Chris opted for less sleep so we would get to the starting line with lots of time, so we were up and tried to leave with J but they took off while we were packing the car. I had hooked the battery up to my trickle charger all night, and it started right up. Great! We drove to the starting line and I was turning the fans on and off, watching the temp gauge. When we got there it was getting a little hot, so I listened for the fans. No fans.

I AM ON THE OTHER SIDE REWIREING THE FANS IN THIS PHOTO, WHILE BANDS PLAY IN THE BACKGROUND, AND THE OTHER DRIVERS GET THEIR INSTRUCTIONS!
So now sweating like crazy, I cut through the relay wires and took a hot wire from the battery, to the dash and a line from the fans to the ground. As I was trying to get to the switch, I got mad as that same darn screw that would not let go the night before, and went ape man on it and it moved! So I got out the switch to check it and realized it was a 4 amp switch and that’s what blew. If I could have gotten to the switch the night before it wouldn’t have happened. So while all the other drivers enjoyed the bagpipes, cheerleaders, and local media coverage of the start, I was feverously connecting the fans to the right switch. Chris handed me tools and connectors and a towel to wipe off my forehead, and kept one ear on when the race would start. At one point J came by and asked how I was doing, and I told him no fans no Batmobile. He had to go and I kept the image of me in an empty parking lot in FLORIDA as they all disappeared into the sunset! So, we have no instructions, no idea what Jay has been saying, but as the cars finally start to pull out, I put the dash back together, slam the hood, start it up and we fall into line and take off!

WE ROLL OUT WITH THE REST OF THE FIREBALLERS IN THE NICK OF TIME!
Only one problem, in my rush to get done, I didn’t want any problems with the fans, so I took off the other electronics that were hooked up to the big switch. I stopped for a moment and thought “that’s just the detectascope and other flashing lights on Robin’s side, don’t need em!” But I had disconnected the power to the new CD player and that’s where we got all of our rally instructions! So we followed the fireballers and Movie Mike’s RV for about 150 miles as we had used up a lot of gas running around town the day before, then pulled off, got gas, and I went once again under the dash and wired up the CD player. Tanked up and found a hot lead for the CD player in under ten minutes and we were back in the game!
With 200 miles between fuel stops, we had a burger king card with 20 bucks on it for lunch along the way.

LOTS OF STATES GO WHIZZING BY!

THIS PLACE LOOKS LIKE THE LAST ONE! WHERE IS EVERYONE?

LIKE THE CAPE? GOOD FOR KEEPING SUN OFF OF MY NECK!
We were HOT. Inside the car the air was still and hot, but a little wind wing action with our hands helped a bit.

CHRIS USING THE HIGH SETTING ON THE AIR CONDITIONING!
We powered through, averaging 80 MPH figuring that we lost some time with the electrical at the first stop, so we wouldn’t stop and sit for lunch. Well you don’t EVER do that we found out, but we powered through 700 miles to Baton Rouge. Somewhere along the way, a big bug hits my detectascope antenna, and I hear a CLUNK!
One fan of my antenna is gone, and I thought I heard it blow over the car. “Oh well”, I think, “I wanted to get one of Sammy’s anyway!”, but this one was made by my Dad, and I was sorry to lose it.

HOLY BIG BUG IMPACT, BATMAN!
Well at the next fuel stop, the missing part was sitting under my side windshield in the middle of the car! I tuck it inside the car to reattach when we get home, with a “Thanks, God!” we check out the growing bug collection on the front of the car and then jump back in the race!

[ZoranC]

Re: Batman Car Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

Hey Nat-man here ...

Nat-man, thank you for fun evening!

[Eddie6th]

Re: Batmobile Extreme Makeover - Pictures & Comments

Excellent work.Brings back a lot of memories.I loved watching the show when I was a kid.Well documented aswell.

I've always wondered what happened to the cars out of 'Death Race 2000'?

It would be nice to see an extreme makeover on those,as they are also unique.