How to Beat The Barnacle®

When The Barnacle® first began appearing on the windshields of bad parkers, a group of enterprising college students reported a method to defeat the first-gen Barnacle. The story goes that they ran the defroster for 15 minutes then used a credit card to release the suction cups. They may have been successful. Or just lucky. Or it’s an urban legend.

But would this work with the latest-gen Barnacle devices? Is it possible to defeat a modern Barnacle device? The latest-gen Barnacle includes the newest anti-defeat technologies that make attempts to defeat it not only nearly impossible – but also extremely impractical.

Before we explore the possible ways to defeat a Barnacle parking device, let’s address a few key points to consider first.

Tamper Alarms and Alerts

If you give The Barnacle® a decent bump with your fist, a tamper alarm will go off. And it’s loud. This instantly sends a tamper alert signal to the parking manager who placed it on the windshield. It’s like those bank-robber movies where they are trying to crack a safe without causing the slightest vibration, or else the police force will be on them like syrup on pancakes. On that note, if a driver attempts to pull an Ace Ventura and drive away with their head out the window, The Barnacle’s motion sensors will trigger the alarm – and an alert is also sent.

If somehow, someone was able to detach the Barnacle without triggering any alarms, the second they move it from the windshield – those same motion sensors would trigger.

But hey, at this point, The Barnacle has been tossed into the bushes, and you’re making your fast getaway!

But Wait: Smile, Your Car is on Camera!

When your vehicle was Barnacled, photos were taken of the deployment and vehicle by the parking manager or enforcer. And the license plate is tied to the deployment, along with the ID of The Barnacle device. If you did manage to remove The Barnacle parking device, haven’t woken half the neighborhood with the alarm and still have a windshield, the parking enforcer still knows it was you. Unfortunately, now you are in a worse situation with them than you were before, with added fines, destruction of property violations, collections and additional woes headed your way.

So yeah, it’s just impractical to attempt to defeat a Barnacle device.

How We Did It: Defeating The Barnacle® Parking Device

Since that’s why you came here, we’ll share with you how we tried to do it. You see, here at Barnacle, we have always done extensive testing and tried every method possible to defeat it. Each time we discovered a weakness, it led to a renewed Barnacle design. Virtually all our attempts led to a broken windshield. We were never successful in preventing the alarm from going off.

But we did discover a few solutions, although we suggest you don’t try these at home.

Crisco Works!

One of our interns tried covering a windshield with Crisco. The Barnacle® had been heavily tested on wet, dirty and icy windows, and it attaches with full strength. But low and behold, cooking fat did prevent The Barnacle from getting a proper grip. While this wasn’t a method for removing The Barnacle, it did seem to prevent it from being attached. Unfortunately, he did the experiment on his own vehicle vs. a test windshield. The wipers smeared the cooking fat across the windshield and made the car undrivable. The odds are already low that anyone would get Barnacled, but if you suspected you might, are you going to cover your windshield with lard every time you park it?

By the way, he says he still has Crisco remnants caked into his windshield trim.

Swap Windshields

In another experiment, we called a local windshield repair company and they were able to successfully remove the entire windshield with The Barnacle® still attached, although we all had to wear hearing protection since the alarm was triggered throughout. But as part of their contract, they must take the old windshield away, and noted they’d refuse to do it with a Barnacle attached. In fact, they said they would have refused the windshield replacement in the first place.

We theorized that if you had a second identical vehicle and were able to create a cage with suction cups to hold the windshield in place, you could theoretically keep the Barnacle device in the exact place in space, and even swap vehicles out from under it, preventing the alarm from going off.  If you attempt this, please film it as we’d like to feature it on our TikTok.

Outlast The Barnacle®

The latest-gen Barnacle device features a suction engine which constantly adjusts PSI based on ambient temperature. As it adjusts, it uses batteries, which will run out after 7-10 days. If you are able to go without a vehicle for a little over a week, you can outlast The Barnacle®, because the device will eventually lose suction after the battery dies. However, in over 50,000 deployments, we’ve never heard of anyone waiting it out. Additionally, the parking manager will return to the vehicle at any point and replace the battery if needed, thus making the deployment effectively eternal.

Stuck On You

Like Lionel Richie’s 1983 hit song “Stuck on You”, if you get Barnacled, you’re stuck with something yourself.

In the end, it seems best solution is this: try not to get Barnacled in the first place.