Topic: Pinewood Derby

[aka-justin]

Been busy with my son's cub scout pack getting ready for our pinewood derby race. He's almost done with his bowling alley car and I'm almost done with my jeep.

[VA_YJ]

 They'll go faster if you put wheels on them. 

Remove the burrs off the nails and polish them real good (use an electric drill or drill press).  Use powdered graphite lube - relube as often as they will allow (e.g., between heats).

Good luck!

[chardrc]

They'll go faster if you put wheels on them. 

Remove the burrs off the nails and polish them real good (use an electric drill or drill press).  Use powdered graphite lube - relube as often as they will allow (e.g., between heats).

Good luck!

x2 if they allow it. my dad even bought a official wheel base jig so that he could redrill the holes for the axles to get better alignment (that pine warps) had the guys ad districts try to DW me because my "wheelbase was altered" pulled out the official BSA wheelbase tool and showed them whats what. debur the nails and polish the wheels. be careful with the graphite when i started they didn't allow it and my last year they changed something and everyone at districts was using it needless to say i got stooped dead in my tracks that day since i didn't use it for fear of disqualification form their tight rules the year before.. the speed is all about the wheels and nails doesn't matter what the rest of the car looks like. 

[aka-justin]

Thanks for the tips... I already went a bit overboard with polishing (1500 grit), axle hole drilling tool, and bought a scale. Ultimately, it was to spend time with my kiddo, but it was fun too. I've even went overboard and built an Arduino based pinewood derby timer that I'm donating. I got the plans from David at http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/pg_pdt.html

 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/XB_s9DBRiT8?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/XB_s9DBRiT8?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US</a>

I'm sure we'll do ok, but if not, we've still had fun.

[Jeffy]

Looks like you're going for design and not speed.  Any speed tricks would be a waste.  Does that bowling lane fit the max width?  Do they still use a car go/no-go gauge?

[aka-justin]

Looks like you're going for design and not speed.  Any speed tricks would be a waste.  Does that bowling lane fit the max width?  Do they still use a car go/no-go gauge?

I originally bought 2 pinewood derby car blocks, but as I inspected my sons, his was too warped. The block they give you is 1.75" and the wheels are 3/8" ea., so I bought some 2.5"x.25" poplar for the alley and cut some 1"x2" to 1.75" to fab some trucks and filled in the middle with straight 1"x2" (which is really more like .75"x1.5"). I didn't plan on the detail work, but as I keep looking at them I keep tweaking and glueing and painting and adding.

Update:

[aka-justin]

Oh yeah... and as far as rules and checking the cars, our cars meet the requirements for our pack. Every pack and council can very in any way if they like - http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/boyscouts/trainingmodules/pinewood.aspx