Building a Pinewood Derby (Race Results)

[Jeremy airjer W]

Things went terribly bad. As I applied the last coat of clear the paint lifted. It was a mad scramble to sand it all down and start over. Then I made my next mistake. I taped off the body to keep the graphite off it and it wouldn't be right if it didn't happen but the tape peeled off the decals. So the car is once again drying and check in is at 5:00 tomorrow!

Here is the doomsday tapping.

This is a pretty slick tool to set the proper gap between the body and the wheel

If you look carefully the notches I made when I polished the axles are at the 12 o'clock position on all four wheels. This is to give the wheels the negative camber. Negative camber will do two things. It will allow just the inside edge of the wheel to make contact with the track and it will also allow the wheel to wander out to the head of the axle which equals less friction. The right front axle is adjusted just a tad to allow the car to track just to the right. This will keep the left front wheel (the offset wheel) to ride the guide rail.

If you look carefully at the left side of the car you will notice that the bottom wheel is closer to the body than the back wheel. This is done so that the left front is the only wheel that will ever make contact with the guide rail.

Here's the car before adding weights

Here's the amount of weight that I will need to add. I won't tell you how I have the weights set up in the car but if you remember my holes are already predrilled to accept 3 full lengths of the weights.

Here's the final fine tuning of balance from front to rear. Ideally you want the car to balance on a pencil somewhere around 1 to 1 1/4" from the center of the rear axle. If you look carefully there are to pencil marks. The care is balancing just a tad over the 1 1/4" mark. Perfect!

Saturday is the day to see if the time and effort pans out. I'll let you know what happens!

[mikemac]

Good luck to you and your boys on Saturday. I enjoyed watching the progress on your cars. Sorry to hear about the set back on the paint jobs, but I bet that they look great. You and your boys sure pay a lot of attention to detail and preformance.

I can remember standing in line at the final weight in before the race and this young scout dropped the car to the ground. SMASH!!! I was waiting for somebody to cry, but nobody cried (dad or son).

Make sure and let us know how the three cars finish!

[Scott K]

Good luck Jer!

[Jeremy airjer W]

Well I didn't better last years time but I still set the track record this year at 2.447 seconds on a 32' track with an average speed of 2.453 seconds.

Ethans car set the first track record at 2.477 seconds and then his car fell of dramatically. So he ended up with second fast time.

Carter ended up with the best average time of the three and ended up with 5th overall.

So no cars going to districts this year but we did all right. Especially carter who was the most improved over last year. We all ended up with an award which is pretty good if you ask me.

The final stats for this year

----------1-------2-------3---Average

Ethan 2.477 2.564 2.553 2.531

Carter 2.545 2.497 2.515 2.519

Jeremy 2.447 2.451 2.46 2.453

The cars with there certificates.

Thanks to everyone who took a peek, followed, or shared in the thread!

[pureinsanity]

Awesome! congrats boys! All four of you

Thanks for an entertaining post!

[Scott K]

Good job!

[MJ1657]

When are you going to get a Pinewood Derby league on the HSO site Airjer????

[TooTallTom]

Great thread, Jer. Things seem to have turned out pretty well, all in all. Pinewood derby on the forum is a good idea. Or maybe a pinewood derby bar league!