I always just busted open a #8 shot shell and used the lead shot for weight

Ugh...I can almost never get a car to go straight. It's irritating...

Just mounted the wheels to the boy's #2 car (we make a spare just in case we totally screw up on the main one) and it has a little drift to the left. On the upside I learned how to use my wheel mounting prep tool but the downside is that the car now goes left. No blinker.

It's only a little left...I'll have to adjust it...

Yep. PWD time. I have a strong tradition in this, starting with building when I was a kid. Just had a dad and son over tonight to work on their car as they don't have any real tools.

Yeah, I am a pinewood geek.

Larry

I love that 917 design. My cars were much simpler but my brother built a dragster once.
Getting the wheels true so the car rolls straight and free is important. Zero toe, Zero camber. Also test the underside to make sure it will not rub the track at the joint where the downhill ramp levels out.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1358915286.jpg

A pic of my favorite all time car. Independent suspension. A winner!

I'll have to post a photo shoot of the track we have. 4 lanes. Metal. Electronic scoring. It's nuts.


I need to check the camber of the wheels tonight. Forgot that.

We have 6 lanes. We usually only use the 4 inside. 6 cars at one time is crazy!

Here is this year's Ferrari inspired entry from my oldest:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1358988539.jpg

Here are last years cars. Mine is the Mach 5, it didn't race and to be honest it is only 4.5 oz so while it is pretty quick as a car it could be much faster.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1358988572.jpg

The blue car is my son's entry and it is a supposed to be Finn McMissle. I think he did a great job and as I said before he really did do most of it himself. Like this year's entry the majority of the work was done by him and I helped him fine tune it.

Also here is a local news story on last year's race. I think we'll have similar coverage next year.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mz21ce15Q4s?list=UUxIHXywoJ5iy5iiizQyULXg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Somehow my YouTube link changed....

Anyway, check in tonight and racing tomorrow!

2nd place in his den and 9th overall. Sweet!

Not so good here. Won a couple of the heats (random selection) but didn't podium in the Den. He was really bummed about it.

My little girl raced a car which I built. I was too aggressive on the cut and the axel holes got all messed up. So I just nailed them into the body. It was slow and she was not happy about it.

Bryce got bounced quick. We had some absolute speedsters out there.

I think I screwed it up though. We had to turn them in Thursday but didn't use the graphite.

I thought we would do it this morning. When I got there the race official looked at me like i was crazy.

Oh well next year.

Oh yeah, once you turn the car over to the race you don't get to mess with it again.

Some packs don't even let the kids touch the cars again until after the race.

The way that I run our race is that we do take the cars the night before, during the race though the kids are given their cars to take to the race track when it is their turn then they go and sit at the end of the track.

We had a pretty decent race overall but quite a few people who didn't read the rules which haven't changed in YEARS for our Pack. I had 2nd year Webelos showing up with last year's car. Plenty of cars with non-kit wheels - they were BSA wheels but they were technically outside the rules. Next year I will make some modifications to the rules and allow those wheels specifically. I will highlight that they can't race a car from last year. It won't matter if they don't read them though...

Finally, I had one Tiger dad show up with his Tiger at noon with their car all ready to race. If he had read any of the emails sent out, been to any meetings to listen to the announcements he would have known to show up the night before for check in and that our race actually started at 9:30.

Ugh.

One of the things I kind of stick on during inspection is 4 wheels FLAT on the floor. When we do inspection we have a construction table setup with good guys to help get cars right. When I inspect a car and it clearly has one wheel not even close to touching - I send it to the table to get squared up. I had a couple of dad's look at me like I was crazy. I did my best to help them, gave them my nice tools to do it and provided knowledgeable friends to assist. I had to send back about a dozen cars and only one dad really gave me a hard time. In the end though they got it right and it probably cost them 30 minutes, maybe. Today however - they didn't show up. Their car was pretty damned sweet too - light but sweet. The other pack we race with does not do this - they don't care. For me it is about being fair to everyone. When you have a tricycle it'll easily go .2 seconds faster and that's usually the difference between placing in the top 3 and not. I did check out some of their top cars which took all of the top 10 fastest track times in the software for the last two years that I have data. They were tricycles. When that happens I get dad's coming up behind me during the awards saying 'what the *****@!?' - I had that happen in that race but it did NOT happen at all in our pack's race which is why I do it.

I try not to be THAT pinewood derby race coordinator. I hope I succeeded. My goal was to get as many people as possible to race.

We share our track with another Pack that operates with us. We hold our race on the same day ours in the morning and theirs in the afternoon. After my son and I ran our pack's race we then ran the other packs race for them doing the timers and software. During our race I trained my son on the software (He's 8 and a Wolf) and then during the other pack's race I asked their Cub master if it was okay for Jacob to run their race. That pack actually operates out of my son's school but he has friends in both which is how we ended up where we are. So he wanted to run his friend's race. Cub Master said that sounded perfect and said go ahead. He ran the race nearly perfectly - it was great. Prior to the race though their Cub Master presented me with a Scouting Coin to thank me and me for my service and for teaching my son those same values.

I was surprised - I am friends with all these people in both packs and I do it just because I like to. I usually get a ton of Thank Yous which is all I expect (and some time to do a Dad's race) so even though the thing was just a little shiny coin I was very grateful for the recognition.

Another very funny thing. His car's top time and my car's top time were identical. In the overall ranking he and I tied for 14th place. If I take the Dad and Siblings out he was 9th overall.

A few pictures

My son is the one in the middle. The one on the right is our first place Wolf Cub. I've known him since he was born. He's a great kid and I think he was dead last last year. He was so worried that his colored wheels meant he was a cheater. I told him it didn't and to have fun.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269301.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269336.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269363.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269418.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269468.jpg

My son running the other pack's race.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269490.jpg

Kid cars
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269622.jpg

Dad Cars
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359269667.jpg

Thanks for the pix, Mike. The tracks have really changed in the 45 plus years since me and my brother were in cub scouts. So have the cars.
Here's the only pix I could find of our cars, and I had to scan them from slides, not the best pictures:

the purple car probably got built in '68 or '69, the rest of them were all earlier, so the blue one far left is probably from '64 or '65....

We always won trophies for the best designs, but our cars were never fast.

Yes, dad helped.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359382850.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1359382883.jpg

Guys, I need some help.

This is my first Pinewood as a dad.

I used the grinder to shape a concave wedge.

I left some height to pack weight high and in the rear.

The rear is a (bad) copy of a Daytona Coupe.

The Littleman told me he wanted a Stealth Bomber.



What do I do to the axels?

i think i need to cut in pontoons.

Put an axel in a drill, sand with 400, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit sans papers. Make sure you get all surfaces that will touch the wheel including the head. Both of my boys hated this process but they loved podium finishes.

There are two books that I've reccomended when I was at Barnesand Noble, just search pinewood derby.

Put the axle nail in the chuck of a drill, and run the drill with fine sandpaper polishing the area where the wheel will be. Also use a file to make the inside of the nail head a rather convex shape so there is less rubbing on the base of the wheel.

Put a wheel onto the nail in the drill chuck and hold the wheel stationery while the nail turns inside the wheel in effect polishng the wheel I.D.