[mikester]

Also, I always build a car myself to keep my hands off my son's car. It usually works, this year he asked me to help him a little more and I obliged. I'm not a super competitive guy and I don't even really care much about going the fastest. I like to make a good looking car and always strive for speed but I have never been the fastest car. We did a track tuning night on Friday, we have a pretty long aluminum track. It's extruded to key together in lanes. Since I have taken over the Pinewood mantle for the two packs (and likely the district this year) I decided this year we need to realign the track as some of the lanes appeared to be slipping and the joints between track panels weren't lining up cleanly. Me and a few other dads spent friday night on the track. Of course we brought a few cars from last year and this year (one of the benefits of volunteering for track duty is testing your car). My son's car from last year was a little slower than we expected but this years car was definitely faster. Since Friday we have done a little more to it as well so the expectation is that it will be faster. I do make the nail heads a little cone shaped but not too much as I believe in taking off as little metal as possible. If you do too much the wheels tend to wobble. I do end up with a low ridge around where the head and the nail meet. I've also seen guys file a groove or depression in the nail to reduce the friction area. This is actually a little against our rules but we don't remove an axle to check for it.

Our track record was unofficially set on Friday at 3.089 seconds. Our track is about 40ft.