Derby Talk

Randy, I appreciate and applaud the moral courage it took to contact these ebay sellers directly. Thank you. Not that it will get them to change, but at least it will demonstrate that not everyone agrees with their actions and that selling these cars is against the fundamental character of scouting....

TJs,

I think you are right on target about the "break-away" factor. Once we set up the Pack track I want to do some additional testing from a drop of about 4 feet and see how the SB10 performs.

Will post results.

Franklin, I agree with you 100%. I have almost all of Racer X's tools and they have served our Den quite well. The problem I had with the axle press was before final polishing, I was simply trying to straighten the nail, when the scaring occurred. I plan on doing some more testing, I know the nail d...

I am just curious if any other members have had any problems with the axle press really scaring and scratching the nail finish. After working on a set of nails recently, the finish was so damaged that I was concerned I would have to remove some diameter in sanding to eliminate the scratches. Certain...

Alignment may not be as difficult as rocket science, brain surgery, or getting my 11 year old to go to bed at night, but it is definitely challenging. Everytime I think I am beginning to understand this sport, my hubris is quickly erased by a really dumb mistake on my part. Case in point. I was fini...

Maximum Velocity has a new bore polishing tool that works pretty well. It also incorporates a Micro-Gloss liquid abrasive at about 1 micron which does a pretty good job. I just used it on my October WIRL car and it seemed to work fine. In the past, I have used a whitening toothpast to polish the whe...

Franklin, let us know how your tests go. I did not have as good of results with SB10 as I would have liked. I am going to do some more testing. Even though some of the threads in this forum said "volume" of lubricant did not matter, I think I might have been a little too liberal in applica...

Darin and Stan, thanks for the explanation of runout. It was pretty clear even to a non-techie like myself. Our problem is that even with a better understanding of the term, and I can definitely see its impact on performance, our family race team will be limited to matching wheels sets and trying to...

Loosewheel, I don't have any hard empirical evidence, but from three years of hands-on experience, we (my son and I) have found lower is better than higher for weights - just to add stability. Of course in our Pack we are utilizing a rather rough, 32 foot wooden homemade track. I am trying to get ou...

Dave, I really like the idea of a registration card. I am going to work on implementing that idea this week. It sounds like you guys have a terrific Pack with solid core values.

Shane, personally I have printed off copies of the cars I have seen on ebay. Some are very distinctive, others are not. I commiserate with TDean, even if we spot them, I don't know if we could really disqualify a car, unless the parent or scout admitted purchasing it. Talk about a challenging situat...

Thanks for sharing Jay. Just finishing up the paint job and will begin wheel installation and alignment next. What of part of central NC are you from? I've noticed we have a good number of Derby Talkers from Carolina. It would be fun to all get together at some point and share tips, hold a construct...

TDean, I have to agree with you that on this forum we are basically "preaching to the choir" in terms of ebay cars. It just seems that this years marketing ploys are outrageously exploitative and the number of cars available has skyrocketed. And even though we have talked about this in the...

Has anyone else noticed the flurry of high-priced, fully completed, PWD cars being marketed on ebay? It is not even October and I have observed dozens of cars being hyped with "District Winning Potential" and costing a $100 dollars or more. I saw a car last week at over $325. Wheel sets an...

I am attempting to build an extended wheel base car for the WIRL modified division. Since we have only worked with standard wheelbase cars with standard slots (required by our Scout Pack and District rules), I just wondered if those of you who have experience with extended wheel base cars go with a ...