Derby Talk

California is due for another earthquake. That might help lift the western end of the track high enough to produce the needed slope.

I'm curious to hear what others think about a car that is automatically disqualified at the start because it is "too good". Unfortunately, I hear about that going on quite often. It ignores the fact that this should be a joint project of a child working with an adult, not the child alone. Besides, ...

We used to use a similar system, except we always had a car in each lane: 1 2 3 4 2 3 4 5 3 4 5 6 ... 18 19 20 1 19 20 1 2 20 1 2 3 Years ago, we switched to a system that is essentially another implementation of Partial Perfect-N (PPN). The cars get to race against different opponents each time, th...

Now, the point of the post is "before you cut that block". Our "before you cut that block" emphasis is related to alignment (friction), not aerodynamics. We make sure that the kids press their axle holes before they cut the block, so all the sides of the block are still square. We saw a huge improv...

My experience changing the rules/procedures for a derby was at the local level, with no regional authority to stay compatible with, and no conflicts with the instructions in the box. And even then, it was a challenge. It's just a lot easier to keep doing things the way they've always been done. Ther...

Air flowing around the car is not why the car must be aerodynamic. It must be aerodynamic so the additional added weight (tungsten) can be placed in a certain area and can be placed where it will do the most good. "Get Rid of the Wood". I'm sorry if I did not make that clear at the very beginning. ...

We've always used big cardboard boxes set up outside, with plastic turntables.

Wow! That's a really nice design. I don't think it would fit our track (the rear wheel would probably drop into the slot for the start gate), but it's still gorgeous!

The inline videos are not playing for me. If that happens to anyone else, you can go directly to the YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKdHZe ... EEw/videos

Wow... Those are really nice!

Nice work, really like the boxes too... which no doubt leads to people looking at them on display thinking, oh look that guy cheated by using a model, LOL - gotta love those people. We had a father-son team build matching cars one year. They bought the same plastic model kits, but used them very di...

For our All Comers class, we've had either separate design awards for adults and for youth, or design awards only for youth and none for adults. But we have only one set of speed awards, and any adults and youth in the All Comers class compete against each other.

Have you considered separate open classes for youth and for adults?

I don't know about "most places", but we've never restricted lubricants, as long as it isn't applied excessively so that it causes a mess. But about 10 years ago, we switched from providing graphite at our workshops to providing Krytox at our workshops. But the motivation was more to eliminate the g...

The analysis I heard is that derby cars don't want spoilers (or anything else) that pushes them into the track (which is the role of spoilers on real race cars, to increase traction aka friction). And any spoiler that could lift the car would generate more aerodynamic drag than the reduced friction ...