Derby Talk

Have to be careful comparing times on tracks. We are a good example. Our personal track is a 49' Best Track that we run in both 49' and 42' configurations. We have two timers that we use on track. The type of timer and start mechanism for the timer will make a significant difference on time. The rec...

I absolutely love your response slipperyfrog. I believe this response is far more helpful than how the responses usually go on the forum around suspected cheating. Ask for help and you and your boy can learn. When someone comes on the forum, first or second year building cars, and lost by 2 or 3 car...

Having done this now for 14 years and having built well over 200 cars with 5 of my 6 boys, youngest is not interested, I can tell you that what type of wood someone uses for the car is not going to make any significant difference. IMHO, barking up the wrong tree. Is it possible they have a track, sp...

I could not figure out a way to easily simulate the timing intervals that I needed. So my testing was the actual running a car from the top using the 2nd timer. In isolation you could not be sure the 2nd timer was not actually what was in error. But the visual data of the behavior make me comfortabl...

Personally, I feel four on the floor is a silly rule. Every scout PWD I have been to there are tons of cars that unintentionally don't have four on the floor. A very difficult rule to enforce without sending kids home which should never be the goal, IMHO. But I would never be comfortable breaking it...

We have always used Hodges and have had good luck. We purchased a couple of big bags years and years ago and continue to use. I believe the graphite changed when Hodges sold the company maybe 6 or so years ago.

Will depend on the smoothness of the track. Really the joints that connect the segments. We usually use a little less drift, about 3 inches over 6 feet but have a track to tune. Our experience has been that it is better to have too much drift than too little.

Wanted to post an update on this as we start back in PWD this year. We now just use both timers all the time. I can easily recreate the problem as we have two cars that run between the times that cause the problem on a consistent basis. I have three ways to verify. The NewBold timer run in parallel ...

Thanks Drathbun. I did spend some time searching the forum and did the see the thread referenced and the Sporty thread also that was similar. But I was actually looking for the difference between 1g old and new wheels. When I was not able to find I did look for 1g versus full weight old wheels and w...

Thanks. I appreciate the response. I was looking for how much faster would a highly prepped 1g 1999 wheel be compared to a low prep 2009 wheel? Maybe just a guestimate. The weight difference is by far the biggest any maybe only advantage to a 1g 1999 wheel. I was just curious if anyone had switched ...

This would be on a 42' Best Track. The wheels would be going from commercially available 1g wheels to using a 2009 wheel, matched set but minimal other prep work. Including the step being left intact. Curious on a rough estimate the difference and I realize there are a lot of factors. The car would ...

No it does NOT start with a "j". I have talked to the company and the owner was extremely nice. He told me that he had never heard of this before. Over the last days we have litterly made 100's of runs. Since our cars are now almost 100% of the time in the area where the problem exist we s...

I would interpret that fenders are part of the car and the car has to have 3/8" ground clearance. So I would assume the fenders would also need to be 3/8" above the ground. Curious to what other think. I realize being outside the wheels they are not going to hit but if you follow the rules...

Cubes are more dense so take smaller space. Depending on the design we have used cubes, big discs 1", medium discs 3/4", plates, canopy, have used the very small discs. Right now we are using the cubes mostly. We started with cubes. Only thing there was then went to using plates for two ye...

There must be something with the number 3.072 or 3.071. I don't think I have ever seen 3.071 or 3.171. I have seen 3.170 and 3.072. So there must be something significant with one of these numbers. I would have thought the problem was when the numbers were getting bigger not smaller.