Derby Talk

Pinewood Daddy, I've got the dial indicator and its jigs for holding it (I got it for setting up woodworking tools). I need to build a solid wheel holder like yours (or get a lathe like MaxV!!). You could probably set up a side business selling your test station to the Pineheads on this site. My son...

Clemsontigerfan, I think one of the questions is what benefits the moly offers. Previously, Hob-E-Lube was considered better than plain graphite because of the moly particles acting as mini ball bearings. Now we get data, from multiple product vendors, claiming that new pure graphite products are fa...

Pinewood Daddy, that is some impressive setup! I'm probably closer to Wooden Wonder's setup. :P Based on the drawings, the gage pin goes through the block and is held in place by two set screws?? Part of what threw me is the term "drop gage" which I have only known as a dial indicator. I t...

Pinewood Daddy: I made a gage to check run-out on wheels (hardened steel) using a drop indicator. Could you explain more about this setup for the less mechanically-inclined of us?? :oops: I have been trying to come up with methods for determining which wheels were going on the car, and I haven't lan...

Thanks for all the replies. I think I may take a few test runs using the dremel to see how that works. I like the idea of using the cutoff wheel as that could limit any inadvertent damage to the axle shaft. Jackie, do you just drill the center hole larger? The cutoff wheels seem somewhat fragile whe...

School's back in session and the scent of Pine is rising!! I am looking at improving our technique for cleaning up the axles and I am wondering about the impact of slop in the drill chuck when removing the burrs. We use a Black and Decker drill clamped to the work table and my son uses a small trian...

One of my sons would like to build a flying carpet this year. Dad of 3, for your flying carpet, take a lookat the TDean flag car on MaxV's website). http://www.maximum-velocity.com . I think some minor tweaks and the flag could be readily turned into a flying carpet. Also, one of our boys made a di...

This year I wanted to put more emphasis on design, so we offered trophies for Best Design-Car and Best Design-NonCar. The whole pack was greatly surprised by the creativity and execution of some of the cars. The Best Non-Car was a miniature dining room table complete with roast turkey, candle sticks...

Warp Speed, How do you deal with the ridges on the shaft of the nail? My concern is that, unless you remove the ridges, you won't get the benefit of the tool. However, removing the ridges may reduce the overall diameter of the axle.

Stan, thanks for the reply. If there is anything I can do to help out, I would be more than willing. With three 3GHz PCs at home, I may not have THz, but I do have some compute cycles to lend to the effort.

Let me know if you think I can help.

Stan/Cory, I would love to replace our Stearns fragment with a PPN-style chart for our 6-lane track. The head-to-head inequality and lane inequality of Stearns has always bothered me. However, the chart generator balks at using more than 1 round for any number of cars more than 6 on a 6-lane track. ...

But remember the race is for charity and these are "adults".

That's a completely different race! Depending on the seriousness of the competitors, single elim may be sufficient. It might be fun to use Stan's 5E no chart with adults.

Given the number of racers and categories, what do you think the number of racers in each category will be?? We run our Pack race where all ranks race all of the others. We have had as many as 80 cars racing in a group on our 6-lane track. We use a Stearns chart to determine the top 6 racers, then u...

Sparky, Congrats on your son's success!! There are sufficient variables that one loss in that many heats is an extremely good day of racing. Differences in lanes, staging, starting gate, etc can all combine to impact finish order. As far as the wheel marks, there is also a "wear line" on t...

Congratulations!! It must be very gratifying to help others learn, build and be successful. I especially liked that the boys did the bulk of the work with coaching and help from the adults. As oldforsrule said, maybe one of them will run a workshop or two some day. Congratulations again!